The Polish rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU has published its programme of political priorities for the first half of 2025. The climate and the environment are nowhere to be seen. With a focus on security in a number of areas (the economy, defence, migration, etc.), Poland’s programme barely mentions the environment when it comes to the issue of food security, which is more closely linked to agriculture.
The section of the preamble devoted to “competitive and resilient agriculture” warns: “The policy should encourage, rather than force, farmers to take action to protect the environment and show the benefits of combating and preventing the effects of climate change, such as floods and droughts”. Changes within the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) must, however, “support the transformation needed to address environmental and climate challenges”, according to the Polish Presidency.
Bans and excessive burdens “could undermine public support for green transition”, which has moreover become “the target of a systematic disinformation campaign aimed at slowing down the transition”, the Polish Presidency justified. To combat this disinformation, Poland intends to “develop tools”. For the environment, the Presidency will favour “non-binding sustainable target values”, which will “not create an obligation to act”.
Environment. Despite this, the Environment Council under the Polish Presidency will have a busy agenda ahead of it, and will need to act as a “neutral intermediary” during its term of office.
It is responsible for several trilogues, starting with soil monitoring (see EUROPE 13545/7) and the revision of the Waste Framework Directive covering food and textile waste (see EUROPE 13509/27). Two trilogues were devoted to ‘soil monitoring’ under the Hungarian Presidency, without an agreement being reached between the Council of the EU and a European Parliament whose right-wing orientation and fear of imposing new constraints on farmers have put the brakes on regarding environmental legislation in recent months. The Waste Framework Directive was the subject of a trilogue. Negotiations should continue in January, according to a diplomatic source.
There will also be discussions between the Member States and, a priori, negotiations to be held with the European Parliament: - the regulation to prevent plastic pellet losses, on which the Council of the EU adopted its position on Tuesday 17 December (see EUROPE 13547/7); - the green claims directive (see EUROPE 13538/3), on which the European Parliament has just adopted its position on Wednesday 4 December; - the draft regulation on end-of-life vehicles (see EUROPE 13547/8); - the ‘One Substance, One Assessment’ package, still under discussion in the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13542/9).
At an international level, the Polish Presidency will be responsible for closing COP16 on biodiversity, as the meeting in Cali (Colombia) did not result in an agreement being reached between the stakeholders on the issue of financing (see EUROPE 13532/2).
Climate. The Polish Presidency remains discreet about its climate priorities, in particular the EU’s climate target for 2040, a proposal that the European Commission unveiled almost a year before the start of this Presidency, in February 2023 (see EUROPE 13344/1). European ministers have already held three discussions on this subject, unanimously calling for a rapid adoption of the target starting at the beginning of 2025.
This urgency is due to a major deadline: the European Union must submit its new nationally determined contribution (NDC) by February.
During the most recent discussions, at the December Environment Council (see EUROPE 13547/10), several Member States called for the 2040 climate target to be quickly finalised in order to ensure an ambitious NDC that is consistent with the EU’s long-term commitments, particularly with a view to COP30, to be held in Belém (Brazil) in November.
Read the Polish Presidency programme here: https://aeur.eu/f/ewk
See the draft agendas for Council meetings during the first semester of 2025: https://aeur.eu/f/exi (Original version in French by Florent Servia and Nithya Paquiry)