Leaders approve single EU cap on emissions

National governments have approved a single EU-wide cap on greenhouse gas emissions instead of country by country targets at the council's spring summit.

“The current system did not prove enough of a guarantee that the March goals would be reached,” said Slovenian prime minister Janez Janša, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

EU leaders met in Brussels on Friday to finalise ambitions laid out by the council last March, which were released by the commission in an energy and climate change package in January.

“The fundamental importance of energy solidarity should be kept,” commission president José Manuel Barroso told journalists. “Europe needs to speak with one voice.”

The decision to impose and EU-wide cap for the post-2013 phase of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) comes amid fears that Europe’s energy intensive industries will have to bear excessive costs and threaten to move to areas outside the EU, where targets are not as high.

In the next few months, the commission will release a revised directive on the ETS, which will include a binding commitment to protect energy intensive industries in case no post-2012 global climate agreement is reached.

But green groups think the EU is concentrating too much on industry and watering down ambitious targets 

“The spring European council was a non-summit.

"Despite high expectations for progress on climate and energy, all we got was a carbon copy of last year’s deal, supplemented by some misplaced protectionist language to appease heavy industry,” said Mahi Sideridou, Greenpeace’s EU climate and energy policy director.

EU leaders have promised to finalise the energy and climate package by the end of this year in time for the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, where a post-2012 global agreement will be discussed.

“There is some fear that if we don’t reach an international agreement the threat will be real that energy intensive industries will move to areas where standards are lower,” said Janša.

“But the danger from a social and economic perspective is losing jobs in these industries.”

However, Barroso reiterated that this is just a worst-case scenario. “If an international agreement fails,” he stressed, “Then appropriate action will be taken.

"An international agreement remains the best way but in case such an agreement is not ready we will be ready to face the consequences.”

• Previous article
• Next article