Emmanuel Macron's speech at COP28

"We absolutely must commit to aligning trade policy with ecological transition. This is another absurdity, sincerely, that I wanted to highlight because today, we are investing in greening our industries at the national or regional level. Still, we continue to liberalize imports of polluting products at the international level as if nothing had changed. This is a losing bet and a discouraging one. And I say this as well: we are asking for a lot of effort in Europe, for example, to decarbonize industry and agriculture. If we continue to have the same trade agreements as in the 80s-'90s, which are sometimes trade agreements that were negotiated during that period, and that will allow countries with carbon components and production practices that make no effort, our producers will no longer follow us. And they will be right because we are absurd.

So, we need a system that engages everyone in a strategy. I genuinely believe that we must integrate our climate rules into the rules of the WTO. We need to incorporate them into the system. We must completely change in this regard and integrate the climate clause into the World Trade Organization to align our trade regime with the Paris Agreements."

Read the full speech.