Over the past month, the EU’s budget plans have been held up by Poland and Hungary, who have protested against the bloc’s attempt to make access to funds contingent on the observance of democratic values and respect for the rule of law.

Warsaw and Budapest are believed to be the targets of this so-called rule of law mechanism, although a compromise was found in Brussels on Thursday evening, allowing the Polish and Hungarian governments to take the matter to the European Court of Justice further down the line, in exchange for their approval of the budget.

Along with the budget agreement, the European Union’s member states also came to a deal on ambitious new emissions targets as part of the bloc’s attempts to reach “climate neutrality” by 2050.

“After several hours of very intense discussions, we have taken a big step forward for the European Union in various areas,” European Council President Charles Michel said at a press conference on Friday.

Poland, Hungary Push for Rule of Law Postponement

For EU leaders, getting a consensus on the 1.074 trillion euro seven-year budget and 750 billion euro NextGenerationEU COVID-19 recovery fund was of paramount importance at the two-day summit. Polish and Hungarian leaders had refused to make concessions prior to Thursday’s meeting, meaning that a new tactic was required.

A solution appears to have been found by allowing Poland and Hungary to refer the bloc’s rule of law mechanism to the European Court of Justice, a process that is likely to take several years. In return, Hungary and Poland finally gave their consent to the budget and recovery fund proposals, which are set to come into force in 2021.

“We have had the capacity to reach an agreement, to get together in order to implement the multiannual financial framework and recovery fund that we talked about in July. I would like to pay tribute to Chancellor Angela Merkel on this topic, in particular, because she really rolled up her sleeves, she got down to work with a great deal of commitment to do this for Europe“, Michel said at a press conference.

According to the European Council president, the European Union will now be able to fund many of its ambitious plans to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

EU Increases Emissions Cut Targets

Climate change once again took centre stage in Brussels, and the heads of the 27 EU member states agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent of 1990 levels by 2030. The previous target envisioned a reduction of 40 percent by 2030.

“To meet the objective of a climate-neutral EU by 2050 in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the EU needs to increase its ambition for the coming decade and update its climate and energy policy framework. To that end, the European Council endorses a binding EU target of a net domestic reduction of at least 55% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990”, a European Council document published after the summit read.

Since becoming president of the European Commission one year ago, Ursula von der Leyen has pushed European Union member states to back her so-called Green Deal, although Jean-Louis Butre, from the French Federation for a Sustainable Environment, told Sputnik that meeting the ambitious emissions goals is likely to be difficult.

“Everybody knows that it is so much easier at the beginning of a specific effort to get results; it is called ‘picking the low-hanging fruit’. Governments, industries can adopt new rules, close evident loopholes, take easy measures that enabled, in our case, Europe to reduce its emissions or at least the expected growth of emissions by 20 percent in comparison with the level of emissions of 1990. But to do the extra 80 percent is a daunting task, and the decisions that are taken are often not bearing any result,” Butre commented.

According to the French expert, many of the bloc’s attempts at moving to sustainable sources of energy, such as wind or solar power, have in fact led to an increase in emissions.

“Deciding to invest massively and above all in intermittent ‘renewable’ sources of electricity like Germany or Denmark have done, increasing their solar and wind ‘farms’ has imposed the construction, in parallel, of the same capacity in coal and gas power plants to compensate for the absence or excess of wind and sun. The result is evident: Merkel’s Germany has increased its emissions of CO2 in place of reducing them. Not only does the German policy lead to negative growth of the economy and stagnation, but it does not reduce emissions of CO2”, Butre stated.

Turkey Sanctions Potentially Forthcoming

Turkey has been at the centre of many high-level European Union discussions this passing year. Greece and Cyprus have raised multiple complaints about the presence of Turkish seismic exploration vessels in waters both Athens and Nicosia claim to be part of their countries’ respective exclusive economic zones.

At this week’s European Council summit, the bloc stopped short of implementing sanctions on Ankara, although the leaders of the 27 member states noted Turkey’s “unilateral” actions in the eastern Mediterranean region.

“Regrettably, Turkey has engaged in unilateral actions and provocations and escalated its rhetoric against the EU, EU Member States and European leaders. Turkish unilateral and provocative activities in the Eastern Mediterranean are still taking place, including in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone”, the conclusions of the European Council summit read.

Despite the pressure from Athens and Nicosia, the European Union will first consult with the United States, most notably the incoming Biden administration, before taking action against Turkey.

