National leaders are set to endorse long-term plans to deal with climate change.
Leaders of the European Union’s member states are expected to agree on long-term carbon-emissions targets when they meet for their regular autumn European Council in Brussels next week (23-24 October).
The leaders are expected to sign off on a binding target of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 40% from a 1990 baseline.
The member states will at a later point have to work out how the target is to be distributed across the 28 member states, with more ambitious targets applying to some and less ambitious goals to others. Several national governments have made it clear that they can agree to EU-wide targets only, rather than targets that are binding on each member state. The member states are also supposed to increase the use of renewable energy, with a 2030 target of 27%, and improve their energy efficiency.
The targets are laid out in a draft long-term climate and energy-policy framework expected to be endorsed by the leaders next week.
Poland, which has been resisting binding targets for some time, has decided not to block an agreement, but the government is asking for more time to meet targets. This, in turn, would mean that other member states would have to make deeper reductions to their emissions. The EU is hoping to be able to go to global climate-change talks in Paris next year with a unified position.
The leaders are also expected to be briefed on measures to enhance the EU’s energy security, following a call by the European Council in June for the European Commission to assess before the winter the short-term risk of supply disruptions. Fears of disruptions have been heightened by a pro-Russian insurgency and political instability in Ukraine, the main transit country for Russian gas. The Commission carried out stress tests for gas supplies over the summer.
Also as part of its bid to reduce energy dependence, the EU is seeking to improve interconnections of national electricity and gas systems and to push for the full implementation of the third energy package. In cases of severe shortages, the Council will endorse the idea of short-term non-market interventions.
The Council is also expected to discuss a €300 billion investment fund proposed by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president-elect of the European Commission.
This will be the last European Council chaired by Herman Van Rompuy; Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, is to take over on 1 December.