Parliament is discussing the EU's Cop 29 negotiating position

Today, the European Parliament continued discussions on the draft resolution that will shape the EU's negotiating position at the UN Cop 29 climate summit in November. But groups within the EU disagree on elements of the proposal, including the bloc's own targets for reducing emissions.

The European Commission has a preferred target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 90 % by 2040 compared to the 1990 baseline, but this remains a proposal. The European Scientific Advisory Committee recommended reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90-95 % in the same time frame.

“We will block any mention of the 95 percent [emission reduction]… We need more conditions for the 90 percent. We have to stop setting targets without knowing how to achieve them," German EPP MEP Peter Liese told Argus after a meeting of the parliament's environment committee. The centre-right EĽS is the largest party in the European Parliament.

Liese is pushing for the European Commission to focus more on "enabling" carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure, speeding up the permitting process for renewables and decarbonizing industry. And while Liese personally supports the 90 percent greenhouse gas reduction target, he noted that his EPP group is "not there yet."

Spain's centre-left S&D member Javi Lopez wants the EU to maintain ambitious climate targets for the benefit of the whole planet, pushing for more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Emma Wiesner, a Swedish liberal from Renew Europe, also wants more ambitions, calling the current draft of the resolution "very weak". Wiesner criticized the omission of strong wording on the price of carbon in the resolution. Parliament should focus on setting a global price on CO2 and prevent Cop 29 discussions from using Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to obscure emissions reductions through removals, Wiesner said. Article 6 allows countries to transfer carbon credits earned by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to help other countries meet their climate goals.

And the groups are not yet aligned on climate finance - a topic set to take center stage at Cop 29. The EU cannot shoulder all the costs of climate action, Portugal's EPP member Lidia Pereira said. Countries such as China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia should also contribute more to climate finance, she said. Czech conservative ECR member Alexandr Vondra echoed this opinion. "It's impossible for us to pay the bills for the whole world," he said.

Austrian Greens member Lena Schilling wants any Baku deal to provide a new climate finance target after 2025 - the next phase of the current $100 billion a year target for international climate finance. Schilling further called on the EU to push for the phase-out of coal by 2030, gas by 2035 and oil "by 2040 at the latest" (Co2AI).