Postponement of 2040 climate targets could affect the EU's ability to act at the climate summit

On Friday, the EU countries gave up on agreeing on a new 2040 climate target for the EU in September. The Danish EU presidency has been pushing for this.

Now it is an open question whether the EU will also miss an important deadline for the upcoming climate summit in Brazil in November. It is about the target that the EU must submit to the UN before the climate summit.

The EU should have actually submitted a 2035 climate target to the UN back in February. The 2035 climate target is the EU's message to the climate summit. In other words, it should be used to show the rest of the world how much the EU is doing to meet the climate goals from the Paris Agreement.

A task that the EU is increasingly alone with, after Donald Trump has announced the US has withdrawn from the climate fight and large countries such as China and India continue to use fossil energy on a large scale.

Missed deadline

However, the EU missed the February deadline because the EU Commission had not presented its proposal so that the EU countries could reach an agreement. The EU was therefore given a new UN deadline, which expires in September.

That was one of the reasons why the Danish EU presidency tried to get a clarification on the EU's 2040 target at next week's ministerial meeting in Brussels.

Based on the 2040 target, it would be easier to get an ambitious 2035 target agreed upon among the EU countries prior to the climate summit, was the Danish hope.

However, on Friday it became clear that the EU's two largest countries, Germany and France, were not ready to make a decision already at the ministerial meeting in September.

Therefore, Denmark had to give up and let the 2040 climate target go forward to a later EU summit.

It is now an open question whether the EU will be able to agree on the 2035 target at the ministerial meeting next week. If this does not happen, it could mean that the EU misses a new UN deadline before the climate summit.

The timetable for the 2035 target will now be clarified at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Tuesday next week:

- It remains the Danish presidency's goal for the Council to reach agreement on the European climate law and the NDC (2035 climate target, ed.) before the end of the year, according to a statement from the Danish EU presidency.

Can damage climate credibility

The situation risks damaging the EU's climate credibility on the global stage, believes Linda Kalcher, CEO of the European think tank Strategic Perspectives.

She points out that the EU Commission has already made a number of the world's poorer countries shake their heads when the EU in August entered into a trade agreement with US President Donald Trump.

In order to get the agreement done, the EU Commission agreed to buy fossil energy for 750 billion euros in the US.

This does not harmonize well with the statements of EU leaders that the world's countries must quickly switch to using clean, renewable energy, according to Linda Kalcher.

However, the EU Commission defends the agreement by saying that the EU will in any case continue to be dependent on fossil energy until the green transition is completed.

But the agreement with Trump makes other countries doubt the EU's seriousness when it comes to the climate fight, believes Linda Kalcher.

- There is a risk that the Europeans at the climate summit will appear hypocritical.

- And this will only be reinforced if the EU does not manage to agree on a strong NDC (the 2035 climate target, which must be reported to the UN, ed.), says Linda Kalcher.

/ritzau/