ArcelorMittal’s AGM minutes confirm strategic delay, not climate leadership

ArcelorMittal has released the Minutes of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Shareholders, held on 6 May 2025 in Luxembourg. These minutes confirm what SteelWatch has long warned: ArcelorMittal is retreating from its climate leadership claims while attempting to preserve the appearance of progress. 

In its official AGM summary, ArcelorMittal admits that “it is becoming increasingly unlikely that we will achieve our current 2030 targets,” citing “too much uncertainty at the moment to be able to make useful projections about how rapidly we will be able to bring down our emissions in the next five years.” It plans to revise its decarbonisation forecasts only “when the policy environment becomes more settled.”

This is not climate leadership, it is a strategic retreat

As SteelWatch’s Corporate Climate Assessment 2025 has shown, ArcelorMittal has scaled back hugely on its decarbonisation ambitions, budgets, and delivery. Instead, it is waiting for governments and markets to provide the conditions it considers necessary to proceed, prioritising regulatory certainty and profitability over urgent climate action. Yet with the scale, assets, and influence to shape markets, accelerate innovation, and drive demand for low-emissions steel, ArcelorMittal is a market-maker, not a market-taker.

In April, SteelWatch’s updated assessment revealed that between 2021 and 2024, ArcelorMittal allocated less than 2.5% of its generated operating cash on decarbonisation investments. The company could have used its 2025 AGM to deliver its long-overdue third Climate Action Report, offering a serious update to its 2021 plans. Instead, what shareholders and observers received was a clear weakening of climate ambition.

This backsliding comes despite major policy signals. In March 2025, the European Commission released its Steel and Metals Action Plan, alongside a review of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), measures specifically designed to reassure EU steel producers that they will not be undercut by imports from countries with weaker climate regulations. ArcelorMittal publicly welcomed these developments but continues to withhold major investment in its own decarbonisation strategy, citing high energy costs and pending policy implementation.

Written questions submitted to the AGM by SteelWatch asked what the company is doing now to lay the basis for deep decarbonisation in the years ahead. It was positive to get some detail of expansion of DRI-grade iron ore such as the demonstration project at Saint-Chély-d’Apcher, as well as the first tests of H2DRI at the Contracoeur plant in Canada. But these steps are insufficient. 

Most worryingly of all, in reply to another question from SteelWatch on phasing out blast furnaces, the company made clear that it continues “to believe that blast furnaces will be part of our future decarbonized portfolio”. This confirms that coal phase out is simply not in the plan.

Impacted Communities Demand More

SteelWatch, as owner of one company share, attended the AGM along with delegates from Liberia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other affected regions who held proxy votes and brought serious claims of environmental harm, human rights violations, and a lack of meaningful consultation. 

One question in particular, from a Mexican delegate, asked reasons for a ‘failure of engagement’ since last year. We welcomed the reply by Brad Davey, EVP, that the company “will set up more formal communication links to ensure we address these topics” (noting these words are from our own notes, not the formal minutes of the AGM).  

Further discussions were held after the AGM in which community representatives made clear that more formal communication is certainly needed and first steps were taken to build this. It is disappointing though that the replies to written questions do not directly address the question from Fair Steel Coalition as to why 5 letters and emails were simply received no response over the past 10 months. 

When community representatives report the reality of lives and livelihoods disrupted, we expect the company to listen and act. The AGM minutes show that one question from a Liberian delegate at the meeting clearly told the top of the company that their policy is not reality on the ground: ‘The company professes to follow the voluntary principles on security and human rights in their annual report. In practice what you say is not true on the ground in Liberia.’ These words, delivered directly to the company’s senior leadership, are a reminder that ground-level realities must be treated as vital intelligence, not inconvenient interruptions. Going forward, sustained, meaningful participation and accountability are essential.

A clear signal of convenience over commitment

By walking back on its 2030 climate targets while sidelining the harms to communities living with the consequences of its operations, ArcelorMittal is sending a dangerous signal: it will act when convenient—not when climate science or community voices demand action.

The company must move forward with ambition. It must restore credible climate commitments, set clear and science-based targets, and make real investments in decarbonisation now, not later. Just as importantly, it must ensure transparency and accountability to the people it affects, from Zenica to Yekepa.

Climate leadership means action, not delay. SteelWatch and a growing movement of communities, investors, and civil society organisations will continue to hold ArcelorMittal to account.

Written by Sam Daniel