The French Presidency of the EU Council presented a compromise text to the ‘Environment’ Council on Tuesday 28 June, which was rather well received by the ministers, on the revision of the regulation on land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF).
The EU Environment Ministers expected to reach a common position (general approach) on this text this evening, as well as on the other dossiers of the ‘Fit for 55’ package (see other news).
Compared to the Commission’s proposal, the Presidency compromise text proposes to keep the overall EU target of 310 Mt CO2 equivalent of net removals in LULUCF in 2030 (see EUROPE 12970/3).
As regards national targets, the compromise text also maintains the distribution of targets as proposed by the Commission. The compromise “maintains the obligation for each Member State to reach its national target for the year 2030”, said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French Minister for Energy Transition, during the debate.
To take account of the inter-annual variability specific to the LULUCF sector, the compromise establishes an obligation to respect a five-year budget of net emissions or removals over the period 2026-2030 instead of the intermediate annual targets (2026 to 2029) proposed by the Commission.
With regard to flexibilities, the Presidency wanted to “maintain a coherent line consisting of providing for a sufficient level of flexibilities to take account of uncontrollable phenomena that have an impact on the achievement of the objectives, such as the effects of climate change or organic soils on the LULUCF sector, while preserving the environmental integrity of the regulation”, explained the French Minister.
While several Member States expressed reservations about parts of the text during the debate, Poland was the most critical of the compromise on the table.
Link to the compromise text: https://aeur.eu/f/2e3 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)