The EU heads to the COP30 climate summit with watered-down goals and dwindling green consensus.
BRUSSELS — For six years, the European Union’s efforts to fight climate change have been on an upward swing. That came to an end on Wednesday morning in messy, exhausted scenes.
After a marathon meeting that ran through Tuesday night and eventually ended a little after 9 a.m. the next morning, a majority of the bloc’s 27 governments agreed on new targets to cut pollution — but only by weakening existing laws and slowing domestic efforts designed to cut down on that very same pollution.
The compromise was met with relief by many countries and European Commission officials, who had feared an embarrassing collapse that would have hamstrung the EU on the eve of the COP30 U.N. climate talks in Brazil starting Thursday.
But it also underscored a swing in political momentum. After half a decade of green victories on climate policy, a much more skeptical group of countries and parties now has the upper hand.
In an interview just after the talks ended, the Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra hailed the EU’s continuing “leadership role” on climate issues.
But the commissioner was candid about the political and economic realities — high energy costs, the rise of right-wing populists and declining industrial confidence — that had strengthened critics of the green agenda.
The EU was “staying the course” on fighting climate change, he told POLITICO, but added “it would be foolish to use the recipe of the past. We’re facing massive change, so we need to adapt to that change.”
Ministers also agreed on a target for 2035 — a requirement under the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement that was due to be delivered earlier this year in advance of the COP30 talks. The ministers were unable to agree to a single number, instead promising a nonbinding cut between 66.25 and 72.5 percent.
The final deal on the binding 2040 goal came up short of the 90 percent cut in domestic pollution below 1990 levels, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had made the key green pledge in her reelection campaign.
Instead, ministers on Wednesday agreed an 85 percent cut in domestic emissions by 2040. Governments intend to achieve the remaining 5 percentage points by paying other countries to reduce pollution on the bloc’s behalf, a system of purchases known as carbon credits.
The deal also opened the door to outsourcing additional efforts as part of a wide-ranging revision clause that will see the Commission tasked with considering amending the target every five years depending on factors such as energy prices or economic troubles.
“Embarrassing and short sighted,” was the assessment of Diederik Samsom, the former top-ranking Commission official who was a primary architect of the European Green Deal policy package during von der Leyen’s first mandate — though he said it was unlikely the carbon credits would be used as they would cost just as much as cutting emissions at home, but without the added benefits of investment and innovation.
“The Green Deal still holds, since its rationale is largely economic … but the lack of political courage amongst European ministers is worrying,” said Samsom, who also served as Hoekstra’s chief of staff for a few months.
These major gifts to countries like France, which had pushed for the credit system, were still not enough to strike a deal on Wednesday. Italy, supported by Poland and Romania, led a blocking minority that refused to budge until they were granted key concessions on existing climate laws.
To win them over, ministers also agreed to delay by one year the rollout of the EU’s carbon pricing system for heating and fuel emissions, known as ETS2. And they asked to extend the use of biofuels and other low-carbon fuels in transport in the future, which could weaken the agreed 2035 ban on new combustion-engine cars.
Watering down existing tools for cutting emissions in order to land a deal on a future target created a challenge all of its own, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank. “The target is very ambitious, and we need all tools to deliver on it. Dilemma is how to get there.”
Those tweaks came on top of concessions already granted in technical talks over the past few weeks, which include permitting heavy industry to pollute more and revising the target downward if the EU’s forests absorb less carbon dioxide than expected.
“Instead of climate protection, the ministers end up with political self-deception,” said Michael Bloss, a Greens MEP from Germany.
Poland was one of the key holdouts and ultimately refused to vote in favor of the target even though it was granted a delay in the ETS2, which Secretary of State for Climate Krzysztof Bolesta said “was one of our main demands.”
Poland was accused of holding hostage the 2035 climate target, which needed unanimous support, over the delay on ETS2, said three diplomats involved in the negotiations. A Polish official said any discussions on the 2035 goal and the postponement of the ETS2 were part of a “package deal” sought by several countries. These officials were granted anonymity to disclose the details of the talks.
But even with that concession, the target was still the lowest level of ambition. “We were forced to accept the lower end of the range to prevent certain countries from blocking this agreement,” said Monique Barbut, the French environment minister.
But that shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign the EU is no longer a global climate leader, according to Barbut. “We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
Hoekstra framed the deal as a new phase of pragmatic climate policymaking that incorporated the views of traditionally resistant countries, rather than sidelining them.
He argued the past approach had failed to protect the bloc from industrial decline and dependence on countries such as China.
“In the past, we have been gambling with our independence and our competitiveness in a way that, frankly speaking, we should not have,” Hoekstra said.