European Climate Law voted in by European Parliament

Yesterday and today the European Parliament approved of the central backbone legislation of the European Green Deal, the so called European Climate Law. The initiative came from the European Commission and it is undergoing the ordinary legislative procedure, under which the European Parliament and its Committees first have to form an opinion, before negotiations with the European Council shall then result in a final law. The European Parliament is well know for being slightly more ambitious in terms of climate action than the European Commission, with yesterday`s vote being no exception. This blog entry takes a look at the main points of the proposed European Climate Law, the European Parliament`s take on it and the likely prospects of the law.


It has not even been a month ago that the President of the European Commission Urula von der Leyen in her state of the Union speech announced plans of the Commission to sharpen the 2030 climate goals for the reduction of European Greenhouse Gas Emmissions (GHGs) to 55% compared to 1990 levels. This should be achieved via changes to the European Green Deal. The European Parliament voted yesterday and today on the proposed European Climate Law, which shall be the backbone of the implementation of the European Green Deal and European Climate goals. 

In its debate and vote yesterday the European Parliament decided to be even more ambitious than the Commission and proposed to write a cut of 60% GHG-emissions compared to 1990 levels into article 2 (3) of the proposed European Climate Law. As current law stands, a mere reduction of 40% of GHG emissions compared to 2030 needs to be achieved, but it is consensual that this will not be sufficent to deliver on the agreed long-term vision of the EU to become C02 neutral by 2050. That is why the debate is now focussing on sharpening the interim goal for 2030.

The European Council is expected to form its position on the European Climate Law and emission reductions already at a meeting next week. However, there are two main issues that stand in the way of the Commission getting its will to ultimately have the law adopted by the end of this year.

First issue: consistency

The vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans, who is in charge of the European Green Deal, said earlier this week in an interview with a german newspaper when asked about the feasibility of the increased GHG-emission reduction goals for 2030: 

 `the beauty of our European Climate Law and its impact analysis is that everybody can track what needs to happen now [to achieve these increased goals].´

Unfortuantely, this is not true in its entirety, as discussed earlier on this blog. The European Commission is proposing a cut of GHg-emissions of 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, but not all of the numbers are fully accounted for in the impact analysis. Even in a positive spin the measures proposed by the Commission would add up to a mere 45% of emission reductions by 2030, not 55% as announced. 

 A further 2% GHG-reduction should have come from a controversial move of the Commission to include agricultural land and carbon sinks, such as improved and enforced forest protection and more sustainable forest management as well as sustainable re- and afforestation and improved soil management including through the restoration of wetlands, peatlands and degraded land. Moreover, via a shift towards growing woody biomass on cropland in a sustainable manner, including as a feedstock for advanced biogas and biofuels This has been criticzed earlier on this blog. The issue was that in the old aim of 40% emission reductions by 2030 land use was not part of the calculation, so this could be viewed as an arithmetic trick. The European Parliament now rejected the controversial Commission proposal to rely on carbon sinks like forests and grasslands to artificially inflate the 2030 climate target.

But even with this additional 2% reduction the numbers would only add up to 47% and not to 55% reduction as claimed. The European Commission partly admitted this (p.13 of European Commission Communication `Stepping up Europe’s 2030 climate ambition Investing in a climate-neutral future for the benefit of our people´ (Communication) COM (2020) 562 final) and has a rather surprising solution to offer. It argues: `However, (...) this would not be sufficient to achieve a 55% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. To achieve this, both the climate legislation as well as the energy policies need to be reviewed to deliver this ambition increase´ (p.13). In other words: we do not know where the additional 8% emission reductions are supposed to come from exactly, but we will find something somewhere in our laws, when searching further. This lack of concrete implementation measures continued throughout the vote of the European Parliament, so that a considerbale number of anticipated emission reductions is not accounted for by underlying actions.

Second issue: political feasibility

While the European Council is expected to discuss the European Climate Law at its meeting next week it is unlikely to make a final decision on it. According to a draft statement of the European Council that is floating in media reports, the Council could just endorse the general lines of the European Climate Law, while postponing the concrete vote on a number for GHG-emission goals in 2030 until December. This is mainly due to reported resistance from Eastern European countries against the sharpened numbers for 2030. Poland already struggled to sign up to the 55% GHG emission reduction cuts that are proposed by the Commission and at the end only agreed because this is an overall European goal and Poland stated explicitly that they do not think that theior country will meet this target. The increased 60% goal by 2030, as proposed by the European Parliament now is bound to be met with hostility by these countries. Due to both of these issues it is unlikely that the EU will see a Climate Law before 2021.


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