Don't accept every result / In addition to phasing out fossil fuels, a new attempt to raise national targets and progress on international emissions trading required / European Commission needs task force to enforce emissions trading and carbon border adjustment mechanism internationally

The chair of the European Parliament's delegation to the climate conference in Dubai, MEP Dr. Peter Liese, called on the European governments and the European Union's negotiators not to accept every outcome. “In Europe, we have very ambitious climate policies. We must make it clear to the world that we can only convince our own citizens of the necessity of these measures in the long term if other major polluters also make their fair contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and financing climate policy in poorer countries. If the COP ends up just agreeing on 'blah blah blah', it would be better if the European Union, together with the least developed countries and the small island states, blocked the outcome,” explained Liese, who is also the environmental spokesperson for the largest political group in the European Parliament (EPP, Christian Democrats).

In addition to the goal of leading the phase-out of fossil fuels, Liese believes it is particularly important to adopt a clear roadmap with strict guidelines for setting new national targets. “We need a clear commitment from all major greenhouse gas emitting countries that they will set new targets by early 2025 at the latest, which will bring us close to the Paris climate target. It is also extremely important to pave the way for global emissions trading. We have adopted an extremely ambitious emissions trading scheme in Europe and consequently have to quadruple our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in the coming years up to 2030. We will then end up with per capita emissions of less than 4 tons of CO2.

No other major economic bloc, neither China nor the USA or the Gulf States have any sort of such ambitious plans. There is a lot of interest in our emissions trading system here at the COP. Most of the participants in the negotiations do not know how ambitious the European legislation is. At the same time, there is criticism and questions and a lot of unknowingness about the already agreed carbon border adjustment mechanism CBAM, unfortunately. Many countries that should actually be on our side, such as small island states or African countries, do not know what CBAM is and why we introduced it. It is therefore imperative that the EU Commission sets up a task force on the international aspects of emissions trading and CBAM as soon as possible. We need to use the transition period to gather allies. Many countries want to set up an emissions trading system and are asking for support from the European Union. Such a task force would therefore be the most effective climate protection measure at the lowest price of all time," emphasized Liese.

Source: JRC, EDGAR, https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2023?vis=co2pop#emissions_table.