At the Economic and Financial Affairs Council on Friday 10 October, ahead of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) in Brazil, the European finance ministers adopted the Council’s conclusions on climate finance.
These indicate that, to further increase this funding, it is necessary to continue to make financial flows compatible with a “pathway towards low GHG emissions” and to reform the financial architecture “in every country as well as internationally”.
The conclusions stress the need to explore “innovative options” to broaden the sources of finance for climate action on favourable terms, particularly for adaptation, “including through instruments such as carbon pricing, levies for implementing climate action and by scaling up net-zero environmental incentives”.
More broadly, the ministers support the “voluntary” objective agreed at COP29 of financing developing countries to the tune of at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 (see EUROPE 13533/5).
On this point, the Council conclusions mention the ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion’, which should reflect “urgent need and transformative potential to unlock significantly more private capital for climate action”.
The conclusions point out that, along with the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU and its Member States are “the largest providers of international public climate finance”, having increased their international financial contribution to adaptation in developing countries by 75% between 2019 and 2023.
Finally, the ministers ask the European Commission to provide an overview of international climate finance flows from the EU for the year 2024, including from its Member States and the EIB, with a view to its approval by the Council ahead of COP30.
Link to the conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/ixh (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)