After a long night that finished around 5am, negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states reached an agreement on the European Climate Law that will enshrine the EU’s commitment to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
As expected, the 2030 target was the big political fight of the night, but parties reached an agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by “at least 55%” by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. That objective will therefore also become a legal obligation for the EU and its member states.
While the 55% target is lower than the 60% that Parliament had earlier voted for, EU member states made a concession to MEPs by agreeing to cap the contribution of carbon removals from land use, agriculture and forestry.
In addition, the European Commission agreed to consider increasing the contribution of carbon sinks in order to bump up the EU’s climate ambition to 57%, although this is not written in the law.
Bowing to Parliament’s demands, EU negotiators also decided to establish an independent scientific advisory body, the European Scientific Advisory Board, to advise policymakers on the alignment of EU policies with the bloc’s climate neutrality goal.
The new body will consist of 15 members from across Europe, each nominated for a four-year mandate. It will provide scientific advice and report on existing and proposed policy measures and targets as well as greenhouse gas budgets. The European Environment Agency will act as its secretariat.
“We raised the ambition of the 2030 net target to almost 57%, we got the GHG-budget and the Advisory board. We wanted more, but this is a good first step towards climate neutrality,” said Jytte Guteland, the Parliament’s lead negotiator.
As a result, the EU’s 2030 target translates into a “gross” reduction of 52.8% without carbon removals from agriculture and forestry.
The inclusion of “carbon sinks” into the EU’s climate goal caused jitters among the Greens who denounced the move as an “accounting trick” to meet the 55% goal for 2030.
“By failing to establish a serious climate target without accounting tricks in the European Climate Law, the Green Deal fails to live up to the big speeches of the Ursula von der Leyen Commission,” said Michael Bloss, the lead negotiator for the Greens in the European Parliament.
The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which backed the “net” target for 2030, was more positive: “A 55% net target for 2030 is very ambitious,” said German Christian Democrat MEP Peter Liese, who on Twitter hailed what he described as an “historical agreement”.