The fifth EU-China high-level environment and climate dialogue, held in Brussels on June 18, highlighted Beijing’s concerns over clean technology trade restrictions and stressed that an agreement on climate finance is crucial to the success of COP29 in Baku.
In 2023, Frans Timmermans, the EU’s climate change minister, made the long journey to Beijing to meet with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang for the fourth meeting, a trip that helped pave the way for the successful and widely acclaimed COP28 climate change conference.
This year, the Chinese traveled to the city to attend the forum’s fifth edition against the backdrop of a growing trade dispute between Brussels and Beijing and the continuing war in Ukraine.
Timmermans’ successor, Executive Vice Chairman Maroš Šefčovič, who was recently confirmed for a fourth term on the Commission, is looking to build on last year’s momentum.
“It is important not to lose sight of what is important – human survival and maintaining a habitable planet,” he told a gathering of senior government officials and a Chinese delegation in Brussels.
Šefčovič borrowed from the past, “Green is [our] The official statement states it is a “cooperation.”
Tariffs are a big issue
Hours before the high-level meeting, a leading Chinese think tank highlighted Beijing’s unhappiness with the EU’s planned tariffs on electric vehicles (EVs), explicitly drawing a link to global climate change efforts.
“This new [EV] “I think the tariffs are really unnecessary, but maybe it’s a bit of a double standard,” Wang Huiyao, director of the Center for China and Globalization, told attendees of an event hosted by the European Policy Centre (EPC).
He said achieving lagging climate goals “in line with the Paris Agreement” required China to produce clean technology in a “cost-effective, reliable and efficient” way and for other countries to buy it.
The disagreement was not resolved during Tuesday’s talks, with an official statement from the forum acknowledging that “there are areas where the EU and China disagree.”
Climate Finance
Their meeting marks an important step on the circuitous path from Dubai, where COP28 was held, to Baku, and on to COP29. Alongside the latest climate targets, the issue of climate finance is also looming large.
The EU said both sides agreed to support Azerbaijan’s COP Presidency’s focus on new climate finance targets from 2025.
Europe has been at the forefront of efforts to encourage China to provide financial support to poorer countries struggling to invest in decarbonizing their economies.
China, the world’s second-largest economy by nominal GDP, is currently exempt because it was classified as a “developing country” in 1992.
At a recent working-level climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, the EU and other developed countries spent two weeks trying in vain to come up with new terms for including China and other wealthy, high-emitting countries in the list of climate finance donors.
[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Zoran Radosavljevic]
