European Interest

Greens: Sibiu declaration is an insult to young generation

Flickr/United Nations Photo/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today the leaders of Europe met in the Romanian town of Sibiu and agreed on ten points regarding the future of Europe. Climate change featured only tenth as a priority.

Reacting to the outcome the co-leading candidate of the European Green Party, Greens/EFA co-president Ska Keller said:

“The seriousness of the threat of climate change still clearly hasn’t registered for the European leaders meeting in Sibiu today.  Climate change features merely as an afterthought demonstrating that the urgent pleas from the younger generation have fallen on deaf ears.  They pledge to be responsible global leaders, but are instead showing a complete dereliction of duty with regard to the future of our planet.  We extend our full solidarity to the students of #FridaysForFuture to make climate a priority and set binding targets for Europe to meet the climate crisis.

“The scientific community have been categoric: there can be no future without climate action.  This declaration is not fit for purpose and an insult to the young people who are calling on political leaders to take concrete climate action.  It misses a golden opportunity to get serious about setting binding targets for Europe to be carbon neutral before 2050. The clock is ticking but the young and old marching for climate today give us hope that eventually the message will start to get through,” added the co-leading candidate of the European Green Party, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout.

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