BRUSSELS — For decades, the European Union has relied on the United States to act as shock absorber and chief powerbroker at global climate talks. No longer. 

At the COP30 conference starting in Brazil on Monday, the unprecedented absence of its longtime ally leaves the 27-country union bearing the brunt of demands and pressures leveled at rich countries — an awkward role for the EU to take on. 

In theory, the EU is the obvious candidate to step into the leadership vacuum left by the U.S. following President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the summit. After all, its climate targets and concrete policies rank among the most ambitious in the world.

Yet the bloc, increasingly steeped in doubts about its domestic green transition and short on diplomatic heft, arrives in Belém ill-equipped for the job. 

At home, faced with a confident far right and struggling industrial sectors campaigning to hit the brakes on climate action, European governments are weakening green policies and squabbling over the pace of decarbonization. 

At COP30, the EU seeks to cajole other countries into upping their ambitions and agree a joint statement pledging to step up pollution cuts, hoping to send a message to the Trump administration that its fossil fuel revivalism leaves the U.S. isolated. 

That contrast is already opening the EU to charges of hypocrisy, complicating its efforts to convince big polluters such as China and India to commit to more climate action in Belém. 

The bloc’s top climate officials don’t see a contradiction, pointing out that the EU remains not only committed to steep pollution cuts but is on track to meet its targets. 

“We are doubling down on that leadership role,” the European Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra insisted in an interview this week after EU governments signed off on a much delayed and weaker-than-expected new climate target required for this COP. 

“Are there dubious actors that always will try to shift the blame on the Europeans? Of course,” he said. “But this doesn’t hinder us.” 

The absence of the U.S. will also expose the EU to heightened pressure on thorny issues, such as financing and trade, that tend to pit rich nations against developing countries. 

The Americans, a senior EU climate negotiator acknowledged, “are no longer there to deflect attacks” on the negotiation stance of rich countries, putting the bloc in an “uncomfortable” position. “Being the bad cop isn’t a role that comes naturally to the EU.” 

On top of that, the EU is heading into COP30 lacking experienced political negotiators, who take over the talks in the second week of the conference. Prominent figures such as German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan have changed jobs or were ousted in elections over the past year.

In Belém, “there absolutely has to be a strong response” to Trump and new findings showing the world remains far off track to comply with the Paris climate accord, the negotiator said. “But the EU is in a delicate position in terms of calling for that, given all this.” 

The China factor

Trump derided the annual United Nations talks and withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement in his first term as president. But due to a quirk in the 2015 climate accord, the U.S. didn’t actually leave until the day after Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020. 

During Trump’s entire first term, U.S. negotiators continued to hold a prominent role alongside the Europeans, fighting for global climate rules that would apply as strongly to China as to wealthy countries.

On its own, the EU has struggled to continue that fight. 

Pushing China won’t be the bloc’s only challenge at this COP. India and host Brazil are also seeking to pressure the EU over trade measures; major polluters oppose the bloc’s campaign for a joint declaration promising more pollution cuts; and countries that share the EU’s desire for an ambitious outcome may give the bloc flak for wavering on its green commitments.

But the bloc’s approach to China, more than anything, lays bare its difficulties in stepping up and out of Washington’s shadow.

Beijing in September promised to cut its world-leading levels of pollution between 7 percent and 10 percent until 2035, compared to an undefined peak that may have occurred this year. It’s China’s first major emissions-slashing goal, but far below what experts said was feasible. 

The EU, which was expecting a Chinese target of around 30 percent, took the announcement badly. Hoekstra denounced it as “clearly disappointing” — comments that prompted an unusual rebuke from the Chinese, who complained of “double standards” and warned his public criticism “undermines the atmosphere of cooperation.”

Some argue this is the EU stepping up. “We used to have the U.S. acting as the bad cop and the EU acting as the good cop, so we as the EU have to learn to be both bad and good cop,” said a second EU negotiator. “So politicians may show outrage to push China, and on the diplomatic level we can work with China in making the COP a success.” 

Others criticized Hoekstra’s response. “I think it’s counterproductive,” said Cecilia Trasi, a policy advisor at the Italian ECCO think tank. During her recent trip to China, “the common refrain,” including in conversations with officials, “was the EU is hypocritical, and it’s not doing enough to acknowledge the progress that China has made.”

