Climate - Franck Riester’s participation in a ministerial exchange at the European level with John Kerry (video conference, 22 January 2021)

A meeting was held via video conference on January 22 at the initiative of Jeppe Kofod, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, attended by John Kerry, the new United States special presidential envoy for climate, in order to discuss energy transition models, notably the transition away from coal.

France was represented at this video conference by Franck Riester, Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness, attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, who expressed his satisfaction at working with the new U.S. administration in the area of climate action, notably within the G7 and G20 forums.

Franck Riester welcomed the U.S ambitions with respect to the transition away from coal. He underscored the interactions between climate and biodiversity and the need to focus, in the wake of the One Planet Summit in January, on the fight against deforestation in the Amazon and Central Africa.

Franck Riester reaffirmed that trade policy was also an area of cooperation between the EU and the United States aimed at promoting climate action, notably within the framework of the fight against carbon leakage which the EU intends to address through the carbon border adjustment mechanism, in accordance with the WTO rules currently being drafted.