By Caroline Varin and Lucas Parolin

November 23, 2025 - Countries are unable to agree on including a so-called roadmap for a shift away from fossil fuels in an outcome decision for the UN Cop 30 climate summit, which has now moved into overtime.

No closing plenary — which would allow countries to discuss and agree to any conclusions and decisions — was scheduled at the time of writing. The summit, which started on 10 November, was scheduled to finish today. It is taking place in Belem, northern Brazil.

Discussions had not progressed during a meeting of all delegations earlier, which went on for more than four hours, Panama's special envoy for climate change Juan Carlos Gomez said.

Country delegations are now meeting separately with the Cop 30 presidency and discussions are ongoing.

A draft decision text released early on 21 November by the Cop 30 presidency contained no mention of moving away from fossil fuels, sparking disappointment from many delegations. More than 80 countries had called for a roadmap addressing a shift away from fossil fuels to be included in the summit's outcome.

The Brazilian presidency is not ready to change the text, as it says that a majority of countries in the negotiations stands behind it, a European country delegation said.

The text released this morning "is a Brics text — Saudi Arabia is happy and probably China and India can live with this, but this should not be acceptable for Europe", member of European Parliament Bas Eickhout told Argus. It is too weak on cutting emissions and moving away from fossil fuels, he said. "If it stays like this no deal is better than a bad deal", Eickhout said.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva "raised the stakes" and it is up to him to "deliver on it", Eickhout said. He noted that Lula is in South Africa for the G20 summit, so "might do some useful work there". Lula called on world leaders to overcome dependence on fossil fuels at a summit ahead of Cop 30.

Europeans are increasingly isolated in their support for a text including mentions of fossil fuels, even on language that has been already agreed at previous summits, a European delegation said. And some fear that they could bear the responsibility for the summit's failure, it added.

European countries would like to be able to hear countries positions in a plenary, but the presidency signalled that there will only be a closing plenary to agree the packages, according to the delegation.

Developing nations have determined climate finance — specifically finance for adaptation, or adjusting to the effects of climate change — as their ‘red line' at this Cop. UN-designated groups small island developing states (Sids) and least developed countries (LDCs) have called for adaptation finance to triple to $120bn/yr by 2030. Sids and LDCs are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The EU — the single largest climate finance donor — signalled multiple times today that it is ready to open a discussion on adaptation finance. The bloc has suggested that any increase must remain within the goal agreed at Cop 29, of $300bn/yr in climate finance by 2035. But the EU wants to see ambition on mitigation — cutting emissions — in the Cop 30 outcome text first.

"The biggest sticking point for us is ambition", UK energy minister Ed Miliband told reporters today.

Support for language on transitioning away from fossil fuels at Cop 30 needs to grow beyond the countries already backing a roadmap, such as the EU, Latin American nations, some Sids and the UK. But other countries, typically large oil and gas producers, are seeking to restrain the fossil fuel discussion and frame it as a trade-off between mitigation and adaptation.

Countries are working on "getting as far as we can in the time that we've got available. And also sending a message to the world that… 193 countries realise that working together to tackle this global problem is better than going it alone", Miliband said.