BRUSSELS — The Trump administration’s campaign to kill the world’s first global carbon price for shipping upended internal EU climate discussions on Tuesday after Greece prevented the bloc from reendorsing the embattled levy.
At a meeting of the International Maritime Organization last week, Athens dropped its support for the fee and other measures meant to reduce planet-warming pollution from shipping, bowing to pressure from industry and the U.S.
On Tuesday, EU environment ministers approved the bloc’s joint negotiating position for this year’s COP30 climate summit — largely a rubber-stamping exercise — with significant delay after Greece initially vetoed the text over a reference to the IMO agreement.
Five diplomats present at the talks told POLITICO that Athens objected to a single passage, the final paragraph of the text, that “welcome[d]” the IMO measures “as the first legally binding global sectoral climate regulation that will contribute to the reduction of emissions from shipping.”
Three of the diplomats, who were granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks, said Greece had opposed any mention of the IMO levy and rejected several attempts at compromise.
With the text requiring unanimous approval from the EU’s 27 governments, ministers adjourned the debate for several hours while diplomats scrambled to find a solution. But Greece even rejected a last-ditch proposal, seen by POLITICO, to merely “recall” that the IMO negotiations took place.
In the end, ministers could only agree on deleting the IMO reference entirely.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against countries backing a tax on climate pollution from shipping. The IMO meeting was adjourned for a year on Friday.
EU governments in September approved a joint endorsement of the IMO measure, but Greece and Cyprus broke ranks and were among the countries abstaining last week. Cyprus did not object to Tuesday’s text on COP30.
When asked for comment, Greece’s permanent representation to the EU merely pointed to an op-ed written by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday in the Financial Times.
“While European countries still burn coal in our power plants and oil to heat our homes and factories, we are pushing for the decarbonisation of ships and planes and of the most difficult industrial processes,” Mitsotakis wrote. “This emphasis on tackling all emissions at once is shortsighted.”
Louise Guillot contributed reporting.
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