French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said that the EU is looking to formally submit its ratification instruments on Friday, which will ensure that the treaty comes into force by November 7, when the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change takes off in Marrakesh, Morocco. President Barack Obama hailed the news as “a turning point for our planet,” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the agreement’s strong international support a “testament for the urgency of action.” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, called it: “A moment of bright hope in the increasingly discouraging landscape of climate science.”

U.N. Obama called Wednesday “a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations” and he told reporters on the White House Rose Garden: “If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet.”

Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta - European Union nations which have completed domestic ratification and account for about four percent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday. The agreement dictates that a signatory will not be given the voting rights in the making of rules of its implementation until 30 days have passed after it submitted ratification documents to its secretariat.
The Paris Agreement on climate change which governs greenhouse gas emissions will take effect in November.