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The UN’s climate boss has urged Europe to step up efforts to tackle global warming under its security spending drive, as concerns mount that the EU is sidelining green action while dashing to revitalise its armed forces.
As European nations cut aid budgets, increase borrowing and explore new spending structures in an effort to re-arm in the face of US President Donald Trump’s threats to leave Nato, climate experts fear green spending will also be targeted.
“The climate crisis is an urgent national security crisis that should be at the top of every cabinet agenda,” Simon Stiell, chief of the UN’s climate change arm, said in a speech in Germany on Wednesday.
He warned that Europe’s borders were vulnerable to an influx of climate refugees as other regions become “unlivable”, forcing “millions more people” to migrate.
“The damage will not stop at Europe’s borders, but it will increasingly impact them,” he said at the Europe 2025 conference.
As Trump launches a sweeping attack on policies to mitigate climate change, including pulling the country from the landmark Paris agreement, Stiell said “this is Europe’s moment” to show “climate leadership”.
“As one government steps back from climate leadership, it opens up space for others to step forward and seize the vast benefits on offer,” said Stiell, who did not explicitly mention the US in the speech.
He pointed to Germany’s recently agreed defence spending plans — which set aside money for climate change measures — as a way to combine both climate and security efforts.
The speech came days after UN secretary-general António Guterres pleaded with EU leaders not to request rebates from the New York-based body this year to help offset a halt in US contributions.
Climate ministers and negotiators from more than 30 countries are separately meeting in Germany this week for the first large talks since the UN COP29 summit in Baku in November and Trump’s inauguration two months later. The US was absent for the talks across Tuesday and Wednesday.
Stiell, who is also attending the discussions, said climate change could cut the EU’s combined GDP by 1 per cent within the next few years and 2.3 per cent by mid-century, creating what he called a “recipe for a permanent recession”. Last year was the hottest on record.
The EU is due to submit a new climate plan to the UN this year, setting out how the bloc will cut emissions and by how much by 2035. Brussels has backed away from announcing its target ahead of Polish elections in May, fearing voter backlash against ambitious climate plans.
Stiell said well-crafted decarbonisation plans are “wealth magnets, pulling in huge inflows of capital investment”. The comments echoed a landmark report last year by former Italian premier Mario Draghi that said investment in clean power is critical to the bloc’s energy security and economic performance.
“When it comes to security guarantees of the economic kind, they don’t come stronger for Europe than a bold new national climate plan,” Stiell added.