The world’s ice is disappearing — and with it, our planet’s memory of itself.  At a very southern ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Antarctic snowpack Wednesday, scientists stored long cores of ice taken from two dying Alpine glaciers inside a 30-meter tunnel — safe, for now, from both climate change and global geopolitical upheaval. Each ice sample contains tiny microbes and bubbles of air trapped in the ancient past. Future scientists, using techniques unknown today, might use the ice cores to unlock new information about virus evolution, or global weather patterns.  Extracting ice from glaciers around the world and carrying it to Antarctica involved complex scientific and diplomatic collaboration — exactly the type of work denigrated by the Trump Administration of the United States, said Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, a special envoy of France’s President Emmanuel Macron and ambassador to the Poles. Scientists are “threatened by those who doubt science and want to muzzle it. Climate change is not an hoax, as President Trump and others say. Not at all,” Poivre d’Arvor said during an online press conference Wednesday. Glaciers are retreating worldwide thanks to global warming. In some regions their information about the past will be lost forever in the coming decades, no matter what is done to curb the Earth’s temperature. “Our time machines are melting very quickly,” said Carlo Barbante, an Italian scientist who is the vice chair of the Ice Memory Foundation (IMF). The tunnel, known as the Ice Memory Sanctuary, is just under a kilometer from the French-Italian Concordia base in Antarctica. It rests on an ice sheet 3,200 meters thick and is a constant minus 52 degrees. Scientists said they believed the tunnel would stay structurally stable for more than 70 years before needing to be remade. As well as the two ice samples, which arrived by ship and plane this month, the scientists have collected cores from eight other glaciers from Svalbard to Kilimanjaro. These are currently in freezers awaiting transportation to Antarctica. Co-founder of the sanctuary Jérôme Chappellaz, a French sociologist, called for more such facilities to be opened across Antarctica, and said he expected China would soon create its own store for Tibetan ice. Poivre d’Arvor called for an international treaty that commits countries to donate ice to the Sanctuary and guarantee access for scientists. France and Italy have collaborated on building the sanctuary and provided resources to assist with the transportation of the samples. “This is not a short-term investment but a strategic choice grounded in scientific responsibility and international cooperation,” Gianluigi Consoli, an official from the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research. On the inside of the door that locks the ice away, someone had written in black marker “Quo Vadis?” Latin for “where are you going?” It’s a question that hangs over even the protected southern continent. Antarctica is governed by a 1959 treaty that suspended territorial claims and preserved the continent for the purposes of science and peace. With President Donald Trump’s grab for territory near the North Pole in Greenland, the internationalist ideals that have brought stability to the Antarctic for over half a century appear to no be longer shared by the U.S. But William Muntean, who was senior advisor for Antarctica at the State Department during Trump’s first term Trump and under President Joe Biden, said there had been “no sign” U.S. policy in Antarctica would change, nor did he expect it to. “The southern polar region is very different from the western hemisphere and from the Arctic,” Muntean said. The U.S. doesn’t claim sovereignty, military competition is negligible, nor are there commercially viable energy or mining projects at the South Pole. “Taking disruptive or significant actions in Antarctica would not advance any Trump administration priorities.” That said, he added, “you can never rule out a change.”

Ultra-fast-fashion giant Shein will attend a hearing at the European Parliament to discuss the company’s business practices. Pressure has been mounting on Shein to meet with policymakers, who are concerned about the influx of cheap parcels it generates as well as suspected breaches of EU law and the environmental impact it has, especially as the company was caught selling child-like sex dolls in France. The Parliament’s internal market committee had been trying for weeks to bring the platform in for a hearing, but to no avail. Now a date has finally been set for Jan. 27, according to officials. The head of Shein’s Business Integrity Group for Greater Europe, Yinan Zhu, will appear before the committee. “Shein finally answers to EU lawmakers and will appear before the IMCO Committee after I had several email exchanges with them,” said the committee’s chair, German Green MEP Anna Cavazzini. In a letter seen by POLITICO, Zhu confirmed his attendance and asked for a separate meeting with the committee chair. Zhu said he wants to discuss in detail the measures that the company is putting in place to address lawmakers’ concerns. Cavazzini’s goal is to scrutinize the platform. “MEPs finally get to their right to closely scrutinise both the Commission’s enforcement efforts and the conduct of major online marketplaces in the light of Shein’s recent scandals,” she said. Shein’s Martin Reidy said in a statement: “We intend to attend the IMCO committee meeting on 27 January and look forward to a constructive exchange with members on the industry-wide challenge of ensuring customer safety and protection online.”

