Defeating its purpose? Fossil fuel lobbyists accompany European governments to COP29

euronews (in English)

According to a coalition of NGOs, the European Union's national delegations brought more than a hundred fossil fuel representatives with them to Baku for the UN climate conference.

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00:00Representatives of the fossil fuel sector have a strong presence at COP29.

00:07According to a report by a coalition of NGOs, 1,773 lobbyists travelled to Baku for the United Nations Climate Conference.

00:17And 113 of these representatives were actually brought by the delegations from various European Union governments.

00:26Greece is the first one and they got 24, going down Italy that they had 22.

00:32And I want to stop a moment here to specify that both Greece and Italy are the countries that buy more Azerbaijani gas.

00:40So it's not a surprise that they got so many fossil fuel lobbyists.

00:45Next in the table are Sweden and Belgium, with 17 and 13 fossil fuel lobbyists brought to the summit.

00:52On the other hand, the European Commission has completely changed its approach,

00:55as its delegation does not include a single representative from the sector, unlike at the previous COP in Dubai.

01:03This year we don't have any fossil fuel lobbyists on the EU Commission delegation.

01:08And this comes after mounting pressure from civil society organisations.

01:13We see EU Climate Commissioner Hoekstra, he went through his hearing

01:19and he received mounting pressure from civil society to not bring any fossil fuel lobbyists.

01:26From the NGO's perspective, there is clearly a conflict of interest in having these lobbyists present at a conference

01:32on the fight against climate change, when fossil fuels are the number one cause of the environmental crisis.

01:39Civil society is also denouncing the risk of COP29 becoming a forum for trade agreements between governments and the fossil fuel industry.

01:49www.fossilfuel.eu

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