22 January 2010

EU confirms emissions reduction commitments

After long negotiations, on 20 January, the EU member states’ representatives sealed an agreement that confirms their conditional offer to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020 (from 1990 levels) “if the other industrialised countries commit to comparable efforts”.

A letter to this effect will be sent to the United Nations after being approved by the capitals (written procedure), no later than on 27 January. It expresses the European commitment in the form “20%/30%” to be placed in the “reduction targets” square of the still empty table that makes up Annex I to the Copenhagen Accord.  The commitment comes with two footnotes: the first states that, while the commitment concerns the entire EU, not all EU member states are part of Annex I (Malta, Cyprus). The second reiterates the position of the December 2009 European Council and the conditions for moving from a 20% reduction to 30%.

With the problem of the wording out of the way, another matter – institutional and procedural – brought up during the discussions still had to be settled: who will speak on behalf of the EU? In other words, who will sign the official letter addressed to the UN? This is not a trivial issue because it concerns the EU’s representativeness and credibility as an entity, its recurring difficulty speaking with a single voice. This was one of the EU’s big problems in Copenhagen.

According to the treaty, the environment is a “shared” competence. However, in the framework of international negotiations, if an issue has the unanimous agreement of the member states, it is the EU as such (Commission and Council Presidency) which expresses its position. This is the case for the climate, according to the Commission, because the EU position is based on the energy-climate change package. The fact remains, though, that these provisions, as is often the case, allow member states to take more ambitious national measures and as such to speak in their own name at international level, it being understood that they must in all cases defend the common position. The question has been settled for the case in point: the joint Council Presidency/Commission letter will be signed by Ambassador Cristobal Gonzalez-Aller Jurado, on behalf of the Spanish EU Presidency, and by the Director-General of DG Environment, Karl Falkenberg, on behalf of the European Commission. Apparently at no time were the names of Catherine Ashton and Herman Van Rompuy mentioned.

(Source: Europolitics)