Year XXXIX, Number 1, March 2026

Monica Frassoni

President of the European Alliance to Save Energy and EU Center of electoral support.

Without phasing out fossil fuels, rules that move beyond unanimity, and coalitions of willing states, the global climate process will remain stuck.

In Belém, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, COP30 came to a close on Saturday 22 November. Ten years after the Paris Agreement, it was meant to be a moment of truth for global climate action. After an all-night negotiating session, the Brazilian presidency released a final package labelled the “global mutirão” – a Portuguese term evoking collective effort and shared responsibility.

, what emerged with clarity was the lack of agreement on a basic reality: without a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, without halting deforestation, and without real support for the most vulnerable countries and social groups, there is no safe future for anyone. Growing reliance on unilateral trade measures and persistent gaps in climate finance further exposed deep geopolitical fractures. Logistical failures compounded the picture and negotiations were suspended for hours after a fire broke out, forcing the evacuation of thousands of delegates. From the outset, COP30 showed how long and uneven the road from ambition to action still is.

Despite widespread criticism, COP30 cannot be dismissed as a complete failure. For many analysts and civil society organisations, the Belém conference delivered at least one decisive outcome: it put an end to lingering illusions. The long-standing assumption that global climate action could advance as a genuinely shared endeavour based on the unanimous consensus of nearly 200 states has definitively collapsed. This outcome does not reflect a merely procedural shortcoming, but rather a necessary political reality check. Multilateralism remains indispensable – now more than ever – but it is no longer sufficient on its own. Perhaps it never truly was. What has changed is that the margin for ambiguity and delay has disappeared.

In this sense, COP30 marks a strategic turning point. A growing number of NGOs – from Climate Action Network to E3G, from Greenpeace to Oxfam – converge on a clear message: the centre of gravity of climate action must shift. The COP process cannot be abandoned, but neither can it remain the place where we expect the most advanced and impactful decisions to emerge.

A second, often underestimated, positive signal concerns fossil fuels. Despite weak and inconclusive final outcomes, the phase-out of oil, gas, and coal remained firmly at the centre of the debate for two full weeks, and proved impossible to remove from the agenda. This is a threshold that must now be made irreversible, regardless of what happens at future COPs. The debate is no longer whether to exit fossil fuels, but how, when and with which tools. The political taboo has been broken, even if the wall of vested interests remains firmly in place. Even in countries often labelled as “advanced”, the public debate became heavily manipulated by powerful corporate actors that have effectively captured both conservative and right-wing politics and the narrative around the transition

A third signal, still fragile yet politically significant, lies in the partial institutionalisation of the concept of a “just transition.” While the Belém Action Mechanism remains vague and non-binding, it nonetheless consolidates a crucial shift in framing: the climate transition cannot be reduced to a purely technological transformation. Jobs, inequalities and territories are central to the challenge. For many networks in the Global South and for the international trade union movement, this opens a new political space – one that must be actively shaped. Without credible social policies, climate action will not hold.

Finally, if a real mutirão was visible at all, it was outside the negotiating rooms. The mobilisation of young people, Indigenous communities, cities and social movements brought renewed energy after years of COPs held in repressive contexts. Many observers argue that the true value of Belém lies less in the negotiated texts than in the reactivation of a political ecosystem capable of exerting pressure elsewhere: in courts, elections, local governments and companies. Yet this mobilisation must be organised, sustained and funded – at a time when support for NGOs and social movements, including in Europe, is increasingly under threat.

From this landscape, a relatively clear agenda for the coming year emerges. First, the need to build operational coalitions among countries, regions, cities and industrial sectors willing to move ahead without waiting for everyone else. Plurilateral agreements on energy, steel, cement, transport, cities and finance can deliver concrete results far more quickly than universal negotiations. COPs remain a space of political legitimacy; innovation and action must increasingly happen elsewhere. Second, climate finance can no longer be treated as a diplomatic file. We must focus on a domestic and EU politics: national and EU budgets, tax systems and public finance. Taxing fossil fuel windfall profits and extreme wealth, reforming aviation and shipping, redirecting public banks, and ending fossil fuel subsidies are indispensable steps. Without them, international pledges will remain empty words.

Third, law and trade must be used explicitly as climate levers. Due diligence rules, anti- deforestation regulations and climate litigation against governments and fossil fuel companies are already producing tangible effects – even as the European Commission has irresponsibly weakened hard-won regulations in the name of “simplification”. With adequate information and mobilisation, legal pressure can become one of the most effective tools to counter diplomatic and governmental paralysis, including at EU and national level.

Fourth, and most decisively, the battle is political. Without social consent, no transition will endure. Linking emissions reduction and adaptation to jobs, healthcare, housing and affordable energy is not rhetorical framing – it is the only way to turn climate support into electoral support. This is where the real struggle for a just transition is being fought, at a moment when many progressive parties, in government and in opposition, lack a credible narrative and instead view the climate agenda with growing anxiety, leaving space to illiberal right-wing forces.

Ultimately, COP30 reinforces a conviction long shared within the environmental movement: change will not come from the top down. It will emerge from the interaction between social mobilisation, sub-national governments, responsible businesses and determined political coalitions. The UN process remains an indispensable arena, but it cannot be the only horizon for action – not least because the prospects for meaningful reform of the COP system are slim.

COP30 in Belém has left a widespread sense of a missed opportunity. But it has also clarified where the real failure lies today: not in the absence of solutions – which exist – nor in science, which is unequivocal, but in politics. Only politics can turn knowledge and technology into effective decisions. And after Belém, complaisance is no longer an option. Either we translate this clarity into organised, collective action at every level where power can be exercised – or we accept inertia as a political decision, with consequences we already know all too well.