Week two at COP30: will the EU fill the equity gap to make the ambition of the Paris Agreement real?

At COP30, the EU is pushing hard for a stronger global “response plan” to the ambition gap – the growing distance between what science says is needed to keep 1.5°C in reach and what countries are actually doing. On paper, this looks like leadership. In practice, it comes after a weak climate finance deal in Baku and with very little positive signals on equity. If this is not fixed, any new ambition risks resting on the same old pattern: shifting the burden onto those who did least to cause the crisis, while protecting those who benefitted most.

From Paris promise to Baku reality

The Paris Agreement rests on a clear political promise: equity makes ambition possible. Developed countries move first and fastest, and provide the means of implementation so that others can act without undermining their right to development. The new finance goal agreed in Baku should have turned that promise into a more concrete pathway for support.

Instead, many developing countries saw the outcome as unbalanced and unambitious, adopted over their objections and without a clear plan for predictable, grant-based public finance – especially for adaptation and loss and damage. One year later, the EU has still not shown how it will turn Baku into real support, while its own emission cuts remain below what science and its historical responsibility imply. The result is a deep mistrust that runs through all the negotiations in Belém: on finance, on adaptation and on the ambition gap itself.

Implementing Baku with equity: what the EU could signal now

In this context, the least the EU can do is to use the space created by Baku to protect ambition, not hollow it out. That means signalling, here and now, that it will implement the deal in good faith and with the highest possible level of ambition, including through increased public, grant-based support. It also means recognising that just transition is a condition for ambition, not an add-on.

The four demands below are not extras. They are concrete options the EU can use here in Belém to send the signal it will implement the Baku deal in good faith and with the highest possible level of ambition:

• At least triple EU grant-based adaptation finance from 2024 levels ideally by 2030 – to reduce the adaptation finance gap and respond to long-standing demands from countries already living with climate impacts.
• At least triple EU contributions to UN climate funds from 2022 levels – including the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund and the Loss and Damage Fund – to strengthen predictable, country-driven finance under the UNFCCC, where developing countries have a say.
• Bundle these increases into a multi-annual climate finance pledge, to be presented at COP31 and reported under Article 9.5 – to make EU finance more transparent and predictable, and to create space for others “in a position to do so” to step up, without diluting developed countries’ responsibilities.
• Support a robust Belem Action Mechanism / Just Transition mechanism under the UNFCCC – not as a new standalone fund, but as an institutional home to embed just transition principles in climate action and to channel existing and future flows towards national just transition processes.

Taken together, these signals would not reopen Baku. They would show that the EU intends to implement it in a way that still gives the Paris promise of equity and ambition a chance.

What is really at stake in Belém?

At this point, what is at stake goes beyond a few paragraphs on the ambition gap. The EU needs to give clear assurances that it is still committed, in good faith, to implementing the Paris Agreement with real ambition and on the terms agreed in Paris itself: equity and just transition as the foundations of climate action, not as late additions.

If it does not, Europe’s credibility will be questioned more sharply, and some will not hesitate to instrumentalise that weakness. The real risk is that the EU comes to be seen as instrumentalising the climate regime against developing countries and their right to development – with lasting, damaging effects on Europe’s climate standing, on the multilateral climate regime, and on any ambition that emerges from it.