EU touts climate leadership while undermining antideforestation rules, critics say

BELÉM, Brazil — At a Nov. 19 press conference at the U.N. climate summit currently underway in Brazil, European Union officials spoke for half an hour without a single mention of forests or efforts to halt deforestation — even though COP30 is taking place in a city dubbed the “gateway to the Amazon.” For Boris Patentreger, senior director for France at advocacy group Mighty Earth, the silence captured a wider problem: back in Europe, governments are moving to weaken the EU’s flagship antideforestation law, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). “That [press conference] was the last moment to say that we want to keep the EUDR. And they didn’t say that,” he told Mongabay. “And actually, I was really surprised because there was no question about deforestation. It was only a question about cl