BRUSSELS — The world is rapidly closing in on the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that serves as a threshold for ever more dangerous climate change, European scientists have warned.  Average global temperatures are now around 1.4C higher than during the pre-industrial era, according to data released Wednesday by the European Union’s Copernicus planetary observation service. The scientists also found that 2025 was the third-hottest year on record. If this warming trend continues, temperatures will breach the 1.5C limit set out in the Paris Agreement before the end of this decade. In the 2015 landmark climate accord, governments pledged to limit global warming to “well below” 2C and ideally to 1.5C.  The threats from climate change, such as more intense heat waves and rising sea levels, increase with every tenth of a degree of warming. Scientists also warn that passing 1.5C risks triggering so-called tipping points, from rainforest diebacks to ocean circulation collapse, that bring about irreversible and extreme climatic changes.  In theory, the world could return to 1.5C after crossing it by using technology to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a scenario known as “overshoot.” This technology, however, is not yet available at the scale required. “With the 1.5C in the terms of the Paris Agreement around the corner, now we are effectively entering a phase where it will be about managing that overshoot,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told reporters at a press conference. “It’s basically inevitable that we will pass that threshold, and it’s up to us to decide how we want to deal with the enhanced and increased higher risk that we will face as a consequence of this,” he said. The longer and greater the overshoot, the bigger the risk, he added. The hottest year — and the only one so far to exceed the 1.5C threshold — remains 2024 with 1.6C. However, the Paris Agreement targets refer to long-term trends rather than those lasting a few years, and Buontempo said three different Copernicus models, including five-year averages and 30-year linear trends, showed warming has now reached around 1.4C.  Copernicus data shows that 2025 was the third-warmest year on record at 1.47C above pre-industrial levels, just marginally cooler than 2023. That’s despite El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern that tends to bring hotter temperatures on top of the human-induced warming, ending in mid-2024 and a cooling La Niña phase emerging late last year. “The last three years in particular have been extremely warm compared to earlier years,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director at Copernicus. Taken together, she noted, the three-year period exceeded 1.5C, something that had not occurred before.  “The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dominated by the burning of fossil fuels,” Burgess said. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the air, temperatures continue to rise, including in the ocean; sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets continue to melt.”  For the European continent, 2025 also marked the third-warmest year on record, the data shows. Hot and windy conditions contributed to record wildfires, resulting in Europe’s worst fire-related emissions since monitoring began 23 years ago. Half the world experienced an above-average number of days causing strong heat stress, meaning temperatures that feel like 32C or more. Burgess added that some regions — including most of Australia, parts of Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula — saw more days with extreme heat stress, when perceived temperatures reach dangerous levels above 46C. “The summers we are facing now are very different to the summers that our parents experienced, very different to the summers that our grandparents experienced,” Burgess said. “Children today will be exposed to more heat hazards and more climate hazards than perhaps we were or our parents were.” The polar regions saw significantly higher temperatures in 2025, with the Antarctic experiencing its hottest year and the Arctic its second-warmest year on record.  Accordingly, the expanse of polar sea ice was below average throughout the year, and in February 2025 briefly hit a record low since monitoring began in the 1970s. The shrinking of the ice caps accelerates global warming by reducing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.  European science officials also expressed concern about the Trump administration’s climate science cuts and erasure of datasets.  “Data and observations are obviously central to our efforts to confront climate change … and these challenges don’t know any borders,” said Florian Pappenberger, director of the European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which oversees Copernicus. “Therefore, it is of course concerning that we have an issue in terms of data.”  Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — On Greenland’s southern tip, surrounded by snowy peaks and deep fjords, lies Kvanefjeld — a mining project that shows the giant, barren island is more than just a coveted military base. Beneath the icy ground sits a major deposit of neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to make magnets that are essential to build wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-tech military equipment. If developed, Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, would become the first European territory to produce these key strategic metals. Energy Transition Minerals, an Australia-based, China-backed mining company, is ready to break ground. But neither Copenhagen, Brussels nor the Greenlandic government have mobilized their state power to make the project happen. In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland’s inhabitants control of their natural resources; 12 years later the Greenlandic government blocked the mine because the rare earths are mixed with radioactive uranium. Since then the project has been in limbo, bogged down in legal disputes. “Kvanefjeld illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty — combined with geopolitics and high capital requirements — makes even strategically important projects hard to move