Poland’s
Duda bucks EU on climate
Poland’s
president vetoes climate pact, but Warsaw can’t do much to change
the EU’s direction.
SARA STEFANINI
10/29/15, 4:33 PM CET Updated 10/31/15, 2:51 PM CET
Polish President
Andrzej Duda is sending a strong signal that business as usual is
over when it comes to his country’s climate policy — vetoing an
extension of the 1997 Kyoto climate protocol as his right-wing party
took control of the EU’s sixth largest country.
The so-called Doha
amendment would extend the first and only legally binding
international climate treaty for eight years to 2020. By blocking it,
Duda stops the whole EU from approving the protocol’s extension,
and prevents Poland from continuing its lucrative trade in emissions
allowances.
Duda, elected in
May, made his decision following his Law and Justice (PiS) party’s
romp to an absolute majority in Poland’s parliamentary election
Sunday.
“An international
agreement having an impact on the functioning of Poland’s economy
and linked with social costs should be preceded by a detailed
analysis of the legal and economic consequences,” said the
president’s office, explaining his decision taken two days after
the election.
Both the outgoing
government of the center-right Civic Platform party and PiS are
ardent defenders of the coal that supplies almost 90 percent of
Poland’s electricity, and both are skeptical of ambitious EU
emissions reduction targets. But PiS uses even harsher rhetoric on
the issue than Civic Platform.
The veto was
unexpected for a country that has supported the Kyoto Protocol, but
it’s largely symbolic, said Joanna Maćkowiak Pandera, head of the
Warsaw-based think tank Forum for Energy Analysis and a former deputy
environment minister.
“The Law and
Justice party said they were going to protect the energy sector in
Poland, so I expect that two days after the elections Law and Justice
wants to prove they are very much attached to this protection,” she
said. “Everybody was quite surprised, but in our opinion it was a
political move.”
PiS, as well as
other political parties in Poland, insist that the EU not be far
ahead of other big emitters out of fear it could gut the
competitiveness of European industry. Plus, Kyoto’s requirements do
not extend to some of the world’s biggest emitters: the U.S., China
and Canada.
Firmly in credit
The original treaty
required countries to cut their emissions by at least 5 percent
between 2008 and 2012. Most countries have to compare those
reductions to 1990 levels, but Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and
Slovenia secured baselines in the late 1980s, when they housed
belching heavy industries that mostly collapsed when communism ended.
That means they have lots of spare emissions permits they can sell.
Kyoto established a
cap-and-trade system, under which countries are given a certain
number of emissions allowances, or Assigned Amount Units (AAUs), and
can trade any leftovers. The system has largely been eclipsed and
only ex-communist countries have many allowances to trade.
Duda’s
decision could endanger the trade in AAUs: Poland would no longer be
allowed to trade with countries that have signed up to the Doha
amendment.
Poland has the
third-largest stash of surplus AAUs, and has reportedly raised more
than 800 million zlotys (€186.6 million) from trades since 2009. In
October, it announced it would sell 20 million zlotys’ worth to
Italy.
But Duda’s
decision could endanger that business, because Poland would no longer
be allowed to trade with countries that have signed up to the Doha
amendment.
Duda’s veto now
goes back to the parliament, where a three-fifths majority is needed
to override it — a number the outgoing government is unlikely to be
able to muster.
Thorn in the EU’s
side
If the veto isn’t
overturned, Duda’s decision would stop the entire European Union
from signing on for the treaty’s extension.
The 28 member
countries approved legislation in July allowing the EU to formally
ratify the amendment. However, each national government has to agree
before Brussels can submit the bloc’s ratification to the United
Nations. It aims to do that, alongside the national governments,
before the COP21 climate summit starts in Paris on November 30.
Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania have
yet to ratify it, but are not expected to block it.
“The veto would
hamper the ratification of the Doha amendment at the EU level and
slow down further work on the global post-Kyoto agreement,” said
Anna Dubowik, head of Change Partnership Poland, a climate-focused
NGO.
However, even
without ratifying the extension, all EU members are legally bound to
the 2020 targets set out in the Doha amendment. That’s part of the
bloc’s 2020 package, which calls for a 20 percent reduction in
emissions compared to 1990 levels, a 20 percent improvement in energy
efficiency from business-as-usual levels, and a boost in renewables
to 20 percent of the energy mix.
If
the veto isn’t overturned, Duda’s decision would stop the entire
European Union from signing on for the treaty’s extension.
The EU has moved on
with an even more ambitious set of goals for 2030, under a policy
heavily criticized by Law and Justice when it was still in
opposition. But all 28 EU members, including Poland, approved the
2030 package in October 2014. Those targets call for the bloc to cut
greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990, increase the share
of renewables to at least 27 percent and become 27 percent more
energy-efficient.
Just before the
parliamentary elections, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński called the
EU’s climate package “unfavorable” for Poland. “A
renegotiation is needed,” he added.
But member countries
don’t have the power to opt out of EU decisions that have already
been approved, which means that in practice, Poland can’t overturn
policy.
“The proposals
that are sometimes made by politicians are perhaps not 100 percent
transferable in real policies,” an EU diplomat said of PiS’s
campaign promises. “It should be treated a bit more as an
indication of the direction of understanding in the situation.”
Biting the hand
that feeds
Where Poland could
be disruptive is in talks now underway over how the EU should enforce
and govern national policies designed to meet those 2030 targets.
Central and Eastern European countries, among others, already oppose
giving Brussels too much power.
Even under the Civic
Platform government, Poland was a prominent voice in the resistance
to ambitious EU policies. In last year’s initial battle over the
EU’s reform of its oversupplied Emissions Trading System, for
instance, Poland and its Central and Eastern European allies banded
together to demand concessions, and came out with a modernization
fund to help the bloc’s 10 poorest countries.
The European
Parliament and member countries started discussing those reform
proposals this month and will continue next year, and there is
concern that the new Polish government will be even more resistant
than the last.
“The biggest risk
is obstructionism killing the goose that lays the golden egg,”
Dubowic said, noting that the ETS modernization fund would provide
Poland with €2 billion to €4.8 billion to upgrade its energy
infrastructure up to 2030. The country is also getting more than €25
billion in low-carbon funding between 2014 and 2020.
The money may be
attractive, but it’s not enough to offset the pain of transforming
a heavily fossil fuel-reliant economy, said Marek Wąsiński, an
analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
“With this veto,
Poland is on the one hand making a strong signal about its skepticism
about EU climate policy, and that it will be looking for allies in
Europe to secure the best possible conditions for European Central
and Eastern economies to become low-carbon,” Wąsiński said. “And
on the second hand that only a worldwide Paris agreement is
interesting to the Polish government, it must include all economies.”
Even if the new
government tries to upend the 2030 goals, its power to block and
change the EU’s energy and emissions policy is rapidly coming to an
end.
The EU’s reform of
its Emissions Trading System after 2020 and update of its renewable
energy policy are unlikely to be finalized before March 2017, when
the Council’s voting rules change. After that, the group of 11
Central and Eastern European countries including Poland will no
longer have the numbers to form a blocking minority, according to
analysis by the communications agency FleishmanHillard.
Kalina Oroschakoff
contributed to this article.
Authors:
Sara Stefanini
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