During their plenary session on Thursday, 3 July, members of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) held a debate on the 2025 Climate Change Conference (COP30) that will take place in Belém (Brazil) from 10 to 21 November.
They called for multilateral cooperation to be strengthened and for local authorities to be given a larger role in the development of climate policies.
Representatives from local and regional authorities stressed that regions are the first to be exposed to the effects of climate change—fires, floods, erosion—and must be fully involved in international negotiations.
Nadia Pellefigue (PES, French), the CoR’s rapporteur on the implementation of climate action in preparation for COP30, called for this deadline to be decisive.
In her opinion, [local and regional] authorities are moving forward because they do not have a choice. They must address communities’ demands.
Ms Pellefigue called on the European Union to include regions in its future national contribution (NDC) and to maintain its ambition to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions at least 90% by 2040.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency concurs with this message. COP30 Executive Director Ana Toni emphasised that success will come through collective action; she maintained that Brazil wants to give local authorities a central role.
She reiterated that a summit for [local and regional] authorities was actually going to be held in Rio ahead of COP30 so as to bring their proposals to Belém.
Several speakers commented on the decline in policies within the EU.
According to Erika von Kalben (Greens, German), climate change is not waiting for a consensus. She also called for a clear ‘roadmap’ towards climate neutrality that is fair both socially and regionally.
Antje Grotheer (PES, German), for her part, reiterated that faced with a crisis with differentiated global impacts, multilateralism remains the only possible way forward.
Despite disagreements on what means to employ—for example, on the role of nuclear power, which is notably supported by János Ádám Karácsony (ECR, Hungarian), who called for a commitment to “pragmatic and innovative” solutions—a large majority agreed on the fact that the climate response needs to be based on a European Union that is assertive on the international stage and invested in its regions. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)