from potential to production,” Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s former foreign minister and now a strategic adviser to Energy Transition Minerals, told POLITICO. Kvanefjeld’s woes are emblematic of Greenland’s broader problems. Despite having enough of some rare earth elements to supply as much as 25 percent of the world’s needs — not to mention oil and gas reserves nearly as great as those of the United States, and lots of other potential clean energy metals including copper, graphite and nickel — these resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Just two small mines, extracting gold and a niche mineral called feldspar used in glassmaking and ceramics, are up and running in Greenland. And until very recently, neither Denmark nor the European Union showed much interest in changing the situation. But that was before 2023, when the EU signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greenland government to cooperate on mining projects. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, proposed the same year, is an attempt to catch up by building new mines both in and out of the bloc that singles out Greenland’s potential. Last month, the European Commission committed to contribute financing to Greenland’s Malmbjerg molybdenum mine in a bid to shore up a supply of the metal for the EU’s defense sector.  But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. “The EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland’s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,” Kofod said. In a world shaped by Trump’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China’s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe’s neglect of Greenland’s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder. With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images A HOSTILE LAND That’s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy. “Of all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,” said Ditte Brasso Sørensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory’s “very difficult environmental circumstances.”  The tiny population — fewer than 60,000 — and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.  Greenland also has strict environmental policies — including a landmark 2021 uranium mining ban — which restrict resource extraction because of its impact on nature and the environment. The current government, voted in last year, has not shown any signs of changing its stance on the uranium ban, according to Per Kalvig, professor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish government research organization. Uranium is routinely found with rare earths, meaning the ban could frustrate Greenland’s huge potential as a rare earths producer. It’s a similar story with fossil fuels. Despite a 2007 U.S. assessment that the equivalent of over 30 billion barrels in oil and natural gas lies beneath the surface of Greenland and its territorial waters — almost equal to U.S. reserves — 30 years of oil exploration efforts by a group including Chevron, Italy’s ENI and Shell came to nothing. In 2021 the then-leftist government in Greenland banned further oil exploration on environmental grounds.  Danish geologist Flemming Christiansen, who was deputy director of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland until 2020, said the failure had nothing to do with Greenland’s actual potential as an oil producer. Instead, he said, a collapse in oil prices in 2014 along with the high cost of drilling in the Arctic made the venture unprofitable. Popular opposition only complicated matters, he said. THE CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT From the skies above Greenland Christiansen sees firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change: stretches of clear water as rising temperatures thaw the ice sheets that for centuries have made exploring the territory a cold, costly and hazardous business. “If I fly over the waters in west Greenland I can see the changes,” he said. “There’s open water for much longer periods in west Greenland, in Baffin Bay and in east Greenland.” Climate change is opening up this frozen land. Climate change is opening up this frozen land. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Greenland contains the largest body of ice outside Antarctica, but that ice is melting at an alarming rate. One recent study suggests the ice sheet could cease to exist by the end of the century, raising sea levels by as much as seven meters. Losing a permanent ice cap that is several hundred meters deep, though, “gradually improves the business case of resource extraction, both for … fossil fuels and also critical raw materials,” said Jakob Dreyer, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.   But exploiting Greenland’s resources doesn’t hinge on catastrophic levels of global warming. Even without advanced climate change, Kalvig, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, argues Greenland’s coast doesn’t differ much from that of Norway, where oil has been found and numerous excavation projects operate.     “You can’t penetrate quite as far inland as you can [in Norway], but once access is established, many places are navigable year-round,” Kalvig said. “So, in that sense, it’s not more difficult to operate mines in Greenland than it is in many parts of Norway, Canada or elsewhere — or Russia for that matter. And this has been done before, in years when conditions allowed.”    A European Commission spokesperson said the EU was now working with Greenland’s government to develop its resources, adding that Greenland’s “democratically elected authorities have long favored partnerships with the EU to develop projects beneficial to both sides.” But the spokesperson stressed: “The fate of Greenland’s raw mineral resources is up to the Greenlandic people and their representatives.” The U.S. may be less magnanimous. Washington’s recent military operation in Venezuela showed that Trump is serious about building an empire on natural resources, and is prepared to use force and break international norms in pursuit of that goal. Greenland, with its vast oil and rare earths deposits, may fit neatly into his vision. Where the Greenlandic people fit in is less clear.

