Ahead of the State of the European Union address, Carbon Market Watch together with 197 organisations and businesses is calling on European leaders to deliver a fossil fuel exit plan based on five priorities:

1. Quantify the full economic and financial burden of dependence: put a number on what fossil fuels drain each year from households, industry and public budgets, including import bills, exposure to price shocks, health and environmental impacts as well as climate damages.

2. Chart the fastest competitive exit: identify, sector by sector, where fossil fuel vulnerabilities are most acute and set out a pathway to a complete phase-out built on the most cost-effective proven solutions: renewables, energy efficiency, circular economy solutions, modern grids and clean flexibility with secure supply chains for the critical materials European industry depends on. The pathway must not rest on overhyped and unproven technologies that risk delaying the transition and damage the ecosystems we depend on.

3. Align every euro with the exit: identify where EU and national finance, subsidies and spending still prolong dependence, and recommend how to align them with the phase- out.

4. Leave no one behind: identify the governance and financial support needed to deliver a truly just transition, ensuring vulnerable households, workers, companies and affected regions are supported. Worker organisations should be at the centre of its design.

5. Make nature our ally and first line of defence in climate action: set out how to unlock investments, at scale, in natural solutions that Europe already knows work: forests, wetlands and soils that absorb carbon, floodplains that absorb floods, green spaces that cool cities, all at a fraction of the costs of engineered alternatives. Identify what keeps these solutions underfunded despite the evidence, whilst disregarding the ones that pose a risk to nature.

Make this fossil fuel crisis Europe’s last.