The European Union and China must “take global climate leadership” after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a source from the French government said on Wednesday, on the eve of a minister’s visit to Beijing. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, French Minister of Ecological Transition, went to China on Thursdays and Fridays. This is the first time for a French Environment Minister for five years.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher will meet in China the Minister of Natural Resources Guan Zhi’ou and the Environment Huang Runqiu, as well as the old special envoy of the Xie Zhenhua climate. “We are in a crucial moment in the three issues of the visit”, which are Cop30 in Brazil (November 10-21), the United Nations Summit on the Ocean (UNUP) in Nice (June 9-13) and the Additional Negotiation Session on an International Treaty Against Plastic Pollution in Geneva (August 5-14), said the environment of the minister.
The withdrawal of the United States, which has announced its intention to abandon the Climate Agreement of Paris, “leaves two main key actors to whom it is the responsibility of taking climate leadership what Europe is, of course, but also China,” he insisted on the minister’s office.
“We are in a period today when there are doubts that are expressed in climate multilateralism and the police system, the Paris Agreement. And it is extremely important that China and the European Union send a very strong message,” he was tried.
“Preparatory visit” before the July Summit
The arrival of the French Minister also has the ambition to be a “preparatory visit” upstream of the summit between Beijing and the European Union planned in China in July, identified by France as “a good opportunity” to publicly affirm the leadership but also European in the weather. During the COP28 of Dubai in 2023, countries committed themselves to a “transition” to the abandonment of fossil fuels, a promise that had barely advanced during the Baku COP29 the following year.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher also intends to evoke with its Chinese interlocutors the implementation of this commitment and discuss coordination between China and the European Union, two of the main historical officials of global warming, “to boost this issue during COP30”.
Source: BFM TV
