Meeting in Luxembourg on Friday 23 October, the Environment Ministers of the Member States of the European Union adopted a partial political agreement (‘general approach’) on the European Commission's proposal for a regulation to establish a framework for achieving climate neutrality at EU level by 2050, also known as the ‘Climate Law’.
Leaving the question of the new EU climate target for 2030 in brackets pending a decision by the Heads of State or Government at the European Council on 10 and 11 December (see EUROPE 12582/2), the text finally adopted received the support of all Member States, with the exception of Bulgaria, which decided to abstain.
Enabling Framework
During the round table preceding the adoption of the partial general approach, the Bulgarian Ambassador, Ivanka Tasheva, deplored in particular the fact that no reference to the principle of technological neutrality (allowing Member States to determine their own energy mix) was foreseen in the body of the latest draft compromise text of the German EU Council Presidency (see EUROPE 12585/10).
Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic also expressed their wish to place greater emphasis on this principle.
Like Lithuania, they also stressed the need for the text to express more clearly the importance of taking into account national circumstances and starting points as well as the need for solidarity and equity between states.
For them, the reference to the ‘enabling framework’ - the set of instruments, incentives, support and investments to assist Member States in the energy transition taking into account their different starting points - should be directly included in the body of the latest draft compromise text and not only in recital 11.
Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg, on the other hand, were openly opposed to such amendments. The last three countries even warned that they would oppose a partial agreement if the German draft compromise were to be changed too much after the first round of discussions.
Last minute changes
In order to reach a satisfactory compromise between all national delegations, a last-minute change to Article 3(2) was finally made to the German Presidency’s latest compromise proposal.
On a proposal by Romania, the Presidency thus added a sentence stating that, in the context of next year’s and future reviews of relevant EU legislation contributing to the achievement of climate objectives, “the Commission shall assess in particular the availability under Union law of adequate instruments and incentives for mobilising the investments needed, and propose measures as necessary”.
Target 2040
In addition to the latter change, Member States have formally rejected the Commission’s idea of using delegated acts to set climate targets between 2030 and 2050.
According to the partial general approach adopted, the Commission is expected thus to present a proposal for a revision of the ‘Climate Law’ to incorporate the EU’s climate objective for 2040 at the latest within six months of the first global review of the Paris Agreement (scheduled for 2023).
There are no other major changes compared to the Commission’s initial proposal (see EUROPE 12439/2).
Led by Sweden, a group of five countries (Sweden, Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark and Spain) made a point of stressing that they would have liked the text to be more ambitious in certain respects.
Like Finland and Latvia, these countries in particular wanted the climate neutrality target to apply to each Member State individually and not just to the EU as a whole.
The introduction of a sentence stating that the EU should aim for negative emissions after 2050 (an idea defended by Luxembourg, Denmark, Latvia, Finland and Sweden, among others) was also not retained in the compromise adopted.
Trilogues
Asked at the conference about Berlin's intentions regarding the start of interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’), German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said that the Presidency should continue discussions with the Member States before taking a decision.
The interventions of the various national delegations during the meeting revealed divergences on this issue.
The Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, and the Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Environment (ENVI), Pascal Canfin, for their part, said they want to start the trilogues as soon as possible.
Such an approach would maximise the chances that an agreement between the co-legislators on the whole ‘Climate Law’ would be reached in December, so as to be able to present the updated EU nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) before the end of the year, as required by the Paris Accord.
The European Parliament adopted its position on 7 October (see EUROPE 12577/12).
See the text of the partial general approach: https://bit.ly/3mgBpFL (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)