Continued political uncertainty around the timeline for a decision on the EU's 2040 climate goal risks EU negotiators travelling without a 2035 target to the UN Cop 30 climate talks in Brazil in November, Green members of the European Parliament Lena Schilling and Michael Bloss said.
Having no 2040 targets means no 2035 climate target for the EU's nationally determined contribution (NDC) — a climate plan due to be submitted to the UN before the climate talks in Belem, Brazil, according to Schilling an Austrian Green member of parliament's environment committee.
"Governments are backtracking" she said. "France and Germany and other countries are pushing to get [the decision on a target]away from this [18 September] timeline."
Green MEP Bloss said that German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French president Emmanuel Macron are trying to avoid agreeing on a climate target. "Merz knows full well: anyone who subjects Europe's climate goals to the arbitrariness of Viktor Orban, is burying them," he said.
Schilling is a co-draftswoman for the EU parliament's legal report on the 2040 target, alongside the chief draftsperson Ondrej Knotek, a Czech member of the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) group.
Knotek is calling for the parliament to reject the commission's July legislative proposal for a legally binding EU-wide target which would see the bloc cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90pc GHG target for 2040, from 1990 levels.
The environment committee should now vote on the legal report and amendments on 24-25 September.
The EU parliament could then vote on the 2040 target on 7-9 October, if all goes well, an official noted.
Schilling indicated that the social democrats, liberals and parliament's largest centre-right EPP are negotiating a final committee text among themselves without Knotek and his far-right group.
Differences among EU states could shift the decision-making date for a 2040 GHG cut target from a meeting of EU climate and environment ministers on 18 September to the summit of EU leaders on 23-24 October.
This would bring the formal signing off by all EU states of the negotiating mandate for the bloc's NDC and its 2035 goal, itself dependent on the 2040 CO2 target, far closer to Cop 30 in November.
The change of date may also affect the voting method on the 2040 target and this could give single EU leaders, including Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, the chance to veto a proposal. And the NDC, unlike the 2040 target, should be decided by unanimity.
"It's important to have the NDC stuck together with the 2040 climate [goal] because it's the only chance we have a binding [2035 NDC] target," Schilling said. The deadline for NDC submissions to the UN is 23 September, she said. This is so plans can be counted in a report assessing Cop parties' collective progress.