BRUSSELS — Even after most member countries backed the EU’s landmark trade accord with Latin America, opponents of the deal in France, Poland and the European Parliament are still determined to derail or delay it. As a result, even after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen flies to Paraguay this Saturday to sign the accord with the Mercosur bloc after over 25 years of talks, it could still take months before we finally find out when, or even whether, it will finally take effect. The culprit is the EU’s tortuous decision-making process: After the curtain came down on Friday on deliberations in the Council, the intergovernmental branch of the bloc, a new act will now play out in the European Parliament. Ratification by lawmakers later this year is the most likely outcome — but there will be high drama along the way. “It has become irrational,” said an EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If the European Parliament refuses, we will have a European crisis.” Proponents argue that the deal with Mercosur — which groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — is the bloc’s best shot at rallying friends across the world as the EU tries to counter Donald Trump’s aggressive moves (the latest being the U.S. president’s threats to annex Greenland). But more than 140 lawmakers are already questioning the legal basis of the agreement, concerned that it breaches the EU treaties. They want it sent to the Court of Justice of the EU for a legal review, which could delay it for as long as two years. Political group leaders agreed before the Christmas break to submit this referral to a vote as soon as governments signed off on the deal. That vote is now expected at next week’s plenary, a official with the Parliament said.  Yet while the rebel MEPs have enough votes to call a floor debate, they likely lack the majority needed in the 720-seat Parliament to pass the resolution itself.  “I don’t think that the substance of the legal challenge is going anywhere. This is fabricated, it’s a lot of hot air — both in terms of environmental [and] health provisions, in terms of national parliaments. All of this has been tried and tested,” said David Kleimann, a senior trade expert at the ODI Europe think tank in Brussels. LEGAL ROADBLOCKS  The challenge in the Parliament is only one front. The deal’s biggest opponents, Poland and France, are also fighting back. Polish Agriculture Minister Stefan Krajewski said Friday he would push for the government to also submit a complaint to the Court of Justice.   “We will not let the deal go any further,” he said, adding that Poland would ask the court to assess whether the Mercosur pact is legally sound. On the same day, protesting farmers spilled manure in front of his house. “We will not let the deal go any further,” said Polish Agriculture Minister Stefan Krajewski. | Olivier Matthys/EPA Polish MEP Krzysztof Hetman, a member of the center-right European People’s Party and a political ally of Krajewski, said the referrals of the Parliament and of member states would play out separately with the same aim in mind. “If one succeeds, the other might not be necessary,” he said, adding that while the court considers the complaint, the deal would effectively be on ice. French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, is under huge pressure from his political opponents to do more to stall the deal. France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary voted against the deal last week while Belgium abstained. That left the anti-Mercosur camp shy of the blocking minority needed to kill the deal. On Wednesday, the National Assembly will vote on two separate no-confidence motions submitted by the far-right National Rally and the far-left France Unbowed. Even if opposition to the Mercosur deal remains unanimous, the two motions have little to no chance of toppling the French government: The left is unlikely to back the National Rally text, while the center-left Socialists are withholding support for the France Unbowed motion. But nothing can be ruled out in France’s fragmented parliament.  REALITY CHECK Even some of the rebel MEPs admit their challenge is unlikely to succeed — and that the Parliament might still back the overall deal in a vote later this year.  “It will be very difficult now that the Council has approved it,” said Hetman, the Polish MEP. “The supporters of the agreement know this, which is why they sabotaged the vote on the referral in November and December.” Others opponents still see a chance to topple it, and are optimistic that the legal challenge can gather enough support.  “We want to delay the Mercosur adoption process as long as possible,” Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left group, told POLITICO before the Christmas break. She also saw signs that a majority of MEPs could come out against the deal: “I bet there are even more MEPs willing to make sure that the agreement is fully in line with the treaties.” If the judicial review is rejected, the Parliament would hold a yes-no vote to ratify the trade agreement, without being able to modify its terms.  Such a vote could be scheduled in the May plenary at the earliest, Bernd Lange, the chair of the chamber’s trade committee, told POLITICO. Lange, a German Social Democrat, said he was confident of a “sufficient” majority to pass the deal.  Pedro López de Pablo, a spokesperson for the EPP — von der Leyen’s own political family and the EU’s largest party — vowed there was a majority for the agreement in the EPP and dismissed the legal maneuvering.  “It is clear that such a move is politically motivated to delay the implementation of the deal rather than the product of a legal analysis,” he said.  Giorgio Leali contributed to this report. 

