EU climate law sparks political battles
The 5 fights facing the Commission in the wake of
legislating for climate neutrality by 2050.
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Fortress
Europe
By Mehreen
Khan
March 4,
2020
The EU’s
top brass headed to the Greek border yesterday, promising solidarity with the
country’s government as authorities used tear gas and water cannons to repel
people trying to cross its border, writes Jim Brunsden.
Ursula von
der Leyen thanked Greece for being Europe’s “shield”. She also spoke of her
compassion for migrants who “have been lured through false promises into this
desperate situation”. The commission president came bearing financial and
logistical support for Athens but the EU seemed no closer to agreeing any
comprehensive solution for dealing with the parlous situation at the external
border and the plight of those seeking to cross it.
Greece
claims to have prevented 24,000 attempted illegal crossings at the land border
with Turkey since early Saturday. (Kathimerini) EU interior ministers meet this
afternoon to discuss how to fortify one of Europe’s most strained and politically
sensitive frontiers. Along with the cash, the EU has dispatched a force from
its border management agency Frontex comprising seven vessels, two helicopters,
one plane, three thermal-vision vehicles and 100 extra border guards. Medical
equipment staff and shelters are also being provided. (BBC)
EU foreign
ministers get involved later this week. They will discuss how to salvage the
EU’s existing refugee agreement with Turkey when they meet in Zagreb on Friday.
The €6bn scheme, set up in 2016, runs out of money for some projects in the
coming months, threatening key priorities including support for young Syrians.
Before the
latest crisis, ministers had been discussing the idea of setting aside around
€1bn from the EU’s 2020 budget for refugees in Turkey. But the prospect of
releasing further cash is proving politically treacherous after Recep Tayyip
Erdogan threatened to open up his border to allow asylum seekers and irregular
migrants to reach the EU.
Meanwhile
Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades — one of the most hardline EU leaders when
it comes to Turkey — told the FT that the EU faced a looming refugee disaster
on its shores:
“It is
going to be a disaster,” the Cypriot leader warned, when asked what would
happen if the EU did not push back against Erdogan and protect its 2016 deal
with him to stop migration to Europe via Turkey. “On the one hand is the
humanitarian aspect: you should take care of all these people. But who is
creating the problem is the question.”
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Greta
Thunberg: EU climate law is ‘surrender’
Setting a
2050 target for net-zero emissions ’means giving up,’ say activists.
By LAURENZ
GEHRKE 3/3/20, 6:46 PM CET Updated 3/3/20, 6:47 PM CET
Teen climate
activist Greta Thunberg has slammed the EU’s efforts on climate a day ahead of
the publication of the bloc’s flagship law.
The
European Commission is on Wednesday set to propose a European Climate Law
designed to set a legally binding target for the bloc to reach net-zero carbon
emissions by 2050.
In an open
letter together with 33 other climate strikers released, Thunberg on Tuesday
wrote: “This climate law is surrender.”
“‘Net zero
emissions by 2050’ for the EU equals surrender. It means giving up. We don’t
just need goals for just 2030 or 2050. We, above all, need them for 2020 and
every following month and year to come,” the letter read.
The
activists argue the EU is delaying action that should be taken immediately to
halt global warming. While the law is set to commit to a 2050 target, it
doesn’t map out how that would be achieved and dodges the politically charged
issue of increasing the bloc’s 2030 target, according to a draft obtained by
POLITICO.
Thunberg
will on Wednesday meet commissioners and speak in the European Parliament in
Brussels.
“We will
not be satisfied with anything less than a science-based pathway ... This
climate law is surrender – because nature doesn’t bargain and you cannot make
”deals” with physics,” the letter said.
Authors:
Laurenz
Gehrke
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A split
within the EU pits more coal-reliant countries like Poland against members who
are pushing for higher emissions cuts
By KALINA
OROSCHAKOFF AND AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES 3/3/20, 6:01 PM CET Updated 3/4/20,
4:41 AM CET
As calls to
address climate change amplify around the world, the EU is ready to lay out its
European Climate Law — but fault lines still remain among member states on how
best to proceed | Hatim Kaghat/AFP via Getty Images
The battle
to turn the EU climate-neutral by 2050 begins now.