“The EU will seek to coordinate on matters relating to Turkey and the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean with the United States”, the conclusions read.

Sunday Deadline for Brexit Deal

While the leaders of the European Union’s member states met for the European Council summit, UK and EU negotiators continued their talks in the hope of concluding a free trade deal before a self-imposed Sunday deadline.

“We will decide on Sunday whether we have the conditions for an agreement or not”, von der Leyen said at Friday’s joint press conference alongside Michel and Merkel.

The European Commission president had dinner with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday, although the meeting failed to resolve the long-standing issues on fisheries, governance, and the level playing field.

“We understand that the UK aspires to control its waters. The UK must, on the other hand, understand the legitimate expectations of EU fishing fleets built on decades and sometimes centuries of access”, the European Commission president remarked.

On Thursday, the European Commission published a range of contingency measures in preparation for a “no-deal” scenario.

The measures would ensure uninterrupted road and air connectivity between the United Kingdom and the European Union for a period of six months starting on 1 January, upon the conclusion of the Brexit transition period.

Euro Summit Notes EU’s “Strong” Response to COVID-19

The eurozone heads of state also held a meeting on Friday to discuss the bloc’s response to the coronavirus disease pandemic. In a statement, the leaders praised the EU’s “strong” response to the pandemic.

“The strong, swift and coordinated economic policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented but integral in mitigating its socio-economic impact. The crisis will require ongoing support to ensure a robust and well-balanced economic recovery while safeguarding sound public finances”, the statement read.

At the same time, the EU must create the “financial architecture” necessary to support sustainable growth and job creation, as well as to finance the bloc’s green and digital transformations, according to the statement.

After a year of internal and external disputes, the approval of the seven-year budget, COVID-19 recovery fund, and climate change goals means that the European Union can now look to the future as von der Leyen and Michel seek to implement their ambitious plans.

Further clarity may be achieved on Sunday, should the UK and EU finally decide if a trade deal can be reached or not.

It has taken a whole year and many hours of negotiation, but finally on Friday morning all the member states of the European Union have agreed: the continent will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030 (compared to 1990 levels). It has taken several hours of sleeplessness, in a debate that has dragged on into the night, to be able to add countries like Poland, still highly dependent on fossil fuels, to the bargain.

However, just one day before the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, which on December 12 2015, brought together all the world’s governments to keep global warming below 2°C (or 1.5°C as a desirable goal), the European Union has agreed to raise its 40% emissions cut to 55%. The European Parliament was asking for 60% and NGOs were going further by demanding 65%, but the agreed reduction of more than half the emissions in ten years is consistent with what scientists believe is right.

The new 55% goal will finally be included in the European climate law, which was presented in April without this point due to lack of agreement from the East, and will also be presented as a renewed objective to the UN at the first climate summit, COP26, to be held next year in Glasgow (UK) after having to postpone it for a year due to the covid-19.

To achieve this, however, Poland has kept heads of state and governments up all night. From Thursday evening until this Friday morning at 8am, the heads of state and governments meeting in Brussels had not managed to convince the Polish government (the country is highly dependent on coal) to sign up to the commitment to reduce CO2 emissions 55% by 2030. Poland had already been an obstacle at the previous year’s summit, when it disassociated itself from the final conclusions, in which Europe committed itself to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

The keys to the agreement

This time, what Poland was asking for was guarantees that it would receive sufficient European funds to carry out the energy transition that this commitment requires. It should be remembered that Poland was also one of the countries (along with Hungary) that vetoed the European budgets and the coronavirus recovery funds. Mateusz Morawiecki has become one of the protagonists of this last 2020 summit, complicating two key negotiations until the very end: the EU budget, and the climate goals.

According to European sources, one of the most sensitive issues, beyond the guarantees requested by Poland, has been the establishment of national goals by economic sectors. In fact, the objective of reducing emissions 55% by 2030 is global for the entire Union, which means that if Poland does not reach the necessary figure it can be compensated by another country that has managed to cut its emissions further. In this sense, it has been implicitly agreed that leaders will have to address the issue again in future meetings to give “additional recommendations” to governments.

For this reason, the Polish people have the Just Transition Fund, which must help them financially to make the energy transition to end their dependence on coal, and at the same time the need to make all these changes while “preserving the EU’s competitiveness and taking into account the different starting points and specific national circumstances and reduction potential of the different member states” is strongly emphasised.

