BERLIN – Ahead of President Donald Trump’s announcement on whether the U.S. will pull out of the Paris climate deal, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that leaving the agreement would be a slow process, taking up to three or four years.

“It’s not possible that one leaves this climate agreement overnight, as some people in the United States think,” Juncker told a conference at the German foreign ministry on Thursday. “This takes three, four years — which is laid down in the agreement itself.”

Trump tweeted overnight that he would announce a final decision on whether the U.S. will withdraw from the agreement Thursday at 3 p.m. Washington time (9 p.m. in  Brussels).

“The vacuum that would be created [by the U.S. dropping out of the Paris agreement] has to be filled, and Europe has aspirations for a natural leadership in this whole process,” said Juncker.

“I’m meeting tonight and tomorrow the Chinese prime minister in Brussels and we need to talk about this with the Chinese. We have explained to [President] Trump in Taormina it wouldn’t be good for the world and the U.S. if the U.S. took a step back from the world stage because vacuum will be replaced and the Chinese are pushing to take over the lead,” he said. “I’m in favor of concluding tasks together with our American partners instead of changing the setup.”

On Wednesday evening, Juncker said that the deal, which is backed by nearly 200 other countries, is “not only about the future of Europeans but, above all, the future of people elsewhere. Eighty-three countries run into the danger of disappearing from the surface of the earth if we don’t resolutely start the fight against climate change.”