European Union leaders have reached a hard-fought deal to cut the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by the end of the decade compared with 1990 levels, avoiding a hugely embarrassing deadlock before a UN climate meeting this weekend, the Guardian reports.
Following night-long discussions at their two-day summit in Brussels, on Friday the 27 member states approved the EU executive commission’s proposal to toughen the bloc’s intermediate target on the way to climate neutrality by 2050, after a group of reluctant, coal-reliant countries finally supported the improved goal.
Five years after the Paris agreement, the EU wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming. Yet the bloc’s heads of states and governments were unable to agree on the new target the last time they met in October, mainly because of financial concerns by eastern nations about how to fund and handle the green transition.
But a long-awaited deal on a huge long-term budget and coronavirus recovery plan agreed on Thursday by EU leaders swung the momentum.
Large amounts of the record-high €1.82tn (£1.64tn) package are to be spent on programmes and investments designed to help those member states, regions and sectors particularly affected by the green transition, abd which are in need of a deep economic and social transformation. EU leaders have agreed that 30% of the package should be used to support the transition.
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