Speech on the State of Europe: Von der Leyen's climate trick

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EU Commission President von der Leyen after her address on the State of the EU: Climate ambition with a computing trick

Photo: YVES HERMAN / REUTERS

Ursula von der Leyen was not stingy with pathos in the Brussels EU Parliament.

"We have to drive ourselves into the world of tomorrow," said the EU Commission President in her first State of the Union address.

Nowhere is it more necessary to act faster than before.

Even when the corona crisis brought large parts of the world to a standstill, the earth continued to "heat up dangerously".

Evacuations due to the impending glacier break-off on Montblanc, forest fires in the USA, severe crop damage due to a record-breaking drought in Romania showed that the EU has to get serious.

Climate protection should be the highlight of von der Leyen's tenure, then came the coronavirus.

Now the climate president is back - and wants to impose a significantly more stringent climate target on the EU.

By 2030, greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by at least 55 percent compared to 1990, instead of the previous 40 percent.

To put it cautiously, it would be ambitious: in the past 30 years, a reduction of only 25 percent has been achieved, leaving only ten years for the remaining 30 percent.

She knows "that it will be too much for some and too little for others," said von der Leyen.

But it has to be done if the EU wants to achieve its goal of being the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the tightening of the climate target will probably be less than promised - because the Commission is now changing the method of calculation.

Arithmetic trick saves several percentage points

In order to get the new 2030 target off the ground, the Commission has to change its draft climate law presented in March.

In the as yet unpublished amendment text that is available to SPIEGEL, there is an important innovation: Land use - i.e. the CO2 uptake by forests, soils or wetlands, for example - is now to be deducted from emissions.

There was no mention of this in the March bill.

What sounds like a technical detail has it all.

Because the forests alone, which cover around 40 percent of the area of ​​the EU, absorb more than 260 million tons of CO2 per year, according to figures from the EU statistics agency Eurostat.

In a recently announced internal document, the EU Commission came up with similar figures.

After all, this amount accounts for around five percent of 1990 emissions.

The tightening of the 2030 target by 15 percentage points, which von der Leyen announced with a grand gesture in her speech, would decrease by a full third.

"This is how you can make a bella figura," blasphemed the Green MEP Sven Giegold.

He accuses the Commission of an "accounting trick".

Greenpeace's criticism is even more severe: While fires raged in Siberia and California and the forests dried up in Germany, "von der Leyen would like to offset the EU's climate-related efforts with the climate-stressed forests, of all places," says Greenpeace expert Sebastian Mang.

EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans disagrees.

The inclusion of land use only corresponds to the latest methods of the United Nations for calculating carbon sinks, the Dutchman told SPIEGEL.

In addition, shipping was not taken into account in the previous reduction target of 40 percent, which is now to be done.

"We don't do any accounting tricks," emphasizes Timmermans.

Forests could do more to protect the climate

Greenpeace forest expert Christoph Thies nevertheless considers it counterproductive to include CO2 uptake through land use in the general climate goals: "There would only be an incentive to protect forests with a separate target for CO2 uptake through land use."

If the EU wants to make its contribution to the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial age, it needs the forests in full - in addition to all other measures.

In addition, according to Thies, the renaturation of forests and the protection of soils would be a climate protection measure that "could have an immediate impact".

The current CO2 uptake of the forests could probably be doubled.

Around 80 percent of the renewable wood is currently being harvested across the EU.

A reduction to 50 percent would bring a lot.

"We can do it."

Ursula von der Leyen on her climate goals

According to experts, however, it is unlikely that the Paris goal can be maintained.

The world weather authority WMO fears that the 1.5 degree mark will be broken in the next five years.

It is also questionable whether the Commission's climate plan will be adopted in its current form.

The EU Parliament still has to approve the law.

However, there are already calls to reduce emissions by 60 instead of 55 percent by 2030.

It is even more uncertain whether the EU states will go along with it.

The fact that the Commission has so far said little about how climate protection efforts should be distributed among the member states is a "fundamental problem", says Reimund Schwarze from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research.

"We will probably not see a workable result before 2025."

Von der Leyen, on the other hand, is confident.

After all, emissions have been reduced by 25 percent since 1990 - and the EU's economy has grown by more than 60 percent in the same period.

In addition, they now have better technology, greater expertise and the necessary investments.

In any case, it is not just about reducing emissions, but about nothing less than a "systemic modernization of society and the economy".

"We can do it", shouted von der Leyen in her speech, which was given alternately in English, German and French.

You could translate that as: "We can do it."

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