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Lignite-fired power plant in North Rhine-Westphalia: Trading in certificates is to be expanded
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
The result of the vote was a surprise: a majority of the members of the European Parliament voted against the expansion of European emissions trading (ETS).
The vote in Strasbourg was about whether trading in CO₂ certificates should be extended to the areas of road traffic and buildings.
The EU Commission made this proposal last year as part of the climate package the EU is aiming to use to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 55 percent by 2030.
But the reform draft fell through.
The law has been referred back to the Environment Committee to find a new compromise that can be supported by a majority.
The part about a CO₂ limit tax was also not accepted and went back to the committee.
The aim is to impose a CO₂ tax on imports from countries with more lax climate targets in the EU.
"I think that's a shame," said MP Peter Liese (CDU), who is responsible for negotiating the dossier in the EU Parliament.
"As on many other occasions in this report, the far right, the Social Democrats and the Greens voted together."
For the Greens and Social Democrats, the proposal was partly not ambitious enough.
Dispute over consumer burden
At the heart of EU climate policy is emissions trading, in which parts of industry or electricity producers have to pay for the emission of climate-damaging gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂).
The system should now be extended to buildings and traffic.
This was hotly debated because it was feared that consumers would then have to pay even more for heating and driving.
In Germany and other EU countries, these areas are already part of emissions trading.
Members of the Environment Committee had agreed on the now failed reform proposal that corporations should pay for the emission of climate-damaging gases from commercial buildings and commercial traffic from 2025.
Private households would initially have been excluded.
Only when energy prices have fallen and households are already receiving money from a new climate social fund should they be added from 2029.
The allocation of free certificates for CO₂ emissions to certain companies was also controversial until the very end.
This is intended to help competitiveness as long as other regions of the world do not have CO₂ pricing.
There are proposals to stop giving out free certificates after 2030, 2032 or 2035.
The vote is one of several in Strasbourg on important parts of the EU Commission's "Fit for 55" climate package.
It aims to reduce climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 and to become carbon neutral by 2050.
For the laws in the package to come into force, both Parliament and EU countries must agree.
The vote was now about Parliament's position for the negotiations with the member states on the climate package.
mmq/dpa/AFP