Illustration: Chen Xia/GT
In last-minute negotiations before the UN COP30 summit in Brazil, EU climate ministers struck a deal on a 2040 climate change target in the early hours of Wednesday, Reuters reported.
Climate ministers from EU countries approved in a public vote a compromise to cut emissions 90 percent by 2040 from 1990 levels, but with flexibility to weaken this aim, according to the report.
This last-minute climate commitment lays bare the profound challenges facing the EU’s climate agenda, and the grueling negotiations behind it underscore the painful trade-offs that member states face as they strive to balance sluggish economic growth, energy security concerns and urgent climate commitments.
Against the backdrop of sluggish economic growth across the bloc, industries in some EU countries are grappling with a triple squeeze: high energy prices, fierce global competition and the massive expenses required for the green transition. This combination of factors severely undermines their capacity to accommodate stricter emission cuts and fuels socio-political resistance.
The EU possesses distinct advantages in areas, such as industrial carbon capture and advanced clean-energy research and development, but its green transition faces a critical bottleneck. There are high costs and difficulties in the large-scale promotion of cutting-edge technologies, which require both vast application scenarios and cost-competitive supply chains. The EU’s internal market alone cannot meet such requirements in the short term.
It is precisely in addressing this predicament that the strategic value of China-EU green cooperation comes into focus. China has the world’s most complete and cost-effective industrial chain for clean energy, covering photovoltaic modules, wind power equipment, new-energy vehicles and energy storage systems. Leveraging its economies of scale, China can provide high-quality green products at competitive prices, perfectly aligning with the EU’s urgent need for affordable transition solutions.
In the green sector, China and the EU enjoy a solid foundation for cooperation and highly complementary industrial strengths, with substantial space for collaboration in areas such as green product certification, green finance standards and carbon emission permits trading, Wang Zhihua, director-general of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press conference last week.
This complementary advantage is not just theoretical; it is already bearing fruits through pragmatic cooperation.
For instance, a Chinese energy company has formed a partnership with a leading French power company to jointly invest in and develop the Dongtai offshore wind power project, the first China-foreign joint venture in China’s offshore wind power development.
Competitive tensions and trade disputes in the green sector cannot be ignored. Voices within the EU that frame China as a strategic rival in clean energy are not uncommon, and disputes over market access and technical standards require further alignment. But to fixate solely on competition is to miss the bigger picture: China and the EU share a fundamental consensus on advancing the global climate agenda and shouldering their respective responsibilities.
This common ground, rooted in the shared recognition of climate change as an existential threat requiring collective action, forms a solid foundation for collaboration. This is also why there is every reason to believe that, provided both sides maintain an open, pragmatic and cooperative stance while enhancing communication to better understand mutual concerns and align interests, they can bridge differences and forge a win-win path.
In an era where climate targets are increasingly intertwined with economic competitiveness, the significance of China-EU green cooperation extends far beyond bilateral economic ties. It serves as a key solution to address divisions in international climate governance and fill gaps in the supply of global public goods.
If China and the EU can successfully explore a cooperative model that offers a powerful demonstration to other economies of a technologically advanced and economically viable green transition pathway, they will inject much-needed certainty into the volatile global green transition.
原文地址：http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/1106/c90000-20387069.html