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From: TT
Published:
Updated:
Photo: Jessica Gow / AP / TT
Environmental activist Greta Thunberg takes part as the Fridays for future organization holds a webcast press conference on Tuesday to pressure the EU to adopt stricter emissions targets by 2030. File photo.
A tightening of the EU’s climate targets runs the risk of getting mired in the dispute between the majority of the EU and Hungary and Poland.
Germany is negotiating an agreement on budget and crown support to the end.
The last EU summit this year, on Thursday and Friday, has a packed agenda that could be enough for two and three meetings.
The question is how much is worth discussing, given the disagreement over the new requirements for compliance with the basic principles of the rule of law and democracy.
Hungary and Poland refuse to accept the new requirements and have therefore for the moment stopped approving the new long-term EU budget and the support of the crown.
Eye to eye?
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Germany, has recently tried to mediate with the reluctant. That mediation may need to continue at the summit, even if the budget issue is not really going to be discussed there.
– The kind of physical presence may be required when you sit in the same room and can look into each other’s eyes to be able to solve the problem, and in that case that is where it should happen, says EU Minister Hans Dahlgren ( S), after the summit agenda was discussed at an EU ministerial meeting on the web on Tuesday.
If Poland and Hungary do not give in, there are already plans for other member states to continue the broad support of the crown on their own. However, Dahlgren does not believe in such a decision already at the summit.
– I think it’s too early. More efforts will be needed to include Poland and Hungary.
Climate camp
If the budget dispute cannot be resolved, there is also the risk of having consequences for hopes of agreeing at the summit on an adjustment of emissions targets for 2030.
– It is difficult to see how this can happen if there is no agreement on the budget, said a senior EU diplomat in a web-based briefing on Monday, according to the Reuters news agency.
Hans Dahlgren is more optimistic.
– There is broad consensus on the need for the EU to continue to lead on the climate issue. I have not heard anyone threaten not to set climate targets just because they don’t go through the budget, says the EU minister.
Percentage dispute
The European Commission has proposed that member states accept that emissions be reduced “by at least 55 percent”, compared to 1990 levels. The European Parliament and several member states, in turn, are pushing for 60 percent. hundred or even more.
At the same time, the Fridays for future youth movement is calling for more concrete action now.
– We continue to trust the EU, but its credibility is at stake. If the EU still wants leadership, it must redouble its efforts, says Germany’s Leonie Bremer in an online press conference.
– Don’t compromise our future. We need both climate documents and the rule of law, says Hungarian Lili Aschenbrenner.
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