EU climate diplomacy vis-à-vis Australia, Brazil and Mexico: engaging difficult partners to enhance global ambition. CEPOB #4.19, June 2019

> Support from Australia, Brazil and Mexico was key for the adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. All three countries are among the top 15 global emitters, and are central players inside their negotiation coalitions within the United Nations climate regime. > Since 2015, national governments with less climate-friendly agendas have come to power in these countries. In the run-up to the 2019 COP-25 in Santiago de Chile, which represents a last major opportunity to discuss enhanced ambition prior to the submission of parties’ Nation-ally Determined Contribution in 2020, it is important that these countries remain committed to the global negotiation process. > To ensure that they do remain committed, the European Union’s climate diplomacy should: > engage with national governments on some key areas which they are still open to, such as renewable energy in Australia and Brazil and positive spill-overs of public-private co-operation in Mexico; > interact with sub-national governments, which have now often only rhetorically committed to combatting climate change, but lack the capacity to turn these into concrete policy measures