EU leaders don’t plan to discuss whether to alter the bloc’s 2030 climate goals at a Mar. 17-18 Council summit, which will focus on migration, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing two anonymous sources.
A draft agenda for the EU summit doesn’t currently include climate, a Council spokeswoman told Bloomberg.
Officials meet on Wednesday to prepare a written statement to be agreed at the talks and it’s still an open question whether it will include the issue, the sources said.
The issue could be pushed to a later meeting of the Council, which sits at least four times a year.
Read Carbon Pulse’s analysis on why EU leaders are unlikely to budge on the 2030 goal
FACTFILE
- Environment ministers from Germany and several other EU states have called for the bloc to deepen the EU’s 2030 goals in response to the Paris Agreement, but plenty of their counterparts said the current targets were adequate.
- Commission officials have been briefing lawmakers that the EU’s 2030 GHG target could not easily be altered to fit deeper global aspirations, despite being aware that its proposed reforms to the EU ETS won’t keep pace with current UN obligations regarding worldwide temperature limits.
- A deeper overall EU target would drastically lower the cap of the EU ETS, which regulates just under half of the bloc’s greenhouse gas output.
By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com
Not yet signed up to CP Daily? Subscribe to our free newsletter here
