Climate Change Package

14 May 2009

Kevin Leydon

Achieving an important policy ambition!

A groundbreaking – if somewhat controversial – climate change package, which was the subject of extensive lobbying and much debate, was quietly passed into law on 6 April 2009. The European Parliament played a pivotal roll in ensuring that the European Union will send a strong message for progress at the international UN climate change conference, due to take place in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The latest episode began over a year ago. On Wednesday, 23 January 2008, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, presented the energy and climate package (a series of legislative proposals bundled together) before a specially convened plenary session of the European Parliament. In this regard, Barroso called for legally enforceable targets for increasing the share of renewable energy in each Member State’s energy mix. Furthermore, there would be new rules and guidelines on carbon capture, storage and environmental subsidies and on state aid for environmental protection.

This is the package that was quietly but formally passed into law by the Council of the European Union (where national ministers vote on EU laws) at its meeting on 6 April 2009. If the final stage of the legislation went unnoticed by the public and even many of its most enthusiastic supporters, it brought to a close a major phase in the expanding influence of the European Parliament.

Managing the six proposals through the legislative process required exceptional co-operation between the European Parliament’s parliamentary committees. There was much lobbying and, in the interest of transparency, some parliamentary rapporteurs (a member of the European Parliament who drafts a report on a proposed law) added an annex listing the names of those who had made representations. From the listings it can be seen that not only economic actors and NGOs were active in lobbying – a number of Member States were not shy in seeking to directly influence their co-legislative partner! Difficult compromises were arrived at both between parliamentarians but also between the European Parliament and Member States in the European Council (composed of heads of State and/or government) and at the level of the Council of environment ministers. But that is another story. The net result was that the European Union has a policy with which to pursue its ambitious targets: a cut in carbon emissions by at least 20% (or 30% if a global agreement on emissions is reached) by 2020; an increase of 20% in energy efficiency; a 20% share of renewables in overall energy consumption and a 10% bio-fuel component in vehicle fuel.

How did the compromises work out? There is general agreement that both the European Parliament and the Council arrived at working level in respect of CO2 emissions from cars, renewable energies and the fuel quality directive.

On the other three proposals, European Parliament and Council negotiators found it more difficult to find agreement and it was left to the heads of government to cut the final deal in respect of the EU Emission Trading Scheme, the effort-sharing decision, and the carbon capture and storage directive. Industry and some Member States were happier with the final deals than were environmental players. As one experienced diplomat put it, “when we get out of the current recession and growth begins again all players – governmental, industrial and economic actors and environmentalists – will have a clear set of ground rules to pursue the reduction in greenhouse gases.

Forecasting the outcome last summer, only an optimist or a shrewd observer of the Brussels scene could have predicted an eventual compromise that allowed all parties to leave Brussels for an uninterrupted Christmas break!

As an independent forum, the Institute does not express any opinions of its own. The views expressed in the article are the sole responsibility of the author.