EU’s climate chief warns of ‘geopolitical winter’

BRUSSELS — The planet is heating up, but the geopolitical landscape is freezing over, European Union climate chief Wopke Hoekstra warned in an interview with POLITICO.

Donald Trump, a fossil fuel evangelist and climate heretic, is back. Across Europe, far-right, anti-green crusaders are rising. And in Brussels, Hoekstra’s own center-right political family is questioning the EU’s climate ambitions.

“We clearly have entered a geopolitical winter,” Hoekstra said in his office in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters describing “tremendously challenging geopolitical times” that “will get worse before it gets better in the years that we have ahead of us.”

Hoekstra is not a new figure to Brussels, having taken over as EU climate chief in 2023. But he was recently reconfirmed for his role at the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, starting a new term on Dec. 1. 

For the Dutch commissioner, who oversees international climate negotiations for the EU as part of his job, the next few years are likely to be a bumpy ride as he tries to convince the rest of the world to accelerate efforts to cut planet-warming emissions. 

“We’re truly making progress in tackling climate change and implementing measures here, but Europe alone cannot save the day,” he said. “The way the heating of the Earth works is that climate change is indiscriminate. It doesn’t matter where CO2 is being pumped into the air. It affects the whole planet.”

Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to dismember President Joe Biden’s climate legislation, pump out more planet-warming fossil fuels and yank the United States from the Paris climate agreement once again. Given the U.S. is the world’s second-largest source of carbon emissions, the stakes are massive.

Hoekstra refused to get drawn into commenting on the future U.S. administration, as Brussels is first trying to extend olive branches to the incoming president instead of facing him head-on. 

But when it comes to tackling climate change, Hoekstra is well aware that Europe cannot go it alone, as the bloc’s emissions account for only 6 percent of global pollution. 

“Even if you reduce everything back home, but you don’t manage to take the others along, you still face all the problems that we’re currently facing. So diplomacy and applying carrots and sticks and incentivizing others to do more is essential,” Hoekstra said, without specifying the potential sticks. 

One stick the EU is about to impose on the world is a carbon border tax, which will charge importers a levy on emissions-intensive goods starting in 2026. The move has drawn fierce criticism from countries such as Brazil, India, China and South Africa, which also sought to discuss the issue at last month’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

Regarding global climate diplomacy, Hoekstra insisted that the EU would have to “engage” with all major emitters, whether that’s China, the Saudis or the U.S. under Trump.

Noting that the G20 economies are responsible for the vast majority of planet-warming emissions, Hoekstra said it was essential that they boost their climate ambitions ahead of next year’s pivotal COP30 summit in Brazil. 

“It makes sense that this whole group — by the way, including the Europeans — does make a step up,” he said. “We’re not going to move the needle if we try to offload this problem on other countries who have way below average per-capita emissions. … So everyone needs to play ball.”

At the same time, the former finance and foreign minister also wants to square the circle between the EU’s ambitious climate goals and industry’s needs to stay competitive in the face of Chinese and American competition. 

Hoekstra said Brussels in the next five years has to be “much more explicit about combining green transition with a viable business climate.”

According to him, the EU has to make sure that “heavy industry cannot only survive, but actually can strive on European soil, that we give way more room for clean tech, and we make this into a positive business case. So there we truly bridge between climate and business.”

Precisely because of that, Brussels has to stay on course on its climate targets, he stressed.

“Many companies are asking for predictability and staying the course rather than changing the rules of the game simply because they cannot cope,” he said. “Particularly heavy industry have very long investment cycles, sometimes decades ahead, and you are then not helped by politicians who are in the habit of constantly changing their minds.”