On the evening of Tuesday 9 December, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament will attempt to reach a provisional agreement on the amendment to the European climate law aimed at incorporating a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
The aim is to conclude the talks in a single interinstitutional negotiating session (‘trilogue’), given that the positions of the two institutions are very similar (see EUROPE 13755/34).
After the conclusion of difficult negotiations between Member States on 5 November (see EUROPE 13746/1), Parliament validated its position on 13 November (see EUROPE 13751/3), adopting the EU Council’s general approach word for word, with a few exceptions.
These exceptions form the basis of the agenda for the trilogue on 9 December.
In particular, the European Parliament will argue that international carbon credits (allowing the EU to offset part of its emissions by financing decarbonisation projects abroad) should not be integrated into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).
To achieve an 85% domestic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, the final text will provide for a series of flexibilities. One of them concerns the possibility for Member States of using high-quality international credits to achieve up to 5% of their targets and efforts in the post-2030 period. Parliament specifies that these are targets and efforts “in sectors not regulated by the ETS”, i.e. those covered by the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR), such as agriculture and waste management.
Parliament’s position also strengthens the “quality criterion” for international carbon credits, which can contribute to the EU’s decarbonisation efforts, to ensure that the activities supported are carried out in “partner countries whose climate objectives and policies are compatible with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and are subject to robust safeguards (...)”.
This position will have to be defended by the main rapporteur for the European Parliament, Ondřej Knotek (PfE, Czech), who nevertheless tried to reject the compromise put together in the parliamentary Environment Committee by the left and centre-right groups (see EUROPE 13749/7). (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)