A proposal to cut Europe's planet warming emissions by 90 percent by 2040 will not be on the table as environment ministers from the bloc's 27 countries meet in Brussels on Thursday.
The European Commission had indicated it wanted to make the plan official in the first quarter of the year but it has so far failed to do so -- to the worry of green groups and lawmakers.
"Climate was central five years ago. Right now, it's clearly not," lamented an EU official.
The 90 percent reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 is considered a stepping stone towards the EU's broader goal to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
The latter is at the heart of the European Green Deal, a landmark package of measures that defined commission chief Ursula von der Leyen's first term in office but has since come increasingly under fire.
Right and hard-right gains across Europe and the return of Donald Trump to the White House have focused Brussels' attention on defence and competitiveness -- which critics of climate action say is hindered by green rules.
"The failure to publish" the new targets "sends a clear and troubling message about the EU's commitment to the green transition," said Dario Tamburrano, an EU lawmaker with the Left group.
The commission said the 2040 targets would be finalised as soon as possible, adding the "EU's actions and intentions" were "clear" with a "framework to become a decarbonised economy by 2050" already in place.
"We will continue to be a leading voice for international climate action," it said.
Yet, it has already fallen behind in its international commitments.
It missed a February UN deadline to submit new carbon emissions targets for 2035 under the Paris Agreement. Most nations also failed to get their plans together in time.
- 'Under attack' -
Environmentalists see the EU's dithering as particularly worrying at a time where many look to it for leadership after President Donald Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from the Paris accord.
"It raises unnecessary concerns internationally on the EU's commitments to climate cooperation," said Linda Kalcher, director of Strategic Perspectives, a think tank.
Other big emitters could now "use the EU as an excuse to also be late" and there was a risk some would go ahead and publish lower goals than they would have, had the EU already set the bar high, she added.
Disagreements among member countries and the commission are said to be behind the slow pace of progress.
"There is a lack of political will," said Caroline Francois-Marsal of the Climate Action Network, an advocacy group.
Italy's Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said this month the commission should consider lowering the target to 80 or 85 percent, arguing these were also in line with the net-zero 2050 ambition.
A higher goal risked forcing countries to take "overly aggressive measures" with uncertain outcomes, tying them to "technologies that are not yet mature".
The Czech Republic, home to a power-hungry heavy industry, considers the 90 percent goal impossible to achieve.
Observers say Poland, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, would like the debate to play out after its own presidential elections in May, and France has said Brussels should refrain from setting targets without detailing how to meet them.
"We want a target that is constructed in the most credible way possible," said French Ecological Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher.
"Climate policies are under attack from all sides," concluded Michael Bloss, a German EU lawmaker with the Greens.
SEC ends US companies' need to release climate impact data
Washington (AFP) Mar 27, 2025 -
The United States abandoned plans Thursday to require publicly-listed companies to disclose data on their greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to climate risks, with the financial regulator calling the rules "unnecessarily intrusive."
The Security and Exchange Commission's rules were adopted in March 2024, in the final year of Democrat Joe Biden's presidency, the first time the companies were required to report and address climate risks.
But under the Republican Trump administration the SEC has ended its defense of the disclosure regime.
"The goal of today's Commission action ... is to cease the Commission's involvement in the defense of the costly and unnecessarily intrusive climate change disclosure rules," SEC Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda said in a statement.
Under the regulation, which was to be phased in over the 2025 fiscal year, companies would have been required to report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions -- which cover direct emissions and those for energy purchased to run operations -- when those emissions are "material," or significant.
Listed companies also would have had to report on climate-related risks and their real or potential effects on corporate strategy, business models and forecasts.
"States and private parties have challenged the rules," and the commission had paused the regulation pending completion of the litigation, the SEC said Thursday.
"Following today's Commission vote, SEC staff sent a letter to the court stating that the Commission withdraws its defense of the rules."
Shortly after the text was adopted in March 2024, prosecutors in nine states took the case to a federal appeals court.
At the time, West Virginia's attorney general Patrick Morrisey -- today the state's governor -- described the Biden-era policy as "a backdoor move to undermine the energy industry."
Morrisey had denounced SEC efforts to force companies to act definitively on climate change when "there are people that devote their life to this topic and you can't find much agreement."
A Cornell University study from 2021 showed that 99.9 percent of published research had concluded that climate change was primarily caused by human activity.
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