Climate Action: EU submits new greenhouse gas emissions reduction target to UNFCCC

Following the European Council’s endorsement of a new and more ambitious target to reduce the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels, the EU and its 27 Member States have now formally submitted this target as their new nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. In parallel, negotiations on the European Climate Law are continuing among co-legislators. The Climate Law puts the objective of climate neutrality by 2050 and the EU’s 2030 target into binding EU legislation. The Commission conceived the European Green Deal as the EU new growth strategy. Its main goal, to make Europe the first climate neutral continent by 2050, gives certainty to our businesses. Our new NDC is a necessary step to speed up decarbonisation efforts in the context of our contribution to the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The ambitious new EU NDC reaffirms the EU’s commitment to global climate leadership and serves as an example and incentive for our international partners to step up their NDCs in the lead up to the COP26 in Glasgow next year. We have already seen a number of encouraging commitments by other major economies in the fight against climate change over the last months, last week we saw 70 world leaders stand up at the UN Climate Ambition Summit and another 60 of Europe’s biggest companies stand behind the 2030 target. The speech by Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans at yesterday’s Environment Council is available here and the remarks of Environment Commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, at the subsequent press conference are available here. A factsheet on the Paris Agreement and the EU’s climate diplomacy is available online. For more information on the EU’s international action on climate change, see here.