On Thursday 24 June, the European Parliament formally approved the interim agreement on the ‘Climate Law’ reached with the Council of the European Union.
A key element of the ‘European Green Deal’, this regulation aims in particular to enshrine the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality objective in EU legislation. It also sets out a pathway to achieve this goal, including a target of reducing the EU’s net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030.
“With this law, the EU maintains its leadership as the region with the most ambitious targets for climate”, said Jytte Guteland (S&D, Sweden), Parliament’s rapporteur on the dossier, calling it an “historic day”.
A criticized ‘Climate Law’
The text was adopted by 442 votes in favour, 203 against and 51 abstentions.
As reported by EUROPE (see EUROPE 12747/6), almost all Greens/EFA and The Left group voted against the agreement, denouncing in particular a target for 2030 that is too low to limit global warming to a maximum of 2°C, and if possible to 1.5°C, as foreseen in the Paris Agreement.
“The stated objective of -55% of emissions [...] is based on accounting tricks, which mean that the real reduction objectives are only 52.8%”, deplored Saskia Bricmont (Greens/EFA, Belgium), re-launching the war of figures that had followed the conclusion of the interim agreement (see EUROPE 12703/1).
“This is far from the minimum 65% objective that is scientifically needed”, joined Manon Aubry (France), President of The Left.
In response to these criticisms, Ms Guteland said that the agreement reached with the EU Council was “the best Climate Law we could hammer out, given the circumstances”. She also recalled that the S&D group would have liked an “even more ambitious” 2030 target (see EUROPE 12483/11) and “binding [climate] neutrality targets on a Member State level”.
Almost the entire ID group also rejected the ‘Climate Law’ as “green ideology”, in the words of Sylvia Limmer (Germany), the group’s rapporteur on this dossier.
On the ECR side, the majority of MEPs abstained (roughly 20 members, however, voted against). In a debate before the vote, some of them criticised the ‘Climate Law’, in particular for endangering businesses and jobs, especially in poorer Member States.
Other elements of the ‘Climate Law’
In addition to climate targets for 2030 and 2050, the ‘Climate Law’ states that the EU will aim for negative emissions after 2050 and requires the Commission to publish a ‘GHG emissions budget’.
This budget is defined as the indicative total amount of net GHG emissions that should be emitted in the period 2030-2050 without jeopardising the EU’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. It will be one of the criteria for defining the EU’s revised 2040 target.
The text also provides for the creation of a ‘European Scientific Advisory Council on Climate Change’ to assess the progress and coherence of EU climate policy.
Before being published in the Official Journal of the EU, the ‘Climate Law’ still needs to be formally adopted by the EU Council. According to our information, this formality should take place on 28 June, during the meeting of the Member States’ Ministers for Agriculture and Fisheries.
See the adopted text: https://bit.ly/3gSb155
See the detailed results of the vote: https://bit.ly/3xRpEeS (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)