Paris +10: France and Europe must step up on climate – to protect our security, sovereignty, competitiveness, and public finances
How distant December 12, 2015 now seems. All delegations at COP21 had then rallied behind Laurent Fabius’s little green hammer. Ten years later, the trend is closer to backlash.
Climate action is now often portrayed in the public debate as too costly, because it requires major investment. Ineffective, since our share of global emissions is small. Unfair, because it cuts into purchasing power. Too divisive, supported only by part of the electorate. Too late, since keeping the planet below +2°C of warming now seems out of reach. Arguments that are partly true—yet require substantial nuance.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the reasons to act on climate have not disappeared; in fact, they have become even more compelling. They fall into four broad categories: strengthening our security; safeguarding our sovereignty; improving our competitiveness; and supporting the sustainability of our public finances.
In response to a dramatically different global context, climate action must align with those issues. To do so, we must focus on three priorities: eliminating fossil fuels; adapting to climate change; and boosting domestic production of green technologies.
1. Eliminating fossil fuels—for our sovereignty, our public finances, and our security
In 2019 and 2020, part of the French Government met as an “ecological defense council,” a prescient notion, given how stark our costly dependence on fossil fuels has since become. The war in Ukraine highlighted Europe’s deep reliance on fossil fuels: oil for transport; natural gas for buildings and housing; for industry; and for agriculture via nitrogen fertilizers. Radically reducing our need for fossil fuels is therefore an imperative for the continent’s sovereignty.
To illustrate, last year, France imported almost all the fossil fuels it consumed, at a cost of €63 billion. Three years earlier, the bill was nearly double: €118 billion (SDES, 2024 Energy Report). Accelerating the transition means ridding ourselves of these costly dependencies. Recent history should encourage faster action. The sharp rise in energy prices following Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced the French Government to urgently implement consumer protection mechanisms—for households, local authorities, and businesses—to avoid social unrest. The budgetary cost for the French State exceeded €70 billion in under three years (Banque de France, 2024). More than double what the State usually dedicates each year to supporting the transition (Green Budget 2026, favorable expenditures).
France is also heavily dependent on nitrogen fertilizers, produced from natural gas, 66% to 80% of which are imported (French Ministry of Agriculture, 2022, 2024). Optimizing fertilizer use and replacing synthetic mineral fertilizers with organic alternatives are key to improving strategic independence; introducing legumes into crop rotations also reduces dependence on nitrogen fertilizers and on soybean meal for animal feed, itself imported 80% of the time (French Ministry of Ecological Transition).
Many of these fossil fuel imports come from countries which supply may be less reliable over the long term. Ecological transition is thus an imperative for the continent’s security: last year, the European Union imported nearly €22 billion in Russian fossil fuels, effectively contributing to the war effort against Ukraine—and to any future military ventures by Vladimir Putin. Bringing our imports of Russian oil and gas to zero as quickly as possible is therefore a defense priority, aligned with increased military spending.
Several countries seem ready to tackle this well-known problem of fossil-fuel dependence. Although the final COP30 agreement in Belém omits the phase-out of fossil fuels, 80 countries—European, Latin American, and island states—have nonetheless united to call for a roadmap to exit fossil fuels.
As a bonus, reducing fossil fuel use often reduces emissions of other air pollutants, which also have a significant social cost—for example, €4 billion per year in France from road traffic NO₂ (Santé publique France, 2025).
2. Adapting to climate change—for our security, competitiveness, and public finances
Backlash or not, climate impacts are accelerating, striking our regions more often and more severely. Built infrastructure (buildings, transport, energy, water networks…) and natural systems (forests, wetlands…) may no longer be capable of providing the services for which they were designed. With climate impacts, “every tenth of a degree counts,” imposing risks—and costs—on our economy.
Ensuring that students can learn in classrooms where it isn’t 35°C, that city centers can maintain livable temperatures, that firefighters have the resources needed to face fires and floods, that our healthcare system does not collapse at every heatwave… all of this has a cost. But it is the best investment we can make: allocating adequate budgetary resources and making public and private investment climate-proof. This is not an environmental issue — it is one of personal safety, productivity, and territorial competitiveness.
Investing in climate adaptation also reduces risks for public finances, already under strain. For example, climate events in 2022 in France, including the summer drought, required more than €2 billion in public aid for the agricultural sector alone—and, of course, caused major production losses.
3. Betting on cleantech—for our sovereignty and competitiveness
Donald Trump’s pro-fossil-fuel rhetoric should not obscure a clear reality: the race for cleantech is underway between the United States and China. And in this race, the European Union—far behind—faces at least three challenges: higher energy and labor costs; a less dynamic investment environment; and the consequences of the US Inflation Reduction Act and China’s Made in China 2025 strategy.
From the Green Industrial Plan to proposals for a more flexible EU budget, the Commission is signaling renewed ambition: to strengthen the continent’s decarbonizing industrial base and develop strategic clean-technology sectors at scale. Limited resources must target where they will have the greatest impact. Europe must act together to identify priority technologies and sectors that will drive decarbonization, resilience, and competitiveness in the decades ahead.
Among cleantech sectors, one in particular deserves the attention of Europe and France: electric mobility. The shift to electric vehicles now seems inevitable. In twenty-five years, once all cars on the road are electric, we may wonder how our societies relied for so long on a service—essential in many areas—that depended on fuel distributed outside the home. The combustion engine will seem to the electric car what the oil lamp is to the LED, or the well to running water. And the shift will have been made for comfort, not for the climate.
The risk we face is that Europe might end up producing the world’s most competitive hybrid and combustion engines—just as global demand collapses—while China and perhaps others sell batteries and electric vehicles everywhere. A risk of technological lag, which may also threaten us in other cleantech sectors.
4. What remains is to act: plan the transition and make it accessible
There is no shortage of reasons to pursue climate action. Reducing ambition—or worse, reversing course—could cost us dearly on many fronts. Implementing the transition requires two pillars.
The first pillar is planning. We will not reach fossil-fuel independence or carbon neutrality by accident, in France or in Europe. That is the purpose of planning for the ecological transition, and integrating it into all public policies. Planning must be led at the highest political level; include objectives, trajectories, and budgetary means; and anticipate the unpredictable—be it energy price fluctuations, necessary military spending, or trade wars. Ecological transition planning is not the Gosplan; it is above all a tool to coordinate expectations among all actors in a value chain (industry, suppliers, customers, financiers…), enabling them to pivot together. For a green transition plan to be credible, it must as a consequence include a financing plan.
The second pillar is making the transition accessible. Expecting economic actors—especially households—to embrace the transition when they lack access to fossil-free alternatives (electric cars, public transport, home insulation, heating changes…) only breeds rejection and leads us into a dead end. Ensuring access to transition solutions is therefore a major challenge for climate policy. Particular attention must be paid to low-income and middle-income households, so that the investments required for the transition are economically viable for them.
If these two pillars are properly integrated into public policy, let us hope that by Paris +20, in 2035, France and Europe will have helped bring about a “better world”—for people, business and the planet alike.
