The European Parliament supported the revision of Europe's largest climate policy

The European Parliament approved sweeping reforms on Tuesday to boost the ambition of the EU's climate change policies, including modernizing the bloc's carbon market, which is meant to raise the cost of polluting the environment in Europe. Europe's carbon market forces power plants and factories to buy CO2 permits when they pollute the environment. It has reduced emissions from these industries by 2005 % since 2005, but faces a revision to meet the EU's more ambitious climate change targets. The Parliament overwhelmingly approved the agreement reached last year by the negotiators of the EU countries and the Parliament, on the reform of the carbon market with the aim of reducing emissions by 62 by 2005 % compared to the levels in 2030. As part of the modernization, the factories will come to 2 for the free CO2034 permits they currently receive, and shipping emissions will be added to the CO2024 market from year 2. Lawmakers also backed the EU's world-first plan to phase in a tax on imports of high-carbon goods from 2026, targeting imports of steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser, electricity and hydrogen. The aim of the carbon border tax is to prevent EU industries from being undercut by more polluting foreign competitors and to remove the temptation for EU businesses to relocate to regions with less stringent environmental rules. The laws still have to be definitively approved by the EU countries, which will assess them in the coming weeks. That approval is usually a formality that waves pre-agreed deals — but the process was interrupted last month when Germany expressed opposition at the last minute to another policy to phase out fossil fuel-powered cars. Peter Liese, the European Parliament's chief negotiator for reforming the Emissions Trading System (ETS), said the success of the carbon market would make or break Europe's CO2 reduction targets. (Kate Abnett)