The Council wants to dilute the 2040 climate target; the Parliament’s position is still to be decided. Two committee votes on opinions provide no clear signal. The lead committee (ENVI) will vote on Monday evening, in parallel to the plenary session.

Update 7 Nov 13:30, adding agenda for ENVI vote on 10 Nov

Diverging opinion votes

Following the 4-5 November marathon meeting of environment ministers, the Council now has a position (‘General Approach’) on the 2040 climate target. See our take on what this means here. The other lawmaker, the European Parliament, received the Commission proposal at the same time (2 July), but has made limited progress so far. In the environment committee (ENVI), which has the lead on the file, the far-right Patriots group took control of it and gave the rapporteurship to Ondrej Knotek, who wants to reject it. ENVI’s discussion in early September showed strong opposition to that idea, but the committee has yet to decide its position.

That is mainly because the centre-right EPP – the largest party group – is unable to reach internal agreement. Its members are split along national lines, with those from eastern countries generally opposed to new ambitious climate targets. In this situation, the EPP group opted first to see what the member states in the Council decided before taking the file to a vote in ENVI. See our take on the ENVI committee debate on 2040 in September and comments by shadow rapporteurs.

While ENVI is the lead, the industry and energy committee (ITRE) and the transport committee (TRAN) will give opinions. ITRE voted yesterday (5 November) in support of Niels Fuglsang’s (S&D) opinion report on the 2040 climate target. His text is much closer to the European Commission’s original proposal than the vastly increased flexibility that the Council wants. Most notably, Fuglesang keeps the 90% target, with international credits limited to 3%. His report was endorsed by the ITRE committee (48 in favour, 34 against). The EPP members were split.

In parallel, the TRAN committee held a vote on its opinion report, penned by Virginijus Sinkevičius (Greens). That was rejected (22 against, 20 in favour).

ENVI, the lead committee, is planning a vote next week, on 10 November, as shown in this draft agenda. Following that, the 2040 target file might be added to the plenary session agenda for a vote on 12 or 13 November.

Will EPP ally with the far-right to water down the 2040 target?

Once the European Parliament decides its position, that will effectively be the mandate for a team consisting of lead rapporteur Knotek, (some of) the shadow rapporteurs, and (possibly) ENVI Chair Antonio Decaro (S&D) to start trilogue negotiations with the Council (represented by the outgoing Danish presidency and the incoming Cypriot presidency). That trilogue process will determine the final details on the 2040 target, flexibility, revision clause and other elements.

While it is too early to predict how the EPP members will vote in the ENVI committee and in the plenary, there are growing signs that the group is turning its back on the old broad centre coalition with S&D and the Liberals and is instead seeking to cooperate with ECR and the Patriots on the right. That at least seems to be the case for the omnibus simplification file, for which EPP has recently decided to start tabling its own amendments instead of coordinating with S&D.

If the aim is to build a right-wing majority, it will be interesting to see how many of the EPP members choose to embark on that journey. As we highlighted in an analysis in July,  a divided EPP teaming up with the far-right will struggle to reach the absolute majority threshold, i.e., 361 of 720 votes.

If, e.g., 113 of the 188 EPP members (60%) and every single MEP further to the right vote to water down the 2040 target, that will only produce 303 votes (and possibly 417 against). If, on the other hand, all 188 EPP members vote to water down, it could bring the tally to 378, a winning majority.