The EU heads to COP31 in Turkey next month while weakening its own climate laws, Brussels journalist Dave Keating wrote in his Gulf Stream Blues newsletter on October 28.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries meet in Antalya on November 9-20 without the US, which Donald Trump has pulled out of the Paris Agreement for the second time. Türkiye hosts the summit; Australia’s Chris Bowen is president of negotiations.

In Trump’s first term the EU led the effort to hold the Paris process together. This time, several capitals are seeking to ease climate regulations, citing high energy prices and industrial competitiveness. EU negotiators will carry an uncomfortable truth to Turkey, according to Keating:

"The EU is moving backwards rather than forwards on climate action, currently revisiting 15 years of climate legislation in order to weaken it in the name of lowering prices and boosting competitiveness."

The clearest example is the car deal French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz struck on the sidelines of the EU leaders' summit in Brussels on October 16, which Keating calls a "dirty deal". France backed softening the 2035 phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars in return for German support for a "buy European" preference in public contracts and subsidies, which Paris has long championed. Under the deal carmakers would have to cut fleet emissions by 90% by 2035 rather than 100%, with no obligation to offset the remaining 10%, Euronews reported. The two governments' joint press statement gives no figures, promising "an ambitious European decarbonisation pathway with the necessary regulatory flexibility". MEPs vote on the Commission's proposal for the 2035 rules on November 23.

Methane rules for imported fuels are slipping too. The European Commission proposed on October 14 to push back the obligation on importers of oil, gas and coal to prove their suppliers monitor and report methane emissions by a year, to January 2028, citing security of supply. On October 22, the European Parliament voted 341 to 225, with six abstentions, for a three-year delay, a move Green lead negotiator Jutta Paulus called “an absolute scandal”. The Parliament’s legislative record records the vote.

Carbon pricing is under pressure as well. Italy and Greece joined Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in calling for a delay to ETS2, the extension of the EU carbon market to road fuel and heating due in 2028, triggering a three-hour standoff at the October 15-16 summit before the majority rejected it, Politico reported. Rome and Prague had prepared a joint push for the suspension of the methane rules and the postponement of ETS2 ahead of the meeting.

The Commission has also delayed until at least early 2027 a package of climate and energy laws for the post-2030 period, covering a 2040 renewables target, energy efficiency and national emissions commitments, that had been due in December, Politico reported on October 16. The package is needed to translate the EU's goal of a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 into law.