On
Wednesday, Brussels presents its European Climate Law — the centerpiece of its
Green Deal vision of radically slashing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by
mid-century. EU leaders signed off on the goal in December, but the bill is
meant to turn their political commitment into law.
Brussels
argues that making the 2050 target legally binding provides the long-term
certainty to green the way Europe produces, consumes and uses resources over
the next decades.
Legislating
for climate-neutrality is also meant to send a global signal that the EU is
serious about its climate leadership claims, ahead of a major summit with China
in September and November's COP26 global climate talks in Glasgow.
There's
going to be a lot of fanfare around Wednesday's announcement — even youth
climate campaigner Greta Thunberg will be in town, despite the coronavirus
fallout leading the European Parliament to cancel all external events for three
weeks.
"The Commission may have locked itself into a
trap. The theatrics are such that business as usual will be considered a
failure" —
Quentin Genard, acting hed of E3G think tank
So far,
she's not impressed.
"'Net
zero emissions by 2050' for the EU equals surrender. It means giving up. We
don’t just need goals for just 2030 or 2050. We, above all, need them for 2020
and every following month and year to come," said a Tuesday letter to EU
leaders signed by Thunberg and other activists.
The bill —
POLITICO obtained a draft — papers over major cracks in EU climate
policymaking, and kicks off a year of tough battles among EU and national
policymakers, industry leaders and environmental campaigners.
"The
Commission may have locked itself into a trap," said Quentin Genard,
acting head at environmental think tank E3G in Brussels. "The theatrics
are such that business as usual will be considered a failure."
These are
the five main battles.
1. Same
goal, different speeds
The EU
wants to be climate-neutral by 2050 — but it's an EU-wide target rather than
one all 27 member countries have to hit at the same time.
As long as
the overall goal is met, some countries can go faster, while poorer and more
polluting ones like Poland can lag without derailing the broader aim.
Poland
already made clear that it won’t adopt the 2050 timeline for now, instead going
at its own pace. Coal fuels some 80 percent of the country’s power needs;
dropping it will take time and a lot of money, Warsaw says.
"If
the EU wants to make climate-neutrality a real and feasible goal, it needs to
raise the issue of a fair distribution of commitments," said Poland's
Climate Minister Michał Kurtyka, adding that to maintain EU credibility
"there is a need to diversify the pace of achieving climate-neutrality, as
well as the distribution of funds for funding this transition."
Other
countries like Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden have pledges to get to
carbon-neutrality faster than mid-century.
The proposed law would also hand Brussels some new abilities
to make sure that emissions cuts are on track for the 2050 target.
How far off
the EU is from reaching climate-neutrality will become clearer by the end of
the year, when all members submit their long-term plans — and calculate what
the goal might mean in practice.
The
proposed law would also hand Brussels some new abilities to make sure that
emissions cuts are on track for the 2050 target. It proposes giving the
Commission powers to ram through tougher emissions cuts every five years after
2030, by making increases difficult for countries and the Parliament to block.
But many national politicians won't like the idea.
Greens MEP
Bas Eickhout told Dutch media the Commission's move wasn't smart, likely
triggering a grueling "battle between the institutions."
The
Commission also plans to review EU-wide and country progress every five years
from 2023 — another measure aimed at keeping the EU on track even if capitals
set different long-term goals.
The
Commission's climate law for now postpones the debate on how to apportion
future emissions cuts across sectors — ranging from transport to agriculture
and energy — and countries. But, it will eventually have to face it.
2. Dodging
a tougher 2030 emissions cut
Turns out
getting the EU to sign off on climate-neutrality by 2050 was the easy part.
The real
fight will be about increasing the bloc’s current goal of cutting emissions by
40 percent by 2030 — a step that's
crucial to hitting the 2050 target, but which the law dodges for now.
Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen and her Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans
pledged to increase the target to 50 percent, if not 55 percent. But going that
far has major political implications.
The
European Parliament wants nothing less than 55 percent, and some political
groups want much more — however, the European People’s Party, the Parliament’s
biggest group, only warily backed it in January, and with conditions.
EU
countries are split. A group of western and northern members such as Finland
and the Netherlands support a 55 percent cut, but coal-reliant countries are
resisting over concerns it would hit jobs and competitiveness.
Brussels is
treading carefully. It's aware that attempts to push a higher 2030 goal past EU
members without their full backing bear major political risks.
Commission
officials aim to model what higher targets mean in practice by September. A review
of existing renewable, energy efficiency and national emissions targets would
happen by June 2021.
The fight is over who foots the bill — and who'll
benefit.
There's
already anger over any delay. An alliance of 12 largely northern and western
countries on Tuesday called on the Commission to come out with its 2030
proposal by "June at the latest."
3. Cash
clash
Going green
will require enormous investment. The fight is over who foots the bill — and
who'll benefit.
Wealthy
nations such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark are pushing hard for higher
climate goals. But at the same time they're balking at boosting their
contribution under the EU's next seven-year budget — which infuriated poorer
nations and led to last month's EU budget summit failure.
Member
countries are already brawling over the €7.5 billion proposed under the Just
Transition Fund (JTF), the Commission initiative that would help carbon-heavy
regions go green, and that would most benefit Poland, Germany, Romania and the
Czech Republic.
France and
the Netherlands want to tie fund allocation to the 2050 climate-neutrality
goal, an idea European Council President Charles Michel partially backed in his
failed budget bid. Poland, which could lose half of its promised JTF
allocation, is resisting, and it's unclear if the proposal will endure.
Another
complaint — spearheaded by Spain — is that the fund rewards coal-reliant
nations such as Poland and Germany over countries that went green earlier.
4. Sucking
up extra emissions
Going
climate-neutral by 2050 won’t be possible without absorbing emissions that
simply can’t get cut.
"The
Union should aim to achieve a balance between anthropogenic economy-wide
emissions and removals, through natural and technological solutions, of
greenhouse gases domestically within the Union by 2050," the climate law
draft says.
The draft
also includes a provision calling for removing more emissions than are emitted
after 2050, but that measure is likely to be dropped from the final version of
the bill, according to two Commission officials.
That shows
the deep divisions on how to go about removing carbon.
EU
officials are increasingly hyping forests to suck up excess emissions, which
could help clean up sectors such as construction by promoting wood as a
building material, and replace coal and other fossil fuels. But environmental
campaigners worry that could threaten forests and biodiversity, undercutting
the potential of trees to absorb emissions by burning them instead.
Technological
solutions such as carbon capture and storage, or more esoteric options like
direct air capture also raise concerns. Critics say they're costly, untested
and could undermine efforts to squeeze fossil fuels from the energy mix.
5. EU vs.
the world
There is
also a diplomatic dimension to going climate-neutral — something the bloc hopes
to tout at the COP26 climate talks.
"Making Europe climate-neutral by 2050 is good,
not just for Europe, but for the world" — EU competition chief Margrethe
Vestager
The EU
wants to convince economic rivals and top polluters China and the U.S., as well
as other big emitters, that slashing emissions to net zero by 2050 makes
economic sense — as well as helping stem worsening climate change.
"It’s
not going to be military power that is going to make us leaders in the world,
it’s the attractiveness and the success of our society that make us leaders in
the world,” Timmermans said in February.
The
challenge will be ramping up EU policy to fight climate change without
unleashing global retaliation, something the EU risks with its proposed carbon
border tax to shield European companies from competitors able to produce in
laxer jurisdictions.
"Making
Europe climate-neutral by 2050 is good, not just for Europe, but for the world.
And European businesses that work hard to cut emissions shouldn’t be undercut
by others abroad, who aren’t doing their bit," said competition chief
Margrethe Vestager in a speech earlier this week
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