BRUSSELS — A qualified majority of EU member states has approved the bloc’s trade deal with the Mercosur countries for signature, four EU diplomats said. France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary expressed their opposition while Belgium abstained. EU capitals now have until 5 p.m. on Friday to lodge any objections. Additional farm market safeguards that would kick in if there is a surge in imports from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay surge too much also won the approval of EU ambassadors, the diplomats said, on condition of anonymity. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to travel to Paraguay next week to sign the agreement.

LONDON — Europe’s leaders have discovered yet another hill they are unwilling to die on: their long-held dream of a world fighting climate change together. President Donald Trump launched his most far-reaching attack on the international climate process Wednesday by ordering the U.S. to withdraw from the 1992 treaty that underpins most global attempts to stave off global warming. It means the world’s richest country and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter will play no further part in United Nations-led efforts to mitigate climate change — a position that could prove impossible to reverse by a future U.S. administration. European leaders might, then, have been expected to respond with loud condemnation. But the silence was deafening. Ursula von der Leyen? Schtum. Keir Starmer? Crickets. Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, was low-key. On Thursday, in a speech to French diplomats, the French president admitted the U.S. attacks on multilateralism, including Wednesday’s pledge to withdraw from 66 international organizations spanning environmental, social and human rights issues — the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) among them — “weakens all the bodies through which we can resolve common issues.” But Macron warned his officials: “We are not here to comment, we are here to act … If we have an intelligent response to offer, we do so. If we don’t have an intelligent response to offer, we look elsewhere.” It’s a far cry from 2017, when leaders across Europe lined up to hammer Trump for ditching the Paris Agreement — a less serious violation of the international regime, given there are now questions about whether the U.S. will ever be able to rejoin the UNFCCC, in which the Paris Agreement resides. But the world looks very different now than it did in 2017. Climate change concerns have been sucked into the black hole of Trump’s geopolitical tumult, and even if Europeans feel aggrieved, little sign of it has escaped the event horizon. “With Europeans still critically reliant on U.S. intelligence and being able to purchase U.S. arms to ensure Ukraine’s survival, it makes no sense to criticize Trump’s latest assault on combating climate change, just as they haven’t criticized the Venezuela operation,” said Robin Niblett, former director of the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank.  PICK YOUR BATTLES EU leaders have demonstrated this week that violations of international law and multilateral trust are way below the bar for confronting the Trump administration. Only a direct threat to invade European territory in Greenland has stirred Europe’s leaders to respond. “This is the bigger picture we’re seeing — European leaders essentially sort of pick their battles in this environment, and unfortunately, the UNFCCC process isn’t their biggest priority right now,” said Susi Dennison, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.  “The White House doesn’t care about environment, health or suffer[ing] of people,” Teresa Ribera said on social media. | Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images On top of that, she added, Trump’s attacks on climate action have lost their shock value. Wednesday’s announcement is “consistent with the withdrawal from climate action as a specific goal of the administration,” she said.  Officials in the offices of the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and the European Commission declined requests from POLITICO to comment on the announcement that the U.S. would ditch the UNFCCC and also withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. climate science body, and the Green Climate Fund.  The response was left to a smattering of lowly environment ministers, who expressed a mixture of exasperation and anger but very little shock at the announcement. (German Climate Minister Carsten Schneider simply noted that it “comes as no surprise.”)  