For decades, the only meaningful deals China struck with any other nation to reduce its enormous output of greenhouse gases were with the world’s other largest polluter, the United States.

Now, the European Union is trying to break into that club. 

Six months ago, the Donald Trump administration cut U.S. ties to the Paris climate agreement, reneging on past deals with Beijing. 

That left a huge gap. The world’s two top-polluting countries had for many years set the course for the rest of the world — albeit at a pace far too slow to avoid warming the planet to catastrophic levels. 

Even in the hours before its leaders were to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, there was no guarantee of a deal. But on Wednesday afternoon EU diplomats were told the statement would go ahead, according to one of those informed, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the talks.

If an agreement comes, there’s no certainty it will be meaningful.

Regardless, experts say a joint statement between the leaders of the EU and China, being floated for Thursday’s summit, could be a much-needed boost for jittery clean energy markets and give political confidence to other nations’ governments to further cut their own emissions.

“This is a moment the EU and China cannot afford to miss,” said Ireland’s former President Mary Robinson, a prominent voice in climate diplomacy. “EU-China climate cooperation can help steady markets, accelerate the clean energy transition and show that even in a moment of division, climate action remains one of the surest paths to resilience.”

On Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, presidents of the European Commission and European Council — which writes the bloc’s legislation and represents the national leaders, respectively — will meet Xi and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing for talks including on security, economics and trade.

The relationship is not ripe for dealmaking and there is little prospect for fruitful discussions on any of these topics, with trade tensions in particular driving the two sides apart. 

In fact, climate is the only topic where there appears to be any hope of an outcome beyond thin-lipped smiles. 

Beijing wants a “comprehensive agreement” on trade, economics and beyond from the leaders’ summit, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. But failing that, “at least a climate one.” 

Changing equation

During the first Trump administration, the EU struggled to step into the role of China’s climate interlocutor. Those talks were restricted by the EU’s own internal divisions and lack of diplomatic clout, as well as China’s unwillingness to step into the role of global leader and the expectation that Trump was an aberration.

A decade later, Trump is back in the White House, and some things have changed. 

For one, China doesn’t need convincing that climate efforts are in its national interest. China’s clean technology economy has surged, with exports of products such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles “becoming key growth drivers for the Chinese economy,” said Belinda Schäpe, a China policy analyst with the Finland-based nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 

That has a positive effect on the climate. According to analysis by the website Carbon Brief, Chinese clean technology exports reduced global emissions by around 1 percent in 2024.  

Schäpe said the EU is an “important market” for Chinese products, which are often cheaper. That gives China more incentive to deal with the EU.

It also feeds into the trade tensions that are upsetting the rest of the EU-China talks, with Europeans fearful that China’s state subsidies will lead to a flood of cheap products displacing manufacturers in the EU.

On top of that, earlier this year, China extended export controls on critical minerals needed for the production of many clean technologies. 

That showed China was “willing to strike where it hurts when geopolitics demand it,” said Byford Tsang, a senior policy fellow with the Asia program at the pan-European think tank European Council on Foreign Relations. 

“Before signing up for a closer climate partnership with Beijing, Europe should ask whether it is ready to accept the terms and conditions of relying on China Inc. for its energy transition.”

Burnishing China’s image

A deal would boost China’s attempts to position itself as the anti-Trump locus of global affairs, and a supporter of the United Nations and multilateralism.

“In an increasingly turbulent international landscape with rising unilateralism and protectionism,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told the press on Tuesday, the summit was “good not only to our two sides, but also to the world as a whole.” 

An agreement with the EU on global warming would make the U.S. look isolated and reckless, boosting China. 

Such a statement would draw a sharp contrast “against the U.S. withdrawal” from the Paris deal, said Schäpe. As well, it shows China can work with Europe “despite the situation with Russia” and Beijing’s tacit support for its war in Ukraine. 

“It makes China look like the more responsible actor,” Schäpe added.

The EU doesn’t want to hand China that win for nothing. 

The two camps have held intense talks for months in the hope of brokering a joint leaders’ statement this week. 

That includes a two-day summit earlier in July between Chinese ministers and EU commissioners in Beijing. The two sides tangled over the EU’s demand for China to make real commitments, either on cutting down pollution or curtailing its coal use, according to an EU official who was granted anonymity to discuss the substance of the talks. 

“China was a very challenging mission,” said a separate Commission official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy as they are not authorized to speak publicly. 

The EU and China are both expected to submit new targets for reducing emissions until 2035 ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil in November. The EU is especially keen for China to give a signal that its goal will be a step up from its current promise to peak emissions by 2030. 

Western diplomats have pressured Beijing to promise a cut of more than 30 percent below the peak by 2035. 

But the EU’s leverage has been undermined by its own slow process for entering a pledge, with the process for doing so mired in political controversy.

“The problem is,” said Li, “when it comes to substance, the European side has very clear demands on Chinese climate action — but its own climate politics is backfiring big time at home.”

Seeking low-hanging fruit

Joint climate statements have previously been the sole domain of the “G2” — China and the U.S, the two largest polluters and economies. 

Together, the pair accounts for around 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions every year, with China making up the bulk at roughly 30 percent. 

Throughout the three-decade history of international climate diplomacy, economic and superpower competition between Beijing and Washington meant neither wanted to restrict or shift its economic model without a sign that the other would as well.

A major breakthrough came in 2014, when Xi and Barack Obama made a deal to cut their pollution. That agreement laid the foundation for the Paris Agreement, struck a year later.

In 2022, the two superpowers also agreed to cut release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for almost one-third of global warming since the industrial revolution.

The “Sunnylands Statement” — named for the California estate where it was signed — sidestepped the thorniest issues to find lower value, but still important, places for accord. 

This could serve as the template for an EU-China deal, said Li.

There may be room for cooperation on building out renewable energy, reining in nitrogen oxide pollution, financing climate efforts in poorer countries and on carbon pricing frameworks underway in both countries. They might even revisit the moribund U.S.-China deal on methane.

Li suggested they could also look to make a deal on the “sticking points” around the COP30 climate talks. Those include agreeing to avoid messy fights between the big economies that might derail the talks, a rolling dispute over the EU’s carbon border tax, how to extend a past global pledge on moving away from fossil fuel use or funding a new anti-deforestation initiative. 

But EU officials have been watering down such expectations.

“If finally there is a joint statement, it will be an important step forward,” said the Commission official. “In this critical situation I’d say that the victory it’s the joint statement itself.”

Zia Weise contributed to this report from Munich.