COP30 will be a defining test for safeguarding multilateralism, global peace and solidarity. At a time when geopolitical tensions are rising and trust in international cooperation is eroding, the climate crisis remains a shared threat that no nation can solve alone.
For CAN Europe, COP30 must reaffirm the Paris Agreement as a cornerstone of peaceful, rules-based cooperation – a space where countries act in solidarity, not self-interest. Delivering an ambitious and fair global outcome in Belém is essential to restore faith that multilateralism can still deliver justice, stability, and security in an increasingly fractured world. It is also important proof that the Paris Agreement is not just something for our history books – it’s implementation must be our past, present and future.
Read CAN Europe’s detailed demands for COP30, summarised as follows:
COP30 is a defining moment for the Paris Agreement and multilateralism. Ten years after its adoption, Parties’ climate plans remain gravely insufficient to meet the 1.5°C goal.
The EU’s political response must be unwavering, including at the Leaders’ Segment in Belém. The EU must champion the recent ICJ Advisory Opinion, which confirms 1.5°C as the agreed temperature goal under the Paris Agreement. To avoid fatalism, COP30 must deliver real progress and a concrete plan of action, one that shows a credible pathway to close the emissions gap, the finance gap, and the solidarity gap.
The EU must take seriously its legal and moral obligations at COP30 and work with others to drive forward such a plan. Only through leadership, solidarity, and accountability can the EU help keep 1.5°C alive.
At COP30, Parties must establish an International Mechanism for Just Transition to accelerate a holistic shift across all sectors and countries. This mechanism should facilitate just transitions away from fossil fuels, transform agriculture and food systems, promote sustainable industrial processes, enable equitable renewable energy deployment and universal energy access, and ensure sustainable management of ecosystems and natural resources, including fair mineral supply chains.
The EU must champion a comprehensive set of principles, safeguards, and an international action plan for just transition, ensuring efforts are transformational, rights-based, and aligned with the Paris Agreement. Just transition policies must promote decent work, labour rights, alternative livelihoods, inclusive dialogue, social protection, and biodiversity protection, while centring the rights of workers, women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, and other marginalised groups. International cooperation on finance, technology transfer, capacity building, and reform of the global financial system is essential, backed by predictable investment in developing countries.
The EU and its member states must scale up new and additional public climate finance to reach their fair-share contributions by 2035, in line with the USD 300 billion goal of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) agreed at COP29. This target must be treated as a floor, not a ceiling. Scaling up finance for adaptation and loss and damage must be a priority, and the vast majority must be delivered as public grants, not loans. Grants are the only appropriate modality for supporting vulnerable communities.
The Baku–Belém Roadmap must take the form of a concrete action plan, with clear actions, actors, targets, and milestones. It must prioritise high-quality, predictable finance that is transparent, grant-based, and aligned with just transition principles. The Roadmap should also set quantified targets for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, with milestones to increase the share of adaptation and loss and damage finance. Blended and private finance should play only a limited role, applied cautiously and never at the expense of communities’ rights or development goals.
The EU must recognise its obligations under Paris Agreement Article 9.1 and support agenda space at COP30 to ensure accountability for developed countries’ climate finance provision. At COP30, developed countries must also agree to at least triple adaptation finance by 2030, building on the Glasgow commitment to double by 2025. This should be coupled with operationalising the Global Goal on Adaptation through a robust indicator framework that reflects grant-based, accessible finance and differentiated responsibilities. Loss and damage finance must also be scaled up through new pledges to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and to the Adaptation Fund, alongside new polluter-pays taxes and levies.
All Parties must accelerate efforts to align financial flows with Paris Agreement Article 2.1c, and agree to continuing work on this at the UNFCCC. This must include phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and regulating harmful private finance flows. The EU must show leadership by phasing out subsidies at home with a just transition framework and compensation schemes for low-income households. Internationally, the UNFCCC should provide guidance and convene relevant institutions to address barriers to climate-resilient development. This requires reforming debt, tax, and trade systems to free fiscal space for investment and break the cycle of dependence on climate-harming industries.
The EU must actively support new taxation mechanisms, including fossil fuel profit and extraction, aviation, and wealth taxes, designed to be socially fair and channelled to international climate finance. The EU should cooperate with other willing countries on these options, including through the Global Solidarity Levies Taskforce, and implement options at the EU level.
Finally, the EU must strengthen its own collective contribution. The Global Europe Instrument in the next Multiannual Financial Framework must maintain its EUR 200 billion budget allocation, retain its 50% climate and environment target, and exclude all fossil fuel activities. It should be aligned with locally led adaptation principles and ensure coherence with just transition objectives.
The EU must drive global cooperation to triple renewable energy capacity, double energy efficiency and end fossil fuel subsidies by 2030. At the same time, the EU must promote ambitious progress for ensuring universal access to clean, affordable, and reliable energy for all in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.
With some of the world’s richest economies still expanding fossil fuel production, COP30 must send clear signals that the energy transition is irreversible and accelerating. The EU should champion a global roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, alongside sectoral decarbonisation roadmaps for power, transport and industry. The EU must back global targets for renewables and universal energy access and push for a strong Mitigation Work Programme outcome to close the 2030 emissions gap, complementing the global stock take.
The EU must lead by example with ambitious, binding energy targets: at least 50 per cent renewables and 20 per cent energy savings by 2030, and halving energy use within a fully renewable system by 2040. The EU must also prioritise a 75 per cent methane reduction by 2030, tied to the full fossil fuel phase-out.
The EU’s energy transition must deliver justice. Raw material sourcing and trade partnerships must be transparent, rights-based, and build local value chains, with binding safeguards for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including free, prior and informed consent. Phasing out fossil fuels is inseparable from protecting and restoring ecosystems that sustain our health, livelihoods, and future. These life-support systems are already critically endangered.
At COP30, the EU must underline that global climate action will only succeed if it protects human rights, civic space, and public participation and advances a bold, action-oriented Gender Action Plan. These must be at the core of EU external action and its role in the UNFCCC.
The EU has to back decisions that safeguard environmental defenders, guarantee access to climate information, and protect freedom of expression and assembly. Rights-based approaches must guide all climate and energy diplomacy, from defending independent media and scientific integrity to ensuring factual communication, in line with the Aarhus Convention.
We also expect the EU to push for a conflict-of-interest policy and reforms to COP host agreements (Host Country Agreements, HCAs), making them transparent, publicly available, and bound by human rights protections as a condition for hosting COPs. With the Paris Agreement now in its implementation phase, the EU must show how a rights-based and accountable UNFCCC can deliver effective, inclusive climate action rooted in justice and free from the grip of fossil fuel interests and corporate lobbyists.
It is also critical that the EU drives an ambitious Gender Action Plan with measurable outcomes. Member States should lead by example, strengthening the role of National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points and ensuring their full participation across all processes.
Join our COP30 mailing list for journalists to receive press releases, spokesperson quotes and event invitations.
Follow our COP30 WhatsApp broadcast group to receive short term insights, reactions and invitations to press huddles & actions on the ground.
COP30 Press Contact:
Tomas Spragg Nilsson
tomas.spraggnilsson@caneurope.org
+46 707 65 63 92
CAN Europe Headquarters
Mundo B
Rue d’Edimbourg 26
1050, Brussels
Belgium
Tel: +32 (0) 28944670
CAN Europe empowers civil society organisations to influence the design and development of effective climate change policy in Europe, both in the European Union as well as in its Member States and in European countries outside the EU.
© Copyrights 2025. All Rights Reserved.
