BRUSSELS — The planet is heating up, but the geopolitical landscape is freezing over, European Union climate chief Wopke Hoekstra warned in an interview with POLITICO.
Donald Trump, a fossil fuel evangelist and climate heretic, is coming back. Across Europe, far-right, anti-green crusaders are rising. And in Brussels, Hoekstra’s own center-right political family is questioning the EU’s climate ambitions.
“We clearly have entered a geopolitical winter,” Hoekstra said in his office in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters describing “tremendously challenging geopolitical times” that “will get worse before it gets better in the years that we have ahead of us.”
Hoekstra is not a new figure to Brussels, having taken over as EU climate chief in 2023. But he was recently reconfirmed for his role at the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, starting a new term Dec. 1.
