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Climate Change

3. EU´s response

The EU has been taking serious steps to address its own greenhouse gas emissions since the early 1990s. Since the late 1990s, the EU has played a global leadership role in the fight against climate change. Statistics show that currently the EU is struggling to meet the climate change targets it has committed to.

In the context of the Kyoto Protocol, the EU-15 is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below "base year" 1990 levels before 2012. Through an internal EU agreement some EU member states are allowed increases in emissions, while others should decrease emissions. Most new member states have targets of – 6 to – 8 % from their base years (mostly 1990).

In June 2000, the Commission launched the first European Climate Change Programme to identify and develop all the necessary elements of an EU strategy to implement the Kyoto Protocol. The second European Climate Change Programme (ECCP II) was launched in October 2005.

The ECCP has led to the adoption of a wide range of new policies and measures. These include legislation to tackle emissions of fluorinated greenhouse gases and the pioneering EU Emissions Trading System, which has become the cornerstone of EU efforts to reduce emissions cost effectively. It is the first international trading system for CO2 emissions in the world. It covers over 11 500 energy-intensive installations across the EU, which represent close to half of Europe’s emissions of CO2. These installations include combustion plants, oil refineries, coke ovens, iron and steel plants, and factories making cement, glass, lime, brick, ceramics, pulp and paper.

Monitoring data and projections of the Commission indicate that the 15 countries that were EU members at the time of the EU's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 are “on track” to reach their Kyoto Protocol target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. However, further progress requires that the EU member states keep accelerating their efforts to limit or reduce emissions.

In January 2007, as part of an integrated climate change and energy policy, the European Commission set out proposals and options for an ambitious global agreement in its Communication "Limiting Global Climate Change to 2 degrees Celsius: The way ahead for 2020 and beyond".

EU leaders endorsed this vision in March 2007. They committed the EU to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% of 1990 levels by 2020, provided other developed countries commit to making comparable reductions under a global agreement. In order to start transforming Europe into a highly energy-efficient, low-carbon economy, EU leaders committed to cutting emissions by at least 20% independently of what other countries decide to do.

To underpin these commitments, EU leaders set three key targets to be met by 2020: a 20% reduction in energy consumption compared with projected trends; an increase to 20% of renewable energies' share of total energy consumption; and an increase to 10% in the share of petrol and diesel consumption from sustainably-produced biofuels.

In January 2008, the Commission proposed a major package of climate and energy-related legislative proposals to implement these commitments and targets. The proposals are now being discussed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. It is hoped that agreement will be reached on the package before the end of 2008. The 10% biofuels target of the EU was seen as increasingly controversial in 2008, as concerns grew about hiking food prices and environmental degradation, particularly in the developing world. 

In June 2009, the European Council agreed that all developed countries should help fund the fight against climate change in the world’s poorest countries.

In early September 2009, the Commission said it would channel up to €24 billion annually to developing countries. Within days, this figure was scaled back to between €2 and €15 billion. According to the Commission report, most “long term low cost efficiency measures… should be financed domestically” so just “10 to 20%, would need to be funded by international public support by 2020”.

In response, Greenpeace said the EU was “trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet’s climate”. Some African nations have threatened to veto any penny-pinching deals put forward at the UN Copenhagen summit in December 2009.

The draft EU plan says developing countries will need €100 billion per year by 2020 to meet their climate change commitments. Commissioner Dimas added, however, that the EU “will not and cannot bankroll the negotiations alone”.