The controversies

During the early morning negotiations, the French representatives joined with the Eastern European representatives to get a clause included in the text that accepts “transitional technologies” such as gas among those eligible for subsidies, an element that has outraged climate NGOs such as Greenpeace. The agreed text defends “the right of member states to decide their energy mix and choose the most appropriate technologies to collectively achieve the climate objective by 2030, including transitional technologies such as gas”.

For Greenpeace EU climate advisor Sebastian Mang, the agreement reached on Friday “shows that political expediency takes precedence over climate science, and that most politicians are still afraid to attack big polluters. Without further action, the EU’s climate targets will allow oil and gas companies to survive, they will not transform the way we produce food fast enough to stop the climate emergency”. In fact, Greenpeace criticizes the lack of ambition because without new measures, emissions would already be reduced by 46% by 2030. Instead, they believe that in order to stop the climate “catastrophe” it is necessary to cut them by 65%. It should be remembered that the EP was asking for 60%.

The new 2030 target is in fact the start of the EU’s journey to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 (emitting as much as it absorbs), in compliance with the Paris Agreement. The agreement can help Europe regain lost leadership in the global climate fight and adds to the good news of the change of administration in the United States, since Joe Biden will once again ratify the Paris Agreement, which Donald Trump had been unhappy about. However, the new Biden administration will have to work hard to reverse Trump’s denialist policies, which have wasted precious time for the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Yet the world’s largest emitter, China, has so far only committed to peak emissions (to start reducing them) by 2030, even though it is expected to present more ambitious commitments than this at the next COP26. Without the effort of all international actors, the EU’s cut will do little to keep the planetary thermometer at bay.

​​
Local leaders: EU Member States must raise climate
ambitions and agree at least 55% carbon emissions
reduction target for 2030

Local and regional leaders stressed today that
Europe must draw the right lessons from the
COVID-19 crisis and pave the way for a green
recovery by empowering its cities and regions to
lead the fight against climate change. This message
emerged from the debate of the Members of the
European Committee of the Regions with Svenja
Schulze, German Federal Minister for the
Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear
Safety. The European Committee of the Regions also
called on all the EU27 Heads of State and
Government to raise their ambition and agree this
week on at least a 55% emissions reducing target
for 2030.

At this week’s European Council meeting, leaders of the
27 EU Member States will seek agree on a new EU
emissions reduction target for 2030. The European
Commission’s proposes to cut greenhouse gas emissions
by at least 55% by 2030 in relation to 1990 levels, a
position supported by the European Committee of the
Regions. During the Committee’s virtual plenary debate,
leaders of EU regions, cities and villages highlighted
that the COVID crisis should not hinder the EU’s
commitment to tackling the climate and biodiversity
crises by setting a new more ambitious 2030 target. The
successful implementation of the European Green Deal –
the EU’s new growth strategy – must be turned into

concrete projects locally

and be based on a decentralised approach.

Apostolos Tzitzikostas
, President of the European Committee of the Regions,
and Governor of Central Macedonia in Greece,

said

: “Our economy and our climate are at breaking point:
we need a balanced, just and green European recovery
for every region, city and village. EU member states
must agree to cutting carbon emissions by at least 55%
by 2030 and approve the EU’s long-term budget and
recovery plans without delay. This is crucial to pave
the way to a carbon-neutral Europe by 2050 and to
guarantee a rapid transition to more sustainable
economies, protecting jobs and creating new
opportunities.”

Speaking at the CoR plenary session on 8 December, Federal Minister Svenja Schulze said:
“Just as in the fight against COVID-19, we know a key
success factor in environmental and climate policy:
good cooperation between all political levels -
European, national, regional and local. The Green Deal
is the strategy for the economic relaunch of Europe,
making it more resilient, competitive and liveable. It
is essential that the Member States reach an agreement
soon on the Multiannual Financial Framework and the
Recovery and Resilience Facility, which includes huge
expenditure on climate protection and biodiversity.”

Mayor of Seville Juan Espadas (ES/PES)
, chair of the CoR’s

ENVE Commission

and the


Green Deal Going Local working group


, said: “The recovery from the COVID-19 crisis is an
opportunity to rebuild Europe in a sustainable way and
to accelerate the much needed ecological transition. We
have no time to waste, whether it be to save our
economies with a strong European budget or to implement
bold climate actions. The 2030 Climate Target Plan can
become one of the major achievements of this Presidency
this week. Cities and regions are ready to act.”

