EU must urgently strengthen climate action: MEPs

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have adopted — in an overwhelming majority vote — a resolution to step up the EU's work to tackle climate change.

The resolution, adopted by MEPs on 15 September, is not legally binding but it could indicate future voting direction. There were 469 votes in favour, just 34 against and 44 abstentions.

"Extreme weather conditions are a sign of the need for more ambitious action on climate change mitigation and adaptation… the EU should play a leading role in this process and reinforce its efforts in all sectors," the bloc's parliament said.

MEPs called for the EU to scale up efforts on climate mitigation, to limit global warming to a 1.5°C rise, as well as focus on adaptation. The European Commission should propose a "comprehensive, ambitious and legally binding European climate adaptation framework, with particular emphasis on the EU's most vulnerable regions," MEPs said. The bloc should also focus on its global role, ensuring international climate finance targets are met, they added.

The commission should run an EU-wide climate risk assessment and run a climate resilience "stress test" by summer next year, MEPs said. They focussed on forest fires and droughts, calling for a "permanent EU civil protection force", as well as for an expansion of the voluntary firefighting reserve.

MEPs recommended that member states form "buffer stocks of strategic feed and foodstuffs" and that they introduce irrigation systems that recycle wastewater or use rainwater storage, in a bid to reduce overall water use. And there should be an EU-wide target of land degradation neutrality by 2030, they said.

Parliament declared a climate emergency in November 2019. The EU has committed to reduce emissions by at least 55pc by 2030, from a 1990 baseline, and is working on the so-called 'Fit for 55' package to ensure it reaches this goal.

Votes in parliament this week on the revision of the bloc's Renewable Energy Directive coincided with an emergency package, presented as the EU seeks to rapidly move away from Russian fossil fuel imports.

By Georgia Gratton