Over ten hours of negotiations on Thursday 14 December and into the wee, small hours of the Strasbourg morning were not enough to bring the inter-institutional talks to a conclusion on the draft regulation establishing effort-sharing in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sectors not included in the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) – transport, buildings, agriculture and waste.
Despite their best efforts, the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Parliament negotiators, assisted by the Commission, were unable to resolve one issue: the starting point of the greenhouse gas emissions trajectory for the member states (see EUROPE 11923). It will, then, be for the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council to pick up the reins and try to break the deadlock in a matter that is of the highest importance in helping to achieve a 30% reduction in emissions from these sectors between 2021 and 2030, compared with 2005.
Initially the Council proposed 2020 as the starting point. Parliament wanted 2018 the Estonian Presidency, representing the member states, could offer nothing better than mid-2019, a date that Parliament negotiators could not accept.
Successive attempts to squeeze agreement from the Parliament, by tinkering with other parts of the text, for example, by reducing the amount of the safety reserve or the percentage of surplus quotas on the market that could be set aside, where unable to break the impasse.
This failure contrasts with the success of a few hours earlier the same day in Strasbourg in negotiations on a provisional inter-institutional agreement on the draft complementary regulation on the contribution of agriculture and forestry to tackling climate change (see EUROPE 11926). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)