The European Union will not make new climate finance commitments at this year's COP31 climate summit, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said, describing the prospect of fresh financial commitments as “dead in the water” after two years of stalled progress on cutting global emissions, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. “Let's not fall into the trap to have endless new rounds on financing,” Hoekstra said.
Source: Bloomberg Law (Bloomberg)
The EU and its member states are the world's largest providers of public climate finance to developing countries — €32.3 billion (yaani 3,230 crore euro, around $36 billion) in 2025, according to official EU data, up roughly €600 million from 2024. But budgets are under strain from the energy shock set off by the war in the Middle East, and EU officials increasingly argue that other wealthy countries are not pulling their weight on finance while emissions cuts stall.
Source: OilPrice (reporting Bloomberg and EU data)
The refusal sets up a fight over the COP31 agenda. The African Group of Negotiators has written to UN climate chief Simon Stiell asking for three additional agenda items — tripling adaptation finance, trade and climate change, and the financing arrangements of the Green Climate Fund — Climate Home News reported. Countries agreed last year to at least triple adaptation finance, but there is currently no space in the COP31 agenda to negotiate how that goal would work, and developed countries are expected to resist the request.
Source: Carbon Brief Daily Briefing (Climate Home News)
The stance is not new: an internal EU document reported earlier this month said there was “no scope” for new climate funding commitments at COP31, with the bloc preferring to focus on implementing existing pledges and avoiding public clashes after last year's COP30 in Brazil ended without stronger emissions commitments. COP31 opens in Turkey on 9 November.
Climate finance is the money rich countries provide so poorer nations can cut emissions and adapt to heat, floods and drought — funding on which countries across South Asia, including India, depend for adaptation projects. With the biggest donor refusing fresh pledges before the summit even opens, the adaptation-finance demand is expected to become one of COP31's central battlegrounds.
COP31 opens in Turkey on 9 November. The first fight will be over the agenda itself: whether adaptation finance gets a formal negotiating item, as the African Group demands, or stays inside existing agreements, as the EU prefers. Host Turkey has also launched an AI-and-climate pledge, Bloomberg reported.