EU will only make trade deals with nations that ratify Paris climate agreement [View all]

[babylonsister]

EU will only make trade deals with nations that ratify Paris climate agreement
The United States would be excluded.
E.A. Crunden
Feb 6, 2018, 5:01 pm


The European Union will no longer make trade deals with the United States if President Trump follows through on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, according to a French official whose comments were endorsed by the European Commission.

Addressing the French parliament on Thursday, French foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne drew a line in the sand.

“One of our main demands is that any country who signs a trade agreement with EU should implement the Paris Agreement on the ground,” said Lemoyne. “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement. The [United States] knows what to expect.”

EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström tweeted support Lemoyne’s comments on Thursday.

“Yes Paris deal reference needed in all EU trade agreement today,” she wrote.

A day later, a spokesperson for the European Commission — which manages the EU’s day-to-day business — elaborated on Malmström’s stance while voicing support for the comments as well.

“Since the deal we concluded last year with Japan, this chapter contains an explicit reference to the ratification and actual implementation of the Paris climate deal,” the spokesperson told Climate Home News. “This point is a priority for the EU and it would be difficult to imagine concluding an important trade deal without an ambitious chapter on trade and sustainable development attached to it.”

That assertion means that any country that fails to ratify the Paris agreement — a landmark accord that was signed by virtually every country in the world in an effort to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius this century — will be shut out of new trade deals.

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https://thinkprogress.org/eu-paris-us-decd4aad9145/