EU Parliament Votes To Raise 2030 Climate Target To 60%

The European Parliament has voted to raise the EU’s emissions reduction target for 2030 from 40% to 60%, higher than the European Commission’s proposed 55%.

“This is a huge success for the climate,” said Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout, vice-chair of the parliament’s environment committee which called for a 60% target last month. “This vote shows that the European Parliament is listening to the science and the Fridays for Future movement.”

The 60% goal passed by a vote of 352 to 326, surviving opposition from the right. Most members of the parliament’s largest bloc, the center-right European Peoples Party (EPP)
EPP
, voted against, as did the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Identity and Democracy group. The second-largest bloc, the center-left Party of European Socialists, voted for it along with the far-left GUE group and the Greens.

The EPP, Europe’s most powerful political bloc which counts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as members, says it fears the raised target when no other large economy is taking equivalent action could result in a lack of competitiveness.

“Going beyond net 55% emission cuts will really put many jobs in danger”, said German MEP Peter Liese, the EPP’s environment spokesman. “A 60% target or even higher targets that are supported by the Greens or Socialists are really going too far.”

“It is very clear that all major economies have to do more to avoid dangerous climate change but the 55% will by far be the most ambitious contribution of any major economy in the world. From 1990 to now, we have reduced emissions by 25 percent, while all other major economies have increased their emissions.”

Data released last week found that even the 55% target would require a near-complete phase-out of coal in the next 10 years, something that goes beyond the existing phase-out timelines of Germany and Poland. The Commission disputes this analysis, saying the 55% target would only require a 70% decrease of coal by 2030.

The new target still needs to be approved by a majority vote of EU national governments, which gave their assent to the existing 40% target in 2014. At the moment, there isn’t a majority for the 60% target. EU prime ministers and presidents are set to discuss the 2030 proposal at a summit in Brussels next week, and vote in December.

Poland is leading a bloc of Eastern European countries dead set against raising the existing 40% target at all. Germany, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council and will be coordinating discussions on this file over the coming months, has not been enthusiastic about raising the target.

“The German Council Presidency should swiftly bring the Council’s position to the table so that the negotiations can be concluded as soon as possible,” said Eickhout. “The EU must seize the opportunity to be a global leader at the next UN COP climate summit in Glasgow.” That summit has been postponed to November 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking to the European Parliament yesterday, the Commission’s vice president for the green deal Frans Timmermans said the EU executive’s proposal for 55% wasn’t plucked out of thin air and was made on the basis of a thorough impact assessment of what is achievable.

““I know this proposal goes too far for some and for others not far enough,” he said. “But the target is ambitious”.

Climate campaigners disagree. And they have applauded the European Parliament not only for raising the target, but also for removing provisions of the Commission’s proposal that would have made it easier to meet.

“MEPs have shown the Commission’s proposal was too low and the ‘net’ part unclear,” says Imke Lübbeke from campaign group WWF. “However, they didn’t go far enough, and we cannot settle for second best when it comes to climate action. Yesterday’s 60% result needs to be taken up by Member States so we can take real steps towards a green economic recovery and a planet that thrives.”

In a rebuke to Poland, the European Parliament also voted in favour of each member state reaching climate neutrality individually by 2050. Right now the goal of completely decarbonising down to net zero by 2050 has been set at EU level, allowing Poland to get out of meeting it nationally.