Having adopted a compromise amendment to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 (see EUROPE 12557/1), on Friday 11 September members of the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) approved a report by Jytte Guteland (S&D, Sweden) relating to the “Climate Law” (by 46 votes to 18, with 17 abstentions).
As the majority of EPP members decided to abstain on this occasion (they were opposed to a 60% reduction), the vote was not as close as the vote on the specific amendment to the 2030 target.
A path fraught with pitfalls.
The report will now be put to a vote by the full European Parliament at the October plenary session. However, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will get the majority it requires.
The EPP, ECR and ID political groups believe that the 60% target is unrealistic, given both the work that member states will need to do and the socio-economic impact of their efforts (on jobs in the fossil fuels sector, for example).
In addition, although Renew Europe MEPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of the target in the ENVI committee vote, the same degree of unity within the group is not guaranteed in the plenary session.
If the report – and therefore also the 60% target – are adopted, Parliament will be ready for the next stage: the inter-institutional negotiations (or ‘trilogues’).
However, the Council of the European Union is likely to adopt a less ambitious position on this issue than Parliament as currently only five member states (Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Luxembourg) seem ready to accept a target above 55% (see EUROPE 12440/1).
In addition, Guteland’s report envisages the 2050 climate neutrality target being applied to each member state individually and not just to the EU as a whole, an idea that some countries, including Poland, strongly oppose.
Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission is also expected to defend a less ambitious target for 2030 of ‘at least 55%’ during her State of the Union address on 16 September.
Stakeholder reactions
Environmental NGOs generally welcomed the ENVI Committee vote. Greenpeace felt in particular that the vote represented “a step closer to what is needed to achieve the goal of the Paris climate agreement”, but stated that it would nevertheless have preferred a target of 65%.
However, Eurochambers thought that the ENVI Committee has set “unrealistic climate targets at risk of existing merely on paper”. Eurochambers, which represents European chambers of commerce and industry, feels in particular that raising the 2030 climate target in this way beyond the range suggested by the Commission (50-55%) is “destabilising when businesses need planning security and predictability in order to invest”.
The result of roll-call votes can be found at: https://bit.ly/2GKnqsc (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)