France boycotts COP29 after Azerbaijan’s ‘colonies’ attack

PARIS — France’s top climate official is skipping the COP29 climate negotiations in Azerbaijan after the host country’s president accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate change concerns in its overseas territories.
“After discussion and in agreement with the president of the republic and the prime minister, I will not go to Baku next week,” French Ecological Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told the French Senate on Wednesday, denouncing the remarks as “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable.”
“Azerbaijan is instrumentalizing the fight against climate change for its undignified personal agenda,” Pannier-Runacher fumed.
The French climate minister’s withdrawal means Paris will not send any high-level political representative to Baku, as French President Emmanuel Macron will also skip the event.
The decision means that for the first time since the 2015 Paris Agreement — which France helped engineer and has since strongly defended — a COP will take place without senior French leadership.
The dispute also deepens a growing rift between France and Azerbaijan over Paris’ military support for Baku’s historic rival, Armenia.
The COP spat kicked off Wednesday morning, when Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijani autocrat, used a gathering of island leaders to lambast France and the Netherlands for their “neocolonialism,” which he linked to climate change.
“The so-called overseas territories of France and Netherlands, particularly in the Caribbean and the Pacific, are among the most severely impacted” by climate change, Aliyev told the leaders’ summit of small island developing countries at COP29. “The voices of these communities are often brutally suppressed by the regimes.”
Aliyev claimed that France had caused “environmental degradation” in the territories, which he described as “colonies,” citing the nuclear tests in French Polynesia and Algeria. He also accused French President Emmanuel Macron’s government of being responsible for the violent outbursts in New Caledonia earlier this year.
“The European Parliament and the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe … became symbols of political corruption and share responsibility with the government of President Macron for killings of innocent people,” Aliyev said.
The New Caledonia jab touches an especially sensitive nerve in France.
The French overseas state was rocked by deadly violence in May after French lawmakers backed changes to the local constitution that independence activists opposed. Protests erupted and 13 people have since died in clashes with police.
As the violence unfolded, France accused Russia and Azerbaijan of fueling the unrest by “pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state.”
EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra late Wednesday jumped into the fray to defend France, touting the country on X as “one of the world’s leading voices on climate action.”
He added: “Regardless of any bilateral disagreements, the COP should be a place where all parties feel at liberty to come and negotiate on climate action.”
The Dutch also came to their own defense late Wednesday.
In a statement shared with POLITICO, a spokesperson for the Dutch foreign ministry “categorically” rejected the Azerbaijani ruler’s “unfounded views about repression” in Dutch overseas territories.
The row over Aliyev’s accusations is the latest in a series of controversies around this year’s round of climate talks, with Aliyev’s regime being copiously criticized by human rights defenders for cracking down on dissidents ahead of the talks.
The COP29 host country has also come under fire from climate NGOs for continuing to invest in fossil fuels, even striking new deals at the summit itself.
During his opening speech on Tuesday, Aliyev defended his country’s continued production of oil and gas, lashing out at what he called “double standards” from Western countries that import these products from Azerbaijan.
Pannier-Runacher, the French climate minister, also described the COP29 host country’s support of fossil fuels as “unacceptable.”
“This is unworthy of a COP presidency,” she said.