EU climate targets: How the Commission is building loopholes

Once again, the EU Commission is demonstrating its ambition on climate protection. With a new interim target: by 2040, the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by 90 percent compared to 1990. There is now a remarkable tradition of announcements, beginning in December 2019. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke of Europe's "man on the moon moment" when she announced that the Commission had agreed on the European Green Deal, with the goal of making the Union climate neutral by 2050.

Since then, there have been a number of modifications to the Green Deal and a reduction in CO₂ emissions that fall significantly short of the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The fact that the new milestone is now intended to further increase ambition has also developed a remarkable tradition. Whenever it becomes apparent that the fight against climate-killer gases is not going as hoped, even more ambitious targets for the more distant future are conjured up.

There's a calculated approach behind this. Politicians at the national and European levels cannot afford to openly admit failure in this project, which is sometimes called a challenge for humanity or a challenge of the century. Instead, they would rather simply postpone the "man-on-the-moon" moment.

But this time, something else is being added: What von der Leyen now calls "flexibility" is the creation of a loophole that could grow to considerable size. States will be given greater opportunities to offset domestic CO₂ emissions with climate protection projects abroad.

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This could make it possible for a government to use reforestation projects in distant countries to gain leeway when shutting down coal-fired power plants or replacing old oil and gas heating systems. In an extreme scenario, the new 2040 target could actually result in less climate protection instead of more.

However, it is still unclear exactly what the rules for the credits will look like - both in terms of evaluation and the extremely difficult review of foreign projects.

What is clear, however, is that this loophole fits the current political mainstream in the EU. Climate protection has slipped far down the list of priorities in record time. And the election of Donald Trump as US president has massively intensified this trend. Issues of defense and the competitiveness of EU member states are now being treated with enormous urgency by the heads of state and government, forgetting that consistent investments in climate protection could significantly increase that same competitiveness.

The announcements by the new German Minister of Economic Affairs, Katherina Reiche (CDU), also fit the new mainstream. She essentially speaks of climate protection not at any price. This doesn't mean, for example, that the expansion of renewables will now be halted; rather, it will continue at a lower level – supplemented by new gas-fired power plants to quickly and conveniently complete the urgently needed restructuring of the energy system. In fact, by sidestepping the issue, this enormously important issue is only being postponed.

What's more, in this scenario, a major and previously underestimated task becomes even more difficult: If we can't save the climate, we must at least save people from the climate. This means a gigantic repair operation, which includes, for example, the reconstruction of cities to protect residents from heatwaves or the creation of floodplains to absorb the heavy rain that will follow the heatwaves.