Leaders of the European Union reached a hard-fought deal on Friday to reduce the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 pc by the end of the decade compared with 1990 levels, avoiding a massively embarrassing deadlock ahead of a United Nations climate meeting this weekend.

Following night-long discussions at their 2-day summit in Brussels, the 27 member states approved the European Union executive commission’s proposal to toughen the bloc’s intermediate target on the way to climate neutrality by mid-century, after a group of reluctant, coal-reliant countries finally agreed to support the improved goal.

 “Europe is the leader in the fight against climate change. We decided to cut our greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55% by 2030,” said European Council President Charles Michel, who chaired the summit, in a tweet. That target will replace the bloc’s existing goal to cut emissions 40 percent by 2030, from 1990 levels.

Five years after the Paris agreement, the EU wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming. Yet the bloc’s heads of states and governments were unable to agree on the new target the last time they met in October, mainly because of financial concerns by eastern nations about how to fund and handle the green transition.

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