Climate: The Twenty-Seven are content with a minimal compromise for 2035

A minimal agreement. European countries approved a compromise on Thursday, September 18, on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, so as not to arrive empty-handed at the UN General Assembly next week and at COP30 in Brazil in November.

Failing to reach a decision, the Twenty-Seven approved in Brussels a range for reducing their emissions, between -66.25% and -72.5% compared to 1990, and which will be refined if they reach an agreement in the coming weeks or months.

Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union , put this compromise on the table to show that Europe has not given up its environmental "leadership" , despite the differences between states.

There was urgency. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to defend Europe's climate ambitions next Wednesday in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. And COP30, the UN's major climate conference, kicks off on November 10 in Brazil.

But the document approved Thursday after tough negotiations between environment ministers is only a "declaration of intent" and not a firm commitment.

It's a "non-decision," criticizes centrist MEP Pascal Canfin . It's "far from ideal," but "it's the best option" at this stage, tempers Elisa Giannelli of the E3G think tank. This "allows the European Union to save face at the international level."

Europeans are content with this because they cannot agree on their climate target for 2040.

European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra wants to be reassuring. "I am convinced" that Europeans will manage "to resolve the 2040 issue before Belém," he said. "Ultimately, we will continue to be either the most ambitious, or among the most ambitious" on climate issues, he insisted.

Shaken by the rise of the far right in the June 2024 European elections, the EU is much less proactive on environmental issues than during the previous term. Ecology is struggling to find a place on the agenda in a tense geopolitical context.

And the deadlock persists over the European Commission's proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 compared to 1990. Denmark, Sweden, and Spain are pushing for it, but countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic are against it in the name of protecting their industries, and France remains cautious.

The Commission made a gesture in early July, proposing flexibility in the calculation method: the possibility of acquiring international carbon credits, up to 3% of the total, which would finance projects outside Europe. But this concession was not enough.

Last week, France and Germany angered environmental organizations by calling for a discussion between heads of state and government as the first item on the agenda for the European summit in Brussels on October 23.

Before deciding on 2040, France is demanding guarantees on financing the decarbonization of industry and "more ambitious commercial" measures to support European steel. Paris is criticizing the Commission's method, which linked the 2035 and 2040 deadlines, when the UN demanded in February that the signatory countries of the Paris Agreement publish their decarbonization commitments for 2035 (the "nationally determined contributions," or NDCs in UN jargon).

By stalling, France and Germany are also trying to protect their public opinion, while the extreme right, which opposes Brussels ' "punitive ecology" , is making ever greater progress.

At the United Nations, there are concerns that the EU is losing the leadership it once had on environmental issues. Far behind China, the European Union is the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after the United States and India.