Reduce carbon dioxide by 55% – call

EIGHT EU states have called on the bloc’s incoming top climate official, Frans Timmermans, to raise the EU’s carbon dioxide reduction target for 2030 by as much as 15% to 55% – from 40%.

Environment ministers from Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Sweden and four other EU countries presented their demand in a letter ahead of Timmermans’s confirmation hearing in the European Parliament that was due to take place late yesterday.

While there is broad – if not unanimous – support for the EU to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, there are differences among members over how much progress should have been made by 2030.

In 2018, the majority of EU states agreed on a 40% reduction – a goal some have criticised as not ambitious enough.

Timmermans was to due be on the stand yesterday as the proposed executive vice-president for the European Green Deal, the signature climate and environmental policy package of the incoming head of the bloc’s powerful European Commission president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen.

The letter asks for increased ambitions “to underpin the European Green Deal to drive the in-depth transformation, and bold measures needed across all sectors of the economy”.

Von der Leyen has already tasked Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister, with increasing the 2030 goal from 40% to “at least” 50%.

Germany, where chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken in favour of the 55% target, did not sign the letter after its government ministries in Berlin failed to agree on a set of climate-protection measures earlier this month.

Sebastian Mang, EU climate policy adviser at activist organisation Greenpeace, called Germany’s absence “conspicuous”.

Germany hesitated over backing the net-zero 2050 target, fearing it might open a door for the bloc to reassess its 2030 goal and hurt its car-manufacturing industry.

It did, however, back both the 2030 and 2050 goals at an EU summit in June.