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EU risks being sidelined in Paris climate pact

Internal politics threaten to create difficulties in ratifying the agreement.

Top EU officials are growing worried that the bloc’s inability to quickly ratify the Paris climate agreement will sideline European countries as the treaty goes into effect.

European officials are in New York to sign the agreement struck last December by 196 governments. It becomes binding 30 days after being ratified by at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions — something U.N. officials think might happen by 2018.

The problem for the EU is that corralling all 28 countries into ratifying the agreement is difficult because there are deep divisions within the bloc over the EU’s internal climate targets for cutting emissions and how these should be distributed among countries.

Until those differences are resolved, many EU members won’t want to ratify the Paris agreement. But if non-EU countries move more quickly, the agreement could hit the 55-country threshold without the EU, leaving the bloc merely an observer when the treaty enters into force.

“The EU will not be allowed to participate in initial decision-making” over rules and procedures to implement the agreement, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs wrote this week.

That would be embarrassing for the EU, which has long prided itself in helping impose an ambitious climate agenda on more reluctant countries. Brussels is aware of the danger and is trying to hurry member countries along.

Internal divisions

“It will not be understandable … that we are not in when the treaty of Paris enters into force. The European Union must live up to [its] level of ambition,” Miguel Arias Cañete, the bloc’s climate action and energy commissioner, told POLITICO.

The Commission will do its “utmost” to swiftly ratify the deal in order to show that “we are very serious about our commitments,” Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission vice president in charge of the energy union, said this week.

But that’s going to require some delicate diplomacy.

EU countries have signaled they don’t want to start ratifying the deal before they know their national emission reduction targets in sectors such as agriculture, buildings, waste and transport. These are areas not covered by the EU’s Emissions Trading System, and Brussels wants emissions cut by a total of 30 percent across the bloc by 2030 in those sectors.

“Some member states at the moment send the message that they cannot start the ratification process until they know the national target,” said Arias Cañete.

For that reason, the Commission plans to present a proposal on how to ratify the deal alongside its suggested apportioning of emission cuts before the summer break. EU leaders in 2014 agreed on the basic rules that would govern emissions cuts, with national targets ranging from reductions of zero to 40 percent. While higher income countries will have to do more, poorer countries also won’t get off the hook.

Countries are keen to shield their industries from tough commitments, be that agriculture in Ireland, or wood and paper in countries like Finland. Coal-reliant Poland has long tried to protect its country from painful emissions cuts, arguing that the country is too poor to match reductions being made by wealthier West European countries.

Until now, Poland has been able to coast on emissions reductions that were a result of its transformation away from communism after 1989, which shuttered many polluting smokestack industries. Under the targets, Poland will now also have to impose actual cuts, causing political problems for the country’s right-wing government.

Even poorer Bulgaria wouldn’t face actual cuts, but would not be allowed to pollute more, which also creates difficulties.

Who goes first?

Countries don’t want to make a move unless they see their neighbors are also feeling the pain. “The effort-sharing decision is unbelievably difficult, because everybody agrees the target, but only if the neighbor fulfills the target,” Arias Cañete said earlier this year.

Arias Cañete has talked to 19 of 28 EU countries so far. Their message: keep targets as low as possible. “Things are hard. In only one of the 19 member states I saw more ambition than the levels the Commission was proposing,” he told MEPs. “In the rest, huge discussion on the difficulties the member states have to implement the targets.”

The EU has an overall target for 2030 of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent, but environmentalists want more.

Campaigners say the bloc’s target is not enough to meet the Paris deal’s goal of keeping the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2 degrees” and to pursue efforts to keep it at no more than 1.5 degrees. They say the current target is in line with global warming of 2-2.4 degrees Celsius.

“Europe’s 2030 legislative agenda risks locking-in insufficient ambition, and thereby undermining the integrity of Europe’s climate policies,” said a statement by the Coalition for Higher Ambition, a grouping of businesses, unions, local governments and NGOs.

There is also pressure from countries like Germany, which have made hugely expensive commitments to green energy, to get the EU to push for even more ambitious targets.

During a meeting of EU environment ministers in early March, Germany and Austria expressed their disappointment with what they say is a lack of ambition by the Commission to go beyond the EU’s 2030 emission reduction target after Paris. Luxembourg and Portugal also called for tougher emissions cuts.

But some of that determination fades when delegations are no longer in front of the cameras.

“There are some people that are very ambitious in the Council meeting room, but when you come there, saying ‘well that’s the time to show the ambition,’ then things are not so clear,” said Arias Cañete. Meanwhile countries from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Italy and Ireland, for instance, are against tougher cuts.

As pressure grows on the EU, some insiders are confident that the bloc will manage to get its internal politics ordered in time to be in the first wave of ratifying countries.

The prospect of the EU not making it in time “would be rather improbable — it should come to a decision in the course of 2017, and with that the ratification would also be dealt with,” an EU official said.

Sara Stefanini and Anca Gurzu contributed reporting.

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