The European Union must use its influence, power, and resources to build global justice and enable a Global Green Deal. The accelerating climate crisis is undermining peace and prosperity the world over. The future of the climate depends on every country in the world taking action and stopping fossil fuels.
For centuries, we have been exploiting the Global South, hindering development by imposing economic structures and exploiting people, land, and resources. Global justice, in action and not just words, is an ethical responsibility but also a geopolitical need.
Our proposals combine international partnerships and trade reform with international cooperation on equal terms and humanitarian initiatives. They are rooted in our commitment to global justice and the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as our awareness of colonialism’s persistent legacy.
Recognizing our responsibilities through climate diplomacy
We want climate diplomacy to be central to the EU’s relations with its global partners. The EU must recognize the role European countries have made in contributing to placing the Global South at the front line of the climate crisis. As set out in the Paris Agreement, the EU must honour commitments to providing international climate finance for mitigation and adaptation in line with its fair share and make multi-year pledges to the new Loss and Damage Fund. The EU can lead the way by building high-ambition climate coalitions on investment, sectoral and technological priorities for decarbonisation.
We will fight for policy coherence across all internal policies to reflect their global implications with a legislative check for how they will help reach the Sustainable Development Goals and avoid any negative impact on third countries’ ability to achieve them. As Greens, we go beyond the do-no-harm-principle. We will use all tools at hand to engage with partners to jointly change people’s lives for the better and act against the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation. We will continue our push for the international recognition of the crime of ecocide.
Green Deal partnerships for global justice
We want the EU to make Green Deal Partnerships with countries, regions, and civil society actors to support the necessary Global Green Deal with investment, access to technology, and expertise. We want the EU to shape and share the technological development and economic frameworks of the decarbonized world, including by facilitating technology transfer to the Global South.
Initiatives such as the Global Gateway and Just Energy Transition Partnerships must become key vehicles for opening green and resilient development pathways with partners and regions. The EU should seek to unlock as much investment in the green transition globally as it spends in the EU.
For resource justice, against extractivism
Countries around the world must benefit so the green transition does not become a race that excludes the Global South. At the same, the EU’s immediate need for metals and other resources cannot be satisfied without access to new materials. The EU must therefore speed up its transition towards a fully circular economy to reuse materials as long as possible and meet ambitious resource reduction targets. Furthermore, it needs to enable resource-rich countries to extract, process, and recycle raw materials, while prioritizing a “people and planet” approach that protects the rights of communities, especially those of Indigenous people, nature, and biodiversity.
The Global South must be supported so that extraction can be done according to the same conditions as within the EU. The EU’s resource needs should not further exacerbate existing inequalities, nor climate and environmental injustice. Our sufficiency approach, backed up by reduction and recycling targets within the EU, will help minimize the global mining sector’s huge impact in terms of human rights violations, environment destruction, and climate.
Resource justice also entails stopping dumping our waste in countries in the Global South. It is therefore important to adopt clear end-of-waste criteria at the EU level, such as for plastics and textiles, to avoid the classification of waste as second-hand goods. This step would also stimulate the development of recycling activities, skills and capacities in the EU. We call for a collective purchasing strategy and cooperation for rare-earth elements. The use of such elements should be prioritized for those industries most relevant to the ecological transition.
Decolonize now!
The legacy of the colonial era still weighs heavily on relations between certain European countries and their former colonies. It is reflected in the unequal global distribution of wealth, ongoing economic dependencies and unjust economic structures, and lack of representation in our institutions as well as globally. We want the EU to face up to its historical responsibility arising from the crimes of colonialism and its legacy.
We call for a deep comprehensive and inclusive review of Europe’s colonial legacy to ensure reparation, which can be material and symbolic, as well as accountability for past crimes. We support the push for the return of cultural artifacts. We want to correct disadvantageous clauses in trade agreements and push for reforms in development banks. The EU and its member states must work for sound debt restructuring and debt relief for particularly burdened countries. Official development assistance must be allocated in consultation with partners and civil society, in particular at the local level, and ensure local needs are met. Moving beyond a post-colonial posture means that EU external action should not put European interests or those of European companies over and above those of its partners.
From development aid to a global just transition
Europe needs to increase flows to the official development assistance, as defined by OECD, to at least 0.7% of member states’ gross national incomes. International cooperation and development policies must be guided by a decolonial and anti-racist perspective.
