EU Environment Council
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)
I represented the UK at the Environment Council in Luxembourg on 11 June, together with Lord Henley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Stewart Stevenson, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change in the Scottish Government, also attended.
The presidency presented progress reports on the proposal for a regulation on biocidal products, the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) directive and the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive.
The Council agreed conclusions on forest protection, and water scarcity and drought. A number of member states intervened to stress the importance of adequately preparing forests for climate change, and the presidency highlighted the need to reconcile increasing water scarcity with rising demand. Ministers also agreed conclusions setting out the EU position for the forthcoming meeting of the parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in October, and conclusions in support of the “Rio+20” UN conference on sustainable development. Lord Henley stressed the importance of concrete outputs from the conference which recognised the need for sustainability, the importance of ecosystems services and international governance in line with future climate change arrangements.
Under any other business, the UK and Germany raised the forthcoming meeting of the International Whaling Convention (IWC). Lord Henley emphasised the importance of IWC reform to ensure conservation of whales, and stressed the need for the EU to show leadership and consistency in opposing commercial whaling. The French raised an AOB item pushing for a moratorium on the authorisation of genetically modified organisms; the UK welcomed the progress made by the Commission and stressed the importance of ensuring proportionate and efficient regulation, but argued against a moratorium.
The lunchtime discussion focused on international climate change. The presidency gave a presentation on the outreach activities undertaken by the presidency and the Commission during the past six months.
The Commission presented their communication analysing the options to move beyond 20% greenhouse gas emission reductions and assessing the risk of carbon leakage. In the policy debate that followed, member states welcomed the communication as providing a solid evidence base for further discussions on this issue. I intervened to underline the key message of the communication that the costs of moving to a 30% target are significant but manageable, and that they have reduced since 2008. I expressed my hope that the EU would show leadership by increasing our target to 30%, and insisted that unless we do so it is very hard to imagine that we will be able to remain on the trajectory of keeping global temperature increase to within 2°C. While a number of other member states’ interventions supported these arguments, others highlighted the reduced capacity in the European economy for the investment which would be required to meet a higher target. The Council agreed conclusions on the communication which noted the need to return to the issues no later than October 2010 and welcomed the Commission’s intention to conduct more detailed analysis.
Lastly, the presidency presented a progress report on the proposed regulation on reducing CO2 emissions from light commercial vehicles (i.e. vans), which was noted by the Council.