The Policy

Want to know more about the policy behind the Big Ask?

Climate change is the single biggest environmental threat facing our planet. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that by the end of this century temperatures could rise by up to 6.4 degrees centigrade, with dramatic impacts world wide. Without urgent action droughts, floods and extreme weather events will become part of our everyday lives and affect people all around the world.

Annual cuts; moving from long term to short term targets

Friends of the Earth groups across Europe are asking governments to commit to binding annual targets for reducing dangerous emissions. These short-term targets will make politicians accountable and ensure that Europe leads the world in showing that climate change can be tackled.  Long-term targets are important to set Europe’s emission reduction path so that it does its share in the fight against climate change. But it is short-term targets which ensure that emissions cuts actually happen, across the EU and across sectors.

How can we ensure the necessary emission cuts will be made?

The current proposals of the EU for their emission reduction policies until 2020 (an amended Directive for the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and a Decision on Effort-Sharing amongst EU Member States about non-ETS emissions) foresee a linear path with annual emission reductions. But neither proposes specific direct compliance and penalty provisions against Member States if they fail to deliver.

The Effort Sharing Decision is particularly weak on enforcement and compliance. Under this proposal EU Member States are only required to report their progress towards their reduction targets. Friends of the Earth is calling for these EU climate proposals to be amended so that the European Commission can use the strongest enforcement tools available to it, including direct penalties towards Member States.

The reporting about emission reductions in the Member States should be speeded up and take place every year. An independent agency should be set up and could be in charge of compiling emission data from Member States, monitoring the advancements of the Member States towards their emission reduction targets, and it possibly could have the power to manage the fund raised by the direct penalty procedure proposed.

Read more:

A summary of the compliance study "Towards a Better Compliance Structure for the European Emission Reduction Policies until 2020"