(Adds details on Delbeke’s upcoming book on EU climate policies)
Jos Delbeke, the European Commission’s top ranking climate official, is staying put amid a reshuffle of senior management at the bloc’s executive.
Delbeke, a Belgian national who joined the Commission in 1986, will stay on as Director General (DG) for Climate Action at least through this year’s UN climate talks, which be held in Paris from the end of November.
Sources in Brussels had previously indicated he could be up for retirement this year.
Delbeke was appointed to the role in 2010, and has been instrumental in bringing in various changes and reforms to the EU ETS, while enhancing the bloc’s wider climate change policies.
Later in the year but ahead of the Paris talks, Delbeke will publish a book intended to explain the EU’s climate policies and the effects they have had, other EU sources said.
The book will focus on three or four policies that Delbeke feels have been the most successful and can serve as potential examples to other parts of the world.
The first section will be on the EU ETS, which has been maligned by critics for its low prices but touted by EU officials because it has integrated the concept of CO2 pricing into key board-level decisions at major EU companies.
Other sections are to focus on renewables, energy efficiency and measures to tackle emissions from cars.
COMMISSION RESHUFFLE
The Commission on Wednesday announced the appointment of current DG for Competition Alexander Italianer to Secretary-General (SG) following current SG Catherine Day’s decision to retire this September.
It also announced that 11 current DGs will move departments or take on “other important assignments”, while eight Deputy DGs will be promoted to DG roles.
This includes DG for Environment Karl Friedrich Falkenberg, who will from September become a Senior Adviser for Sustainable Development at the Commission’s in-house think-tank The European Political Strategy Centre.
Falkenberg will be replaced by current DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Daniel Calleja Crespo, the Commission said.
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