The FINANCIAL — At a meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg, Germany again managed to buy more time in order to dilute new EU legislation on how car makers should limit CO2 emissions from new cars, according to EUbusiness.
Ministers tasked the Lithuanian EU Presidency and the Commission to explore options to further weaken the deal reached with the European Parliament in June. Environment ministers also discussed their joint EU position for the COP19 climate talks that will take place in Warsaw next month.
The German government had blocked in June a deal on car carbon dioxide emissions agreed between EU countries, the European Parliament and the Commission. In the meantime, Germany has introduced a new proposal to postpone until 2024 a target of 95g CO2 per km for passenger cars, which had previously been agreed upon for 2020.
"The German government has managed to rally enough support to scupper the deal reached this summer but should realise, more than three months on, that it cannot get what it wants – a license to pollute for its high-end manufacturers. The European Parliament should stand firm and reject Germany's demands, which only serve to damage the climate, increase costs for consumers and stifle technological innovation. It should insist that emission reductions by 2025 be included in the legislation," Greenpeace EU transport policy director Franziska Achterberg said.
Greenpeace maintains that further weakening of the legislation will impact on emission reductions, business certainty for car manufacturers and their suppliers, and leave European motorists footing the bill. Continued improvements in car efficiency would not only reduce emissions and lower fuel bills, but could also generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the EU, according to a recent study by Cambridge Econometrics and others.
Regarding the EU's negotiating position for COP19, Greenpeace warned that the EU will only have a credible international role when it agrees on its own adequate climate and energy targets for 2030, and increases its climate ambition for 2020. Greenpeace is calling on the EU to adopt a 2030 climate target of least 55% domestic greenhouse gas emission reductions, a renewable energy target of 45%, and a binding energy savings target of 40%, and is concerned that the 2030 targets currently under preparation by the European Commission are inadequate.
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