One of the most prominent criticisms came from European Commission Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera, a Spanish socialist who is one of the EU executive’s most outspoken advocates for strong climate action. “The White House doesn’t care about environment, health or suffer[ing] of people,” she said on social media. Meanwhile, in the U.K., the populist right-wing Reform party, currently leading in the polls, said Britain should follow suit and ditch the climate treaty. EUROPE ALONE Schneider, the German minister, also echoed a common view in saying the move would leave the U.S. isolated on the international stage. But Washington’s exit also leaves the Europeans without a key ally in global negotiations.  Europe discovered what it meant for the U.S. to be absent from U.N. climate talks in Brazil last year when the Trump administration decided to send no delegates. A coalition of emerging economies effectively quashed any chance that the conference would make meaningful advances or that the Europeans would pursue their agenda. Legal opinions vary on whether a U.S. reentry to the UNFCCC would be as straightforward as a presidential decree or if it would require the U.S. Senate to ratify the deal, as it did in the early 1990s. The chance of a lockout raises the prospect of a permanent rebalancing of power inside the U.N. climate process. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the IPCC comes as it drafts its next round of vital climate science reports. While the move doesn’t stop individual U.S. scientists from contributing, Washington will not get to influence the report summaries that end up informing policymakers, which need to be signed off on by all governments.  As with the U.N. climate talks, others may step into the vacuum to take advantage of the U.S. absence. But Dennison thinks it won’t be the Europeans.  “I’m no longer even remotely optimistic that Europe is capable right now of playing that role,” she said, pointing to the growing divisions over climate action among EU governments and the rollbacks of key green legislation over the past year. “I don’t think that Europeans are going to step into any void.” Karl Mathiesen and Charlie Cooper reported from London. Zia Weise reported from Brussels. Josh Groeneveld contributed reporting from Berlin. Nicolas Camut contributed reporting from Paris. Emilio Casaliccio contributed reporting from London.

The Italian government is satisfied with new funding promised by Brussels to European farmers and is signaling that it may cast its decisive vote in favor of the EU’s huge trade deal with the Latin American Mercosur bloc. Ahead of Friday’s vote by EU member countries, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Rome was happy with the European Commission’s efforts to make the deal more palatable. Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida also said the accord represented an opportunity — especially for food exporters. “Italy has never changed its position: We have always supported the conclusion of the agreement,” Tajani said on Wednesday evening. Yet they stopped short of saying outright that Italy would vote in favor of the deal. Instead, within sight of the finish line, Rome is pressing to tighten additional safeguards to shield the EU farm market from being destabilized by any potential influx of South American produce. Rome’s endorsement of the accord, which has been a quarter century in the making and would create a free-trade zone spanning more than 700 million people, is crucial. A qualified majority of 15 of the EU’s 27 countries representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population is needed. Italy, with its large population, effectively holds the casting vote. France and Poland are still holding out against a pro-Mercosur majority led by Germany — but they lack the numbers to stall the deal. If it goes through, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could fly to Paraguay to sign the accord as soon as next week. The bloc’s other members are Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. ‘AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY’ Italy praised a raft of additional measures proposed by the Commission — including farm market safeguards and fresh budget promises on agriculture funding — as “the most comprehensive system of protections ever included in a free trade agreement signed by the EU.” Tajani, who as deputy prime minister oversees trade policy, has long taken a pro-Mercosur position. He said the deal would help the EU diversify its trade relationships and boost “the strategic autonomy and economic sovereignty of Italy and our continent.” Even Lollobrigida, who has sympathized in the past with farmers’ concerns on the deal, is striking a more positive tone. At a meeting hosted by the Commission in Brussels on Wednesday, Lollobrigida described Mercosur as “an excellent opportunity.” The minister, who is close to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and is from her Brothers of Italy party, also said its provisions on so-called