In Strasbourg, an important climate protection law falls through. This is bitter, but only shows how incredibly difficult and stressful such a project is.
The result of the vote is a disgrace to those MPs who prepared the law. It will weaken the position of the European Parliament when it soon negotiates climate protection legislation with EU governments. But at the same time, this result from Wednesday is also very honest: it reflects how incredibly difficult and burdensome the EU’s climate protection program is. This in turn makes the search for compromises difficult. And that’s why a law fell through in the plenary session of the European Parliament, which the members of parliament had previously negotiated for months. The aim was to find a broad majority for this reform of the emissions trading system. But in the end there was no majority at all because the Greens and Social Democrats had wanted tougher guidelines.
Now the environment committee has to work out a new compromise. This will delay the passage of the law, but this is not dramatic, after all MPs are not starting from scratch. In any case, prudence has to take precedence over speed with such important projects. The emissions trading system is the EU’s main instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: power plants and factories must have polluting rights when they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And the number of these rights is falling. The law is intended to tighten the mechanism so that the EU can achieve its ambitious climate goals.
At the same time, this must not lead to the industry migrating from Europe and then blowing out its greenhouse gases in countries with more lax standards. Finding the right balance is very difficult. But precisely for such tasks, for mediating and weighing up conflicting interests, there are the elected representatives of the EU citizens, the MEPs. The parliamentarians failed with their first attempt. The second has to fit.