Long-term trouble
The battle over the EU’s NDC is closely linked to the bloc’s overarching climate target for 2040, proposed by the Commission in July. Discussion on that target was put on hold after France and Germany joined Poland, Italy and a handful of other countries to form a blocking minority and postponed the discussion until national leaders meet in late October.
The postponement also derailed the planned approval of the 2035 goal, as the Commission and Denmark had planned for the NDC figure to be derived from the new 2040 target.
The statement of intent agreed Thursday is intended as a face-saving compromise that will allow EU leaders to arrive at next week’s New York meeting with something to present. The U.N. has set up the meeting specifically for leaders to announce new targets, and the EU’s leaders were not included on a provisional list published before Thursday’s agreement.
To deliver a 2035 plan ahead of the November climate conference, the EU’s 27 national governments will now have to decide whether to aim for a hard target or the wide range included in the statement of intent.
Several governments skeptical of the 2040 legislation, such as Slovakia, are opposed to the higher end of the range, as it refers to the halfway point between the EU’s existing 2030 goal and the proposed new target. Countries favoring a more ambitious plan — such as Spain and Germany — considered the lower bound of the target range unacceptably weak.
Hoekstra on Thursday indicated that he would be comfortable with either a specific figure or a range as the formal target.
“I’m not religious about [either] of the two. I think the two could work,” he said. “What we will push for is something that is truly ambitious.”
Aagaard said Denmark would organize an ad-hoc summit to approve the 2035 plan after the leaders have had their say.