Luxembourg PM, Environment Minister to Participate in COP27

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, Joëlle Welfring, have confirmed their participation in the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, more widely known as COP27, which will take place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt from 6 to 18 November 2022.

Luxembourg's Ministry of State confirmed that Prime Minister Bettel will travel to COP27 from Monday 7 to Tuesday 8 November 2022 to participate in the high-level segment of Heads of State and Government. No further details are available at this time.

For her part, Environment Minister Welfring will participate in the COP27 negotiations during a high-level segment scheduled to take place from Tuesday 15 to Friday 18 November 2022. She will be accompanied by a delegation made up of negotiators and experts in climate policy from Luxembourg's Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, as well as representatives from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Administration of Technical Agricultural Services and civil society.

As the Environment Ministry explained, from 6 to 18 November, Heads of State and Government, ministers and negotiators, mayors and climate activists, business leaders and representatives of civil society will meet – in a difficult political context marked by the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, but also by food crises in different parts of the world and new geopolitical tensions – for the largest annual gathering on climate action.

After the Paris agreement at COP21 in 2015, defining the framework, objectives and main principles of international climate action, and after the Katowice (2018), Madrid (2019) and Glasgow (2021) conferences, where the implementation provisions of the Paris agreement were detailed, COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh will mainly revolve around the continuation and strengthening of global efforts. A number of negotiation processes are on the agenda, most of which, according to previous years' agreements, will not be completed until 2023. COP27 therefore represents a kind of transitional conference, according to Luxembourg's Environment Ministry, which added that this conference was no less important given the multi-crisis environment in which the urgency of climate action is taking place at this time.

Three negotiation processes will receive particular attention this year: the subject of loss and damage; setting the new collective quantified goal for climate finance; the global stocktake (i.e. the global inventory of greenhouse gas reduction efforts). In addition, it remains a question of maintaining the objective of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era as high as possible on the international political agenda.

According to the Environment Ministry, Luxembourg, as an EU Member State, fully supports the Glasgow Climate Pact, which was concluded at COP26, and calls on all other major emitters to increase their ambition in the short and long term. At COP27, Luxembourg will also insist that energy security cannot come at the expense of climate protection. Finally, Luxembourg will emphasise the need for solidarity with developing countries, particularly those most affected by climate change.