Brussels In the dispute over the most important climate protection law in the EU, the tone is becoming increasingly toxic, especially among German MPs. The responsible rapporteur for the European Parliament, Peter Liese (CDU), sharply criticized his political opponents on Friday, who had brought down his draft law in the final vote on Wednesday. It is about the reform of emissions trading, which controls how much CO2 the industry is allowed to emit.
Liese complained that it was “appalling” that the reform was rejected. This can only be understood through “operational blindness”. “Anyone who acts as irresponsibly as the Social Democrats should not get away with it.” SPD politician Tiemo Wölken’s criticism of the CDU position was “crazy”, considering that other SPD MPs had approved the law.
“You notice that I’m still pretty upset,” said Liese at a press conference on Friday. The politician Michael Bloss is “the first Green I can’t get along with”. According to Liese, he also spoke to a state secretary from the Green-led Federal Ministry of Economics about Bloss. He “reacted physically” when Liese mentioned the name “Bloss”.
Wölken had accused Liese on Twitter of having “actively watered down” climate protection, “overriding” emissions trading and wanting to “sabotage” the EU’s Green Deal for climate neutrality by 2050. Merely had accused Liese of lying, commented on a tweet by Liese with “it really doesn’t get any cheekier” and spoke of a “fossil alliance”.
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Wölken followed suit on Friday. “Peter Liese wants to hide the fact that he has speculated wrongly,” he told the Handelsblatt. However, he is optimistic that a consensus can be reached. Everyone is interested in that. Bloss said he would be happy to continue working with Liese and was looking forward to constructive talks with the aim of getting a majority for a revised law without the consent of the right in parliament. They had voted for Liese’s proposal.
While he is being attacked from the left, Liese points out that he has done a lot of work with the Conservatives: “I have put my group on course to support these ambitions,” he said. This is “an achievement that has to be appreciated”.
And indeed, the atmosphere was different a year ago. At that time, for example, conservative politicians fundamentally opposed the idea of taking away the free CO2 certificates from industry and replacing them with another protective mechanism.
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The resistance is broken. But whether Liese would have had a majority among his own people if he had rushed the process as most Greens, Social Democrats and the Environment Committee had called for is unclear.
In some places, Liese had tightened the commission’s draft law. When it came to free allocations, however, he wanted to go easy on the industry: he suggested issuing the same number of free CO2 certificates by 2028 as before. The Commission only wanted to do that by 2026. According to Liese’s plan, the industry should only have to produce a certificate for every tonne of CO2 emitted in 2034 instead of 2032.
This crossed a red line for the Greens and most of the Social Democrats because they saw the climate target in danger: According to the law, the EU must reduce its emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990.
Liese rejects the objection. “We have to take into account the level at which we are discussing here,” he said. “We want to save four times as much CO2 annually over the next eight years as in the last 30 years.”
Committee meets on Tuesday
Because the reform of emissions trading failed, the votes on the associated laws, the CO2 border adjustment (Cbam) and the climate social fund, had to be postponed.
The intensified rhetoric does not make an agreement any easier. In terms of content, however, there are no points that would prevent both sides from meeting in the middle. A compromise has long been found on the much more complicated issue of whether emissions trading should be extended to include road traffic and buildings.
>>Read here: No Europe-wide CO2 tax for private individuals – two prices at the pump possible
The coordinators in the environmental committee are to meet on Monday to discuss how to proceed. In addition to Liese and Wölken, these are the Dutchman Bas Eickhout (Greens) and the Finn Nils Torvalds (Liberals). The entire environmental committee will then meet on Tuesday and could begin to explore new compromises.
Committee chair Pascal Canfin (Liberals) has already indicated that there should be an agreement within 15 days. This could then be voted on in plenum on June 23. It can be heard that the parliamentary group leaders also want to get involved in the debate in order to prevent it from failing again.
More: The most important climate protection law fails in the EU Parliament