If you are reading this during a heatwave, or an unusual tropical rainstorm, climate change may be on your mind. You probably encounter schemes designed to reduce our climate impact, such as electric cars or windmills, in your daily life. These are often initiated, and funded, by the European Union – but the EU is doing much more. Let’s see how Parliament helped shape EU climate action.
The European Parliament declared a climate emergency in 2019 and has repeatedly urged stronger action and for support for households during the ‘green transition’. The European Green Deal seeks to tackle the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation by achieving climate neutrality by 2050, together with the European Climate Law.
Already a year after the European Commission proposed its Green Deal, it became clear the existing policy framework was not sufficient to reach the goals. As co-legislator, Parliament therefore contributed to raising the 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target from 40 % to a net 55 % compared with 1990 levels. Although this increase was not as high as Parliament wanted, Parliament did succeed in including the ambition of delivering negative emissions after 2050 and establishing an independent, inter-disciplinary scientific advisory panel. The Parliament and Council reached an agreement on the European Climate Law at the end of June 2021.
The ‘fit for 55’ package of legislation puts this ambition into action through a set of laws aligning existing climate rules with the European Climate Law objectives for 2030 and 2050. In its role as co-legislator, Parliament also shaped these laws, calling for more ambitious targets, on renewables, carbon sinks and deforestation and land use, for example. Mindful of the need to provide alternatives to traditional transport fuels, Members successfully pushed for an earlier roll-out of electric charging and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure on EU roads, as well as more ambitious targets for emissions cuts in shipping, and for providing sustainable aviation fuel.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022 completely changed the energy landscape. To ensure industry and households have secure access to energy supplies, the EU has focused on reducing dependency on imported fuels. In May 2022, key ‘fit for 55’ targets set in the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) were raised through the REPowerEU initiative. Parliament managed to increase the ambition for EU countries to enable their industry, transport and by households to reduce their energy consumption, as well as boosting their share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption by 2030. This shows how Parliament used its law-making powers to raise the level of ambition on tackling climate change. Parliament’s powers fall broadly into six, often overlapping, domains: law-making, the budget, scrutiny of the executive, external relations, and, to a lesser extent, constitutional affairs and agenda-setting. This graphic shows more examples of areas where Parliament used one or more of its different powers to influence legislation:
For a fuller picture of the European Parliament’s activity over the past five years, take a look at our publication Examples of Parliament’s impact: 2019 to 2024: Illustrating the powers of the European Parliament, from which this case is drawn.
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