The Commission agrees to allow European companies to discount emissions from projects abroad.

The European Commission today presented its new legislative proposal on climate change , which sets a target of reducing the EU's carbon footprint by up to 90% by 2040, a goal considered more flexible than initially planned. As the most emblematic and ambitious emissions deadlines approach, political tensions are rising both in the European Parliament and the Council, leading the Commission to relax its legislation even at the risk of losing the support of the most sympathetic political groups.

To protect itself from this debate, the EU executive attributes the approved recommendations to its scientific advisors. The 90% figure had already been on the table more than a year ago, but it had met with significant pushback from governments, leading to the proposal to grant unprecedented leeway to achieve it.

Among other things, part of the target will be achieved through international carbon credits, a controversial mechanism that allows the bloc's climate initiatives to be outsourced to developing countries.

This way, European governments could decide to finance climate projects in other countries and would be authorized to count the resulting emission reductions toward their own European targets. In the document presented today by Vice-President Teresa Ribera, the Commission proposes establishing strict limits on international credits and subjecting them to a rigorous impact assessment to ensure they generate significant emission reductions. In any case, the use of this mechanism cannot affect more than 3 percentage points of the emissions reduction target, which is one of the red lines raised by Germany.

Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra believes that "the planet doesn't care where we extract our air emissions from" and justified this measure by saying that developing countries in Latin America and Africa are waiting to access European funding for activities such as forest restoration through carbon credit projects.

So far, climate targets for 2030 and 2050 have only included national measures and explicitly excluded international credits from the EU market to avoid price distortions and focus incentives for emissions reductions on Europe.

The proposal will also allow CO2 removals to be integrated into the carbon market, which could also serve to reduce pressure on energy-intensive industries . The Commission has given its green light today to this legislative proposal, which still needs to be approved by both Parliament and the individual countries in the Council.

The EU executive asserts that this amendment "is in line with the EU Competitiveness Compass, the Clean Industrial Pact, and the Affordable Energy Action Plan" and, in these times of international uncertainty, "fully takes into account the current economic, security, and geopolitical landscape and offers investors and businesses the predictability and stability they need in the energy transition."

According to the Commission, this policy "will boost investment in innovation, create more jobs and growth, increase our resilience to the impacts of climate change, and achieve greater energy independence."

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen believes that "as European citizens increasingly feel the impact of climate change, they expect Europe to act. Industry and investors expect us to define a predictable direction. Today we demonstrate that we remain firmly committed to decarbonizing the European economy by 2050. The goal is clear, the path is pragmatic and realistic."