CoR Plenary (April 2022)

For the post-2025 period, the Commission would set individual targets for each Member State. The proposal has been referred to the European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), which appointed Ville Niinistö (Greens/EFA, Finland) as rapporteur. First edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure.

On 14 July 2021, the European Commission submitted a proposal on a regulation amending the binding annual emissions reductions by Member States from 2021 to 2030. It reviews the collective and national targets set up in the Effort-Sharing Regulation (ESR). The proposal is part of the 'fit for 55' package, which aims to adapt EU climate and energy legislation to the new EU objective of an at least 55 % reduction in net GHG emissions by 2030 compared to 1990, in accordance with the recent European Climate Law.

This briefing provides an initial analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the European Commission’s impact assessment (IA) accompanying the proposal to amend the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) Regulation (EU) 2018/841. Despite the effort involved, the IA contains a number of shortcoming that significantly limit its potential to usefully inform policy-making.

The IA analyses the nature and scale of the problem, which triggers the revision of the Effort Sharing Regulation. While subsidiarity is suffiicently addressed, the proportionality aspects of the revision are not addressed by the IA. One general and three specific objectives, clearly deriving from the problem, were set up. Three policy options were identified and analysed in detail.

Under the European Green Deal, the European Union (EU) has committed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 and set a more ambitious climate target of net-55% emissions reductions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Both of these ambitions rely fundamentally on the role of natural sinks from the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector to compensate residual emissions. But they also come at a time in which the EU’s natural sinks are in decline. Over the last decades, the EU’s net-removals have fallen from a peak of -329 Mt CO2eq in 2009 to -243 Mt CO2eq in 2019 (European Union 2021), mainly due to an increase in forest harvesting rates, including for bioenergy. Achieving the EU’s climate goals will thus require reversing this negative trend and securing a strong contribution from the land-use sector towards the EU’s climate-objectives.

After presenting an overview of measures to support negative emissions around the world, the EU’s climate policy frameworks are reviewed from the perspective of (potentially) integrating negative emissions. This is followed by a review of specific policy measures to support negative emissions in the EU. The paper recommends a wide portfolio of policy measures over time, to account for technology differences and the changing demands of climate policy for different time horizons as climate neutrality approaches

The European Green Deal sets targets for biodiversity, climate change, sustainable farming, and rural development. For abandoned agricultural lands to contribute to these goals, specific policy measures to support appropriate land management are required. However, information is lacking on what these policies will mean for landowners and managers. This paper reviews the role of abandoned lands in European Union (EU) policies linked to the Green Deal.

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, provides an in-depth analysis of the key proposed changes to Regulation 1141/2014 on the statute and funding of European political parties and foundations. It assesses the extent to which the reformed regulation strengthens, as per art. 10(4) TEU, the capacity of Europarties to contribute to forming a European political awareness and expressing the will of EU citizens.