The European Union faces months of internal wrangling before it can ratify the UN climate deal agreed in Paris last December. Energy-intensive businesses are getting more vocal about concerns a high carbon price could drive investment abroad.
Brussels will take part in a signing ceremony to be hosted by Ban Ki-moon at UN headquarters in New York this April.
But experts say it could take until late 2017 or 2018 to get the detail member states need to formally accept the agreement.
And the 28-strong bloc’s leaders are showing little appetite for raising ambition during that time, despite Brussels backing a tougher global goal at the critical UN summit.
At a panel event hosted by think tank Bruegel on Monday, climate and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete reeled off a long list of policies.
“We will have to work very hard in 2016 to overcome the last hurdles of the agreement,” he said. “All signatories have to live up to their responsibilities and implement the agreed provisions.”
What was not evident was any shift in strategy post-Paris.
It was left to Hendrik Bourgeois of General Electric to point out that the EU’s 2030 climate targets were inconsistent with the Paris pact. […]
Heads of member states are set to discuss on 17 and 18 March whether to review the 2030 package in light of the Paris agreement.
Energy-intensive businesses are getting more vocal about concerns a high carbon price could drive investment abroad, said Canete. “All the lobbies were very quiet before Paris. Everybody was silent. The day we came out of Paris, all the lobbies came out and said there is carbon leakage…”