André Corrêa do Lago, COP30 president, bangs a gavel during a plenary session at the COP30 UN Climate Summit, Saturday, November 22, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. ANDRE PENNER / AP
Nations clinched a deal at the UN's COP30 climate summit in the Amazon on Saturday, November 22, without a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels as demanded by the European Union and other countries. Nearly 200 countries approved the deal by consensus after two weeks of fraught negotiations in the Brazilian city of Belem, with the notable absence of the United States as President Donald Trump shunned the event. Applause rang out in the plenary session after COP30 president and Brazilian diplomat Andre Correa do Lago slammed a gavel signalling its approval.
The EU and other nations had pushed for a deal that would call for a "roadmap" to phase out fossil fuels, but the words do not appear in the text. Instead, the agreement calls on countries to "voluntarily" accelerate their climate action and recalls the consensus reached at COP28 in Dubai. That 2023 deal called for the world to transition away from fossil fuels.
The EU, which had warned that the summit could end without a deal if fossil fuels were not addressed, accepted the watered-down language. "We're not going to hide the fact that we would have preferred to have more, to have more ambition on everything," EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters. "We should support it because it is at least going in the right direction," said Hoekstra.
