Twelve EU countries urge the Commission to toughen up its climate goals

Spain, France, Italy and nine other EU countries have decided to form a pressure bloc to try to get Europe to update its plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. The EU has already committed itself to the UN – and within the framework of the Paris Agreement – to reducing these emissions by 40% compared to 1990 levels. But the 40% target was set in 2014 and many countries and the Commission itself understand that six years later there is scope to present a more robust target. That bloc of 12 states, which does not include Germany, asks in a letter to the Vice-President of the Commission, Frans Timmermans, to speed up the procedures so that Brussels presents as soon as possible, and by June 2020 at the latest, the new goal, which, according to the Commission, should be between 50% and 55% cut.

In the letter, to which EL PAÍS has acceded, the environment ministers of the 12 countries – among which are also Austria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden – argue that if the EU presents an “improved” cut plan it can make other large countries do so as well. But, to this end, the signatories understand that the Commission must do so now.

The letter comes in an important week for Europe’s positioning in the fight against climate change. On Wednesday, Timmermans, the Commission’s climate policy officer, is due to present the so-called European climate change law. Brussels and those dozen countries are aligned on the need to increase the targets for this decade in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. But in December, when all EU countries sat down to close that goal of neutrality by mid-century, a blockade position led by Poland and other Eastern countries already emerged. Poland finally agreed to set the 2050 target, albeit with a footnote saying they are not “in a position at this time” to “ensure that the target is met”. The negotiation to tighten the target to 2030 is also expected to be tough. At the moment, the bloc of 12 countries that want to be more ambitious has already been formed. On Thursday the ministers of the 27 will meet in Brussels at a meeting on climate change policies.

The Paris Agreement, which dates back to 2015, establishes that the signatory countries of the pact should update their cutting plans – with those objectives to 2030 – during this 2020. That upward update process is expected to culminate in the climate summit to be held in November in Glasgow (United Kingdom). But none of the major economies has yet updated its targets. Hence the importance of the EU doing so, something that, according to the signatories of the letter, may drag other large countries to do the same.

Source: The Country