geographical indications would help Italy promote its world-famous delicacies in South America. It would mean no more ‘Parmesão,’” he said, referring to Italian-sounding knockoffs of the famed hard cheese. ONE MORE THING … Lollobrigida said Italy could back the deal if the farm market safeguards are tightened. The EU institutions agreed in December to require the Commission to investigate surges in imports of beef or poultry from Mercosur if volumes rise by 8 percent from the average, or if those imports undercut comparable EU products by a similar margin. Even Francesco Lollobrigida, who has sympathized in the past with farmers’ concerns on the deal, is striking a more positive tone. | Fabio Cimaglia/EPA “We want to go from 8 percent to 5 percent. And we believe that the conditions are there to also reach this goal,” Lollobrigida told Italian daily IlSole24Ore in an interview on Thursday. Meloni pulled the emergency brake at a pre-Christmas EU summit, forcing the Commission to delay the final vote on the deal while it worked on ways to address her concerns around EU farm funding. In response Von der Leyen proposed this week to offer earlier access to up to €45 billion in agricultural funding under the bloc’s next long-term budget. Giorgio Leali reported from Paris and Gerardo Fortuna from Brussels.

BRUSSELS — Donald Trump blew up global efforts to cut emissions from shipping, and now the EU is terrified the U.S. president will do the same to any plans to tax carbon emissions from long-haul flights. The European Commission is studying whether to expand its existing carbon pricing scheme that forces airlines to pay for emissions from short- and medium-haul flights within Europe into a more ambitious effort covering all flights departing the bloc. If that happens, all international airlines flying out of Europe — including U.S. ones — would face higher costs, something that’s likely to stick in the craw of the Trump administration. “God only knows what the Trump administration will do” if Brussels expands its own Emissions Trading System to include transatlantic flights, a senior EU official told POLITICO. A big issue is how to ensure that the new system doesn’t end up charging only European airlines, which often complain about the higher regulatory burden they face compared with their non-EU rivals. The EU official said Commission experts are now “scratching their heads how you can, on the one hand, talk about extending the ETS worldwide … [but] also make sure that you have a bit of a level playing field,” meaning a system that doesn’t only penalize European carriers. Any new costs will hit airlines by 2027, following a Commission assessment that will be completed by July 1. Brussels has reason to be worried.  “Trump has made it very clear that he does not want any policies that harm business … So he does not want any environmental regulation,” said Marina Efthymiou, aviation management professor at Dublin City University. “We do have an administration with a bullying behavior threatening countries and even entities like the European Commission.” The new U.S. National Security Strategy, released last week, closely hews to Trump’s thinking and is scathing on climate efforts. “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries,” it says. In October, the U.S. led efforts to prevent the International Maritime Organization from setting up a global tax to encourage commercial fleets to go green. The no-holds-barred push was personally led by Trump and even threatened negotiators with personal consequences if they went along with the measure. In October, the U.S. led efforts to prevent the International Maritime Organization from setting up a global tax aimed at encouraging commercial fleets to go green. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images This “will be a parameter to consider seriously from the European Commission” when it thinks about aviation, Efthymiou said. The airline industry hopes the prospect of a furious Trump will scare off the Commission. “The EU is not going to extend ETS to transatlantic flights because that will lead to a war,” said Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, the global airline lobby, at a November conference in Brussels. “And that is not a war that the EU will win.” EUROPEAN ETS VS. GLOBAL CORSIA In 2012, the EU began taxing aviation emissions through its cap-and-trade ETS, which covers all outgoing flights from the European Economic Area — meaning EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Switzerland and the U.K. later introduced similar schemes. In parallel, the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization was working on its own carbon reduction plan, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. Given that fact, Brussels delayed imposing the ETS on flights to non-European destinations. The EU will now be examining the ICAO’s CORSIA to see if it meets the mark. “CORSIA lets airlines pay pennies for pollution — about €2.50 per passenger on a Paris-New York flight,” said Marte van der Graaf, aviation policy officer at green NGO Transport & Environment. Applying the ETS on the same