Setting the bloc's climate target for 2040 as well as agreeing additional environmental and climate laws is a "challenge" for the six-month Polish EU presidency, Poland's environment minister Paulina Henning-Kloska said, as there is "no unified position".
Speaking to the European Parliament's environment committee, Henning-Kloska, who chairs meetings of both environment and energy ministers, made clear that member state adoption of the bloc's 2040 target for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be difficult.
"We had a discussion on this in the council [of ministers] last December," she said. "What is clear is that there is no unified position," she added, as some member states wants greater flexibility in reducing emissions between 2030 and 2050.
Difficult discussions between EU states and in the European parliament will likely push the submission of the bloc's nationally determined contribution (NDC) — climate plan — to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) beyond the 10 February deadline.
The European Climate Law requires the European Commission to propose a 2040 climate target "at the latest within six months of the first global stocktake". The global stocktake was completed during the UN Cop 28 climate summit in Dubai, in 2023. It gauged countries' progress against the Paris Agreement and proposed measures to keep to its goals — including keeping warming preferably below 1.5°C.
EU officials note that the 2040 target will "inform" the decision on the EU's next NDC.
Even if the EU's NDC submission does not require a separate law, officials also "expect" to receive a political mandate from member states before the NDC submission by the European Commission and the EU's presidency, led by Poland until the end of June.
Despite the threat to a speedy timeline, the commission maintains it will continue to be a "leading" voice for international climate action and aims to submit the EU's next NDC "well ahead" of the Cop 30 climate talks in Belem, Brazil in November.
But German member Peter Liese thinks the EU is in "deadlock" on its 2040 target. "We may like it or not, it's very ambitious," he said. "And I don't see enough support for that target."
A member of parliament's largest centre-right EPP group, Liese also picked up on Polish prime minister Donald Tusk's and Henning-Kloska's call for changes or delay to the bloc's specific emissions trading system for road transport and heating fuels (ETS2).
"I don't see — without the ETS2 — member states have any plan to get to their target," said Liese, who has previously helped draft legislative revisions to the ETS. "I don't think abolishing is a solution. Postponement is also [not] the best solution," Liese said.
