Macron Says No Climate Aid for Poland Unless It Backs CO2 Target
Europe Fixes Historic Climate Target With Poland Half On Board
(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron says Poland won’t have access to a 100 billion-euro pot of climate transition funds unless it signs up to the European Union’s emissions goals in June.
Poland was the only holdout as EU leaders pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050 at a summit in Brussels Friday. While 26 nations gave an unqualified endorsement to the goal, Poland, in an unusual fudge, endorsed the objective without committing to meeting it. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was given another six months to decide whether to join the EU effort.
“One member country doesn’t have the necessary visibility in its national strategy,” Macron said at a press conference. “If in the end they don’t sign up, Poland will be excluding itself from mechanisms like the solidarity mechanism.”
The EU’s historic decision sets in motion a radical overhaul of the economy but despite adding funding to help poorer states like Poland make the transition it also laid bare the divisions in the continent.
The late-night negotiations with Morawiecki highlight the difficulties ahead for the EU as it works out how to pay for an overhaul that will transform everything from energy production to transport, agriculture and the design of cities.
“Poland will reach climate neutrality at its own pace,” Morawiecki said. “We will adjust the pace to the condition of our economy, to what we can afford and to what the Just Transition Fund will be and how much Poland will get from this fund.”
The leaders’ statement gives the commission the mandate to start designing laws in an unprecedented environmental clean-up and has already begun to spur action by industrial giants. ArcelorMittal announced on Friday that it set a target to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 to contribute to the Green Deal.
“This is the outcome investors were looking for,” said Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. “The policy certainty it provides will help unlock the additional flows of capital required to deliver a climate neutral future.”
Polish Break
Leaders agreed to return to the issue in June and before then the EU will also be negotiating its next seven-year budget. That may offer the rest of the bloc a chance to turn up the pressure on Morawiecki with Poland already the biggest beneficiary of EU funds and Warsaw angling for additional help from the transition fund to clean up its power industry.
“The devil’s in the details and we want to explain the details, so that the new fund will serve a real, fair transformation of Poland’s economy, the power sector, and serve Polish households,” Morawiecki told reporters Friday. “This could be a huge injection of very good, extra funds.”
The net-zero emissions target, which EU leaders have been debating for almost a year, constitutes the cornerstone of the commission’s far-reaching strategy to stake its economic future on an environmental clean-up.
With U.S. President Donald Trump set to pull the world’s biggest economy out of the Paris Climate Accord and China, the world’s biggest polluter, still building more coal power plants than the rest of the world combined, Europe is looking to seize the initiative in the global campaign to rein in the effects of climate change -- and betting that it will bring a dividend in terms of jobs and economic growth.
Under the commission’s proposals, the transition to climate neutrality would start next year and involve stricter emission limits for industries from cars to chemicals, revamped energy taxes, new rules on subsidies for companies, greener farming, and possibly an environmental import tax. Everything from finance to the design of cities would need to become more sustainable.
“I am pleased with this important agreement yesterday about climate change,” European Council President Charles Michel said on Friday. “It was very important for the EU to decide and to have a common goal -- climate neutrality by 2050 -- with a clear vision about the investment we have to develop.”
--With assistance from Robert Jameson, Arne Delfs, Viktoria Dendrinou, Nikos Chrysoloras, Ian Wishart, Jonathan Stearns, John Follain and Maciej Onoszko.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ewa Krukowska in Brussels at ekrukowska@bloomberg.net;Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Ben Sills
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