The great legislative package to decarbonize the European Union has stalled this Wednesday in the European Parliament, unable to agree on a position to negotiate with the European Commission and the Council the reform of the CO2 emissions market, one of the pillars of climate transformation of the EU.
An amendment introduced at the last minute by the European People’s Party, supported by liberals and eurosceptics, has led Social Democrats and Greens to vote against the text in its entirety and overthrow the joint position of the European Parliament, against which the extreme right and the left.
What should have been the starting signal to make the most important climate legislation in the history of the European Union a reality has ended in a parliamentary uproar, fuss and crossed accusations in the hemicycle of the European Parliament, meeting in plenary session at its French headquarters in Strasbourg .
After noon this Wednesday, the plenary session began to vote on 8 of the 14 proposals of the Fit for 55 package so that in 2030 the EU reduces its emissions by 55% compared to 1990 and achieves climate neutrality in 2050. It is a an essential step to negotiate the final law with the Commission and Council.
Some of these votes were expected to be tight, but not the future reform of the so-called ETS system, which puts a price on the carbon dioxide emitted by some 11,000 energy-intensive industrial plants and which since 2005 has been the cornerstone of EU climate policy. .
The text had previously been agreed upon in a parliamentary committee, a circumstance that is usually respected, and had been debated the day before in the hemicycle.
But an amendment introduced by the European People’s Party to delay the date of disappearance of free CO2 permits has caused the text to fall, which in turn has dragged other regulations intrinsically related to the ETS.
The ETS system contemplates a series of permits that exempt industries from paying for the tons of carbon dioxide emitted so that they have time to invest in clean technologies while maintaining their competitiveness.
The text, previously agreed upon in the parliamentary committee on the Environment, provided for the end of these permits in 2030, but the amendment pushed that date until 2034.
This has motivated the greens and the social democrats -with fifteen exceptions such as the Spaniards Clara Aguilera and Jonás Fernández- to vote against, which has brought down the document.
“The European People’s Party lowers the agreement with the help of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ERC) and Identity and Democracy (ID). In the end, we and the Social Democrats do not accept that the proposal is weakened. ERC and ID continue to vote against it, so there is no majority,” Dutch environmentalist MEP Bas Eickhout summarized on Twitter, who has made the EPP ugly by agreeing with eurosceptics and the extreme right.
The text will have to be debated again in the parliamentary committee on the Environment, to eventually submit to a new vote in plenary session.
The Council of the EU, an institution that represents the Member States, plans to set the negotiating position of the countries in the councils of Ministers of Energy and the Environment that will be held in Luxembourg at the end of June, so the parliamentary trigger can delay the start of negotiations, scheduled for the second half of 2022.
By postponing the approval process of the European Parliament’s position on the ETS system, the voting on other proposals closely related to this CO2 market was also postponed.
Thus, the vote on the future Border Carbon Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) was delayed to protect certain European industries from lower environmental standards in third countries and the Social Climate Fund, which planned to use part of the CO2 revenue to help to vulnerable households in the energy transition.
The parliamentary traffic jam contrasts with the urgency with which European legislators have acted in the climate field in the current legislature. Added to the ambition of the Fit for 55 to emit less CO2 and transform the productive fabric of the EU is the new Repower EU initiative, which has been designed on the basis of recent energy and geopolitical turmoil and aims for the EU to cut its dependence on Russian gas by 66% in one year.
“The war has only accentuated the importance of making this transition a reality as soon as possible,” the vice president of the Commission for the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, had said in the debate prior to the vote.