New targets for 2035, required from every Paris Agreement signatory, are central to this year’s climate conference. 

The EU missed the United Nations’ September deadline for the targets as its governments were unable to agree. The bloc eventually decided on an emissions cut of between 66.3 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels — instead of the fixed 72.5 percent target the Commission had signaled although never clearly stated. 

Under pressure from surging far-right parties and its high-polluting manufacturing industry, the EU has also embarked on a sweeping effort to deregulate and revise green policies, weakening parts of the legislative web designed to achieve its climate targets. 

This hasn’t gone unnoticed in Beijing. At a meeting between high-level EU and Chinese climate officials in July, the Chinese chewed out their European counterparts for what they saw as the bloc backtracking on climate efforts, according to a person in the room. 

“The Chinese said that it’s shameful — that’s the word they used, shameful — that the EU is going back on its word and lowering the bar on climate. That was quite embarrassing,” said the EU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic talks. 

Until early summer, Brussels and Beijing were still talking about presenting their 2035 climate targets together to demonstrate joint leadership, the first diplomat said. But the bloc’s complex decision-making process and Hoekstra’s choice to delay proposing new climate goals until July meant the EU wasn’t ready. 

“They weren’t seeing strong leadership from others, including the EU. Us not having a [target] was a factor,” the diplomat said. 

“I think China misses the U.S. They had a stable partner — one they didn’t always agree with but could work with, could discuss with,” the diplomat added. “Now in the U.S. absence, they want to step up but are looking for a new partner. The EU is trying, but we’re slow.” 

Trading barbs

EU diplomats say the bloc isn’t the only one not pulling its weight, with the first negotiator complaining that the United Kingdom, for instance, was not stepping up. But they all acknowledged the EU’s challenges in filling the vacuum left by the U.S. 

Aside from the internal backlash against the EU’s green agenda, personnel changes across the bloc “have not been helpful either,” the first diplomat said. “We used to have a lot more high-profile envoys and ministers.” 

The bloc still has an army of experienced diplomats handling technical talks, but many of the political negotiators that helped usher past COPs to a conclusion are gone. 

This year’s German elections saw the new government abolish the climate envoy role, until then held by COP veteran Jennifer Morgan. The Irish elections ousted Green Climate Minister Eamon Ryan, who co-led last year’s negotiations on how to prepare the world for climate disasters, a top issue in Belém. Two longtime climate negotiators, Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen and Spain’s Teresa Ribera, joined the Commission but won’t attend COP30. 

While Ribera has held talks this year with not-quite-retired Chinese envoy Xie Zhenhua, the EU has not managed to set up a channel with Beijing to replace the bilateral efforts undertaken by U.S. envoys such as John Kerry.  

“We still talk to them, but it was easier when the U.S. was there. Especially when Kerry and Xie spoke every other month,” said a third EU negotiator. “It’s much more ad-hoc now.” 

Hoekstra said the EU had put in plenty of effort. 

“We have been in very frequent interactions with them at all levels … we have invested very significantly in the relationship and that is something we will continue to do,” he said. 

Rising trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing are also looming large over efforts to work together at COP.

The EU harbors growing disquiet about Chinese dominance in technologies and materials critical for the energy transition. Its domestic green backlash is driven in large part by the decline of the bloc’s traditional manufacturing base, with China’s state-subsidized model outcompeting the EU on everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines. 

China and its companies “are massive beneficiaries of the green transition but don’t want to lead by example,” the third diplomat said.

Beijing, meanwhile, feels threatened by the bloc’s countermeasure — a carbon tariff, known as CBAM, that seeks to protect European manufacturers from foreign competition not subject to the same climate rules. 

Beijing and its allies, which see the measure as a protectionist move to shut emerging economies out of the EU market, have unsuccessfully sought to put CBAM on the agenda at past COPs. They are set to try again on Monday, and this time the bloc cannot rely on the U.S. to help fend off such attacks. 

“The elephant in the room between the EU and China is CBAM,” said Trasi. “If the conversation around CBAM is not handled well, it can easily become very toxic and derail perhaps not the entire negotiations but joint efforts of the EU and China.”