Following the first meeting on Wednesday 3 September of the Member States’ permanent representatives to the European Union (Coreper) after the summer break, the Danish Presidency of the Council of the European Union did not change the agenda for the extraordinary meeting of the Environment Council on Thursday 18 September. The plan is to try and reach a political agreement on the EU’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
However, a number of Member States called for the deadline to be extended, some arguing that the text was not mature enough for an agreement to be reached, while others stated that the climate target presented by the European Commission was too ambitious in the current geopolitical context.
According to our information, a dozen countries took to the floor briefly at this meeting to express their position. Six of them (France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Latvia) are said to have explicitly requested that the issue be brought back to the table of the Heads of State or Government, whose next formal meeting in Brussels is scheduled for 23 and 24 October. A discussion on the dual green and digital transition is already on the summit agenda. With regard to Germany, a formal position is still awaited. When contacted, the spokesperson for the German delegation gave Agence Europe no further details.
Other countries, such as Italy, Austria and Bulgaria, simply expressed reservations about the text.
A number of other Member States, including the Netherlands and Luxembourg, support the desire of the Danish Presidency of the EU Council to reach a rapid agreement at ministerial level. This would enable the EU to use the 2040 target as a basis for calculating the 2035 target expected to be included in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that the EU is due to submit this month, ahead of COP30 in Belém (Brazil) in November.
On 2 July, the European Commission presented its legislative proposal to amend the ‘climate law’, based on a 90% reduction in emissions, and accompanied by flexibilities and ‘enabling conditions’ (see EUROPE 13672/2).
It is precisely these points that have been the subject of debate for several weeks, in particular that of the inclusion of international carbon credits of up to 3% of the target, as of 2036 (Article 6 of the Paris Agreement).
At the EU Council meeting on Tuesday, national experts debated at great length over the latest draft text from the Danish Presidency, dated 31 July (https://aeur.eu/f/i97 ), without achieving any concrete results.
A new draft is expected early next week, ahead of another Coreper meeting scheduled for Friday 12 September. Before that, the Danish Presidency intends to hold bilateral talks with each of the 27 ambassadors on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 September. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)