Following the decision by the Heads of State or Government of the Member States to return to the EU 2030 climate target in December (see EUROPE 12582/2), the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament called on the German Presidency of the EU Council on Thursday 15 October to organise an extraordinary European climate summit quickly.
For Michael Bloss (Greens/EFA, Germany), such a summit represents “the last chance to adopt the ‘climate law’ this year”.
The EU environment ministers are due to meet on 23 October and are waiting for a decision by the EU27 on the EU’s climate target for 2030 (the main point of the ‘climate law’), in order to decide on their position on the ‘climate law’ and thus start the trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament.
However, if the EU Council waits until the European summit on 10-11 December before adopting its position, the time left for interinstitutional negotiations will be too short to reach an agreement between the co-legislators before the end of the year, the deadline set by the Paris Agreement for providing further nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Questioned by EUROPE on the possibility for the ministers to adopt a position on the other provisions of the ‘climate law’ on 23 October, leaving aside the 2030 objective, and to begin the trilogues on these elements, one source told us that this was not envisaged a priori by Berlin. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)