Showing the German government’s commitment to a strong
local and regional involvement in climate policy, the
current Council Presidency – which will end its 6-month
term on 31 December – requested two opinions from the
CoR. The

first of them

assesses the opportunities of precautionary adaptation
to climate change and urges the European Commission to
develop a new EU Adaptation Strategy with clear goals
and indicators in line with the principles of active
subsidiarity and proportionality.

Rapporteur Markku Markkula (FI/EPP),
Chair of Espoo City Board and former CoR President
(2015-2017), said: “Political leadership should treat
climate change as an emergency that needs to be tackled
collectively with innovative measures breaking down
silos and barriers and integrating mitigation and
adaptation policies. This means raising the climate
ambition bar much higher than the EU is discussing
today and providing cities and regions with the tools
necessary to develop territory-based solutions. No
adaptation policy will work unless it takes into
account the needs, views and expertise of regions and
cities.”

The

second opinion

, which focuses on the impact of climate change in
regions and provides a first assessment of the Green
Deal, will be presented on Wednesday by rapporteur Andries Gryffroy (BE/EA). The member
of the Flemish parliament said: “The Green Deal will be
successful only if it regions and cities are at its
core. Although several regions and cities have adopted
energy transition plans or Local Green Deals, these are
rarely reflected in national plans and strategies. We
stand ready to work with the Commission and its Joint
Research Centre to set up a Regional European
Scoreboard to monitor and track progress in the
implementation of climate and Green Deal related
legislation, policies and financing at regional level.”

Background information

At the European Council meeting this week (10-11
December), the leaders of the 27 EU Member States will
seek agree on a new EU emissions reduction target for
2030. This would allow the EU to submit its updated
nationally determined contribution to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change before
the end of 2020. The European Commission’s Climate
Target Plan for 2030 proposes to cut greenhouse gas
emissions by at least 55% in relation to 1990 levels, a
position supported by the European Committee of the
Regions.

Contact:

Lauri Ouvinen

Tel. +32 473536887

[email protected]

David Crous

Tel. +32 470 881 037

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[email protected]

In this interview, Guido Milana (IT/PES) answers five questions on Farm to Fork , the new strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system in the EU. The municipal councillor from Olevano Romano and former Member of the European Parliament calls for a radical change in food production and consumption, starting with a shift to greener production systems that respect biodiversity and ecology principles. The rapporteur of the opinion ‘From Farm to Fork: the local and regional dimension ‘ stresses that COVID-19 makes it even more urgent to move towards a more sustainable and resilient food system. The opinion is to be adopted during the December 2020 plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions.

The European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions are joining forces to develop a new partnership to increase support to the work on integration that is performed by EU cities and regions. The partnership was announced by the President of the Committee of the Regions (COR), Apostolos Tzitzikostas, and the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, at today’s COR plenary session.

                <p>"Yesterday's European Council conclusions are the worst possible result for Greece and prove that Mr. Mitsotakis is completely incapable of defending the sovereign rights and interests of the country, at the most critical moment," SYRIZA said.</p><aside id="viral-news" class="links-tracker-container" data-area="Viral"/><p>The party's statement noted that "in 2020 we saw the most serious escalation of Turkish aggression since the time of Imia, with Turkey blatantly violating Greek sovereign rights by conducting illegal drilling for almost four months and coming within a few nautical miles of Kastellorizo and Rhodes."

However, SYRIZA noted, “not only do we have the third [EU] summit on Turkey in four months that has failed to adopt sanctions,” – much less the harsh sanctions claimed by the government – “but a clear message has once again been sent of tolerance for Turkey’s aggression, which is free to intensify its violations until the eve of the European Council in March 2021, which is not even going to discuss ‘sanctions or measures’ but only ‘tools and options’.”

SYRIZA also underlined that the EU has once again “collectively shown itself unable to rise to the occasion and to support a member-state, or to negotiate effectively with a strong neighbouring country.” In the wake of these events, SYRIZA said , “the need for a return to a structured national strategy in Greek-Turkish affairs is greater than ever, given Mr. Mitsotakis’ catastrophic diplomatic failure but also the major international developments, realignments and processes that will take place in our region in 2021, which will obviously concern us.”

SYRIZA warned that “if Greece continues during the crucial year of 2021 with the same policy as in 2020, the consequences for the country and the Republic of Cyprus will be extremely serious and long-lasting.”