route would cost “€92.40 per passenger based on 2024 traffic.” There are two reasons for such a big difference: the fourfold higher price for ETS credits compared with CORSIA credits, and the fact that “under CORSIA, airlines don’t pay for total emissions, but only for the increase above a fixed 2019 baseline,” Van der Graaf explained. “Thus, for a Paris-New York flight that emits an average of 131 tons of CO2, only 14 percent of emissions are offset under CORSIA. This means that, instead of covering the full 131 tons, the airline only has to purchase credits for approximately 18 tons.” Efthymiou, the professor, warned the price difference is projected to increase due to the progressive withdrawal of free ETS allowances granted to aviation. The U.N. scheme will become mandatory for all U.N. member countries in 2027 but will not cover domestic flights, including those in large countries such as the U.S., Russia and China. KEY DECISIONS By July 1, the Commission must release a report assessing the geographical coverage and environmental integrity of CORSIA. Based on this evaluation, the EU executive will propose either extending the ETS to all departing flights from the EU starting in 2027 or maintaining it for intra-EU flights only. Opposition to the ETS in the U.S. dates back to the Barack Obama administration. | Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images According to T&E, CORSIA doesn’t meet the EU’s climate goals. “Extending the scope of the EU ETS to all departing flights from 2027 could raise an extra €147 billion by 2040,” said Van der Graaf, noting that this money could support the production of greener aviation fuels to replace fossil kerosene. But according to Efthymiou, the Commission might decide to continue the current exemption “considering the very fragile political environment we currently have with a lunatic being in power,” she said, referring to Trump. “CORSIA has received a lot of criticism for sure … but the importance of CORSIA is that for the first time ever we have an agreement,” she added. “Even though that agreement might not be very ambitious, ICAO is the only entity with power to put an international regulation [into effect].” Regardless of what is decided in Brussels, Washington is prepared to fight. Opposition to the ETS in the U.S. dates back to the Barack Obama administration, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a letter to the Commission opposing its application to American airlines. During the same term, the U.S. passed the EU ETS Prohibition Act, which gives Washington the power to prohibit American carriers from paying for European carbon pricing. John Thune, the Republican politician who proposed the bill, is now the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.

President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from the world’s overarching treaty on climate change in a move that escalates his attempts to reverse years of global negotiations toward addressing rising temperatures. The announcement to sever ties with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change came as Trump quit dozens of international organizations that the White House says no longer serve U.S. interests by promoting radical climate policies and other issues. It was outlined in a memo by the White House. Trump has called on other countries to abandon their carbon-cutting measures, and the move appears to be his latest attempt to destabilize global climate cooperation. The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of rising climate pollution. It has universal participation. The U.S. was the first industrialized nation to join the treaty following its ratification under former President George H.W. Bush — and it will be the only nation ever to leave it. The move also marks Trump’s intensifying efforts to topple climate efforts compared to his first term, when he decided against quitting the treaty. “Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength,” stated a White House fact sheet. The move comes as Trump tears down U.S. climate policies amid the hottest decade ever recorded and threatens other nations for pursuing measures to address global warming, which Trump has called a hoax and a “con job.” The U.S. did not send a delegation to Brazil for the climate talks, known as COP30, late last year. Instead, Trump officials have been working to strike fossil fuels deals with other nations. Trump captured Venezuela’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, in an assault using U.S. commandos on Saturday and said he would control the country’s vast oil resources. The plan to leave the UNFCCC stems from Trump’s order last February requiring Secretary of State Marco Rubio to identify treaties and international organizations that “are contrary to the interests of the United States” and recommend withdrawing from them. Trump has also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 pact that’s underpinned by the UNFCCC. “This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under former President Barack Obama, said in a statement. “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration.”