Guided by the Sustainable Development Goals, we want to coordinate locally led sustainable initiatives better and increase funding to grassroots civil society, in line with the OECD DAC recommendation, avoiding duplication and wasting resources. We will follow a detailed approach to scrutinize and align the EU international cooperation budget with Agenda 2030, focusing on global justice, tackling inequalities, ensuring that most official development assistance is directed towards priority needs such as public services and basic social services and transparency for private sector involvement. The EU must reconvene the Multi-stakeholder Platform on Sustainable Development Goals.
We want to promote local knowledge and local initiatives to support the development of economic cycles and social security systems. To this end, we want to further develop the existing European development cooperation in dialogue with our partners. We reject tying international aid and assistance to migration deals. The integrity of development assistance cooperation must be maintained and closely monitored.
Ending global hunger: food sovereignty for all
The multiple crises of our time, first and foremost the climate crisis, pose existential challenges to food security worldwide. To end hunger, the EU must work for a sustainable and resilient global food system and contribute to the implementation of the right to food. The EU must prioritize agroecological approaches and align its own food and trade policy with the principles of global food sovereignty and climate-friendly agriculture.
Supporting global justice with sustainable trade
The current model of most EU free trade agreements, such as EU-Mercosur, primarily benefits agribusiness and multinationals. It fails to adequately address the socio-economic and sustainability impacts of trade. EU trade policy is not sufficiently aligned to the Green Deal. As Greens, we believe in a global trading system that is based on equity, shapes globalization for the better, and puts human wellbeing at its centre. We believe in reshaping the EU’s trade policy towards sustainable development and stronger human rights protection. The EU should only enter new trade deals with countries that implement the Paris Agreement.
Our Green Partnerships and the EU’s new carbon tariff system (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, CBAM) can create fair competition by making decarbonisation and environmental protection a joint effort. For the CBAM to be effective and fair, it must be complemented with higher EU spending on climate action in low-income countries.
The Greens successfully introduced and promoted legislation on due diligence, deforestation, and forced-labour-free supply chains, setting standards for imports into the EU. All multinational companies operating in the EU must be held accountable for upholding these standards and pay their fair share of taxes inside and outside the EU. We will continue by updating the Public Procurement Directive and introducing a new Unfair Trading Practice for the textile sector.
We advocate rebalancing the global system of intellectual property rights to ensure the Global South can access key technologies, including for health and decarbonization. As Greens, we will push for progress in the World Trade Organization reform to support a global just transition.
Remodel trade deals to protect social rights, environment and climate
As Greens, we will push to improve bilateral trade and investment agreements with binding and sanctionable sustainability provisions. Specifically, the Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the ILO core conventions should become essential elements of our trade agreements. They need to be horizontally anchored in all chapters of trade deals, from raw materials and agriculture to procurement.
Impact assessments for trade deals should include human rights, gender, biodiversity, and animal welfare. The precautionary principle needs to be fully respected and International Labour Organization standards fully implemented. Pre-ratification commitments, a European Parliament vote on the mandate, and full transparency shall ensure democratic legitimacy and the inclusion of civil society and trade unions.
We fight to end protections for fossil fuel investment and instead incentivize sustainable investment. The move to exit the climate-destroying Energy Charter Treaty is a major success. All investment agreements need to fully respect the right to regulate. We advocate abolishing Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanisms and their replacement with a multilateral investment court system.
Trade rules should not impede climate action, nor limit our ability to enact social and environmental policies. On the contrary, trade must be part of our efforts to limit emissions, switch to net-zero technologies, and end ecological degradation. Trade of sustainable goods and services should be facilitated, so that they will become cheaper and broadly available. Any product too dangerous for use in the EU is also too dangerous for use in other countries. Goods that are not authorized to be sold in the EU should not be exported to third countries.
We want to promote food sovereignty and prioritize local and regional food supply chains. Trade agreements should not disrupt or undermine environmentally valuable local or regional productive environments. EU citizens have the right to expect that all imported food products meet international and EU rules, such as phytosanitary requirements, antibiotics, and animal welfare standards.
Freer trade should be paired with measures to limit environmentally harmful subsidies, including those for fossil fuels. Trade agreements should include measures to phase-out fossil fuels and other environmentally harmful subsidies.
Making trade fair for all
As Greens, we push for strategies to integrate fair trade principles into key EU policies related to production, consumption, and trade, promoting living incomes and wages, inclusive decision-making involving smallholder farmers, artisans, and workers, and supporting measures to reduce pesticide usage in third countries. We demand that companies adopt sustainable purchasing practices and adapt their business models in such a way that decouples economic success from exploitation in supply chains, including through the promotion of mission-led business models.