Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety Ordinary meeting
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ENVI European Parliament
Seguir as suas sessõesPierfrancesco Maran
Who abstain? Adopted.
Compromise number six. Who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
Compromise number seven. Who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
Compromise number ten. Who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
Now we have the final vote by roll call vote. The vote is open. The vote is closed. And it's adopted, sixty-one in favor, nine against, nine abstention. Congratulations to both rapporteurs.
And now we have a small pause. We thank the SANT committee and we will go on with our voting session for ENVI in a few minutes.
Colleagues, if we go back to our seats, we can start with the ENVI session. The first item is the adoption of the agenda. If there are no objections, the draft agenda can be adopted without modification. Interpretation and webstreaming are the same of the previous committee. The coordinators' recommendations have been circulated electronically.
If there are no objections, they can be deemed approved. And now we can move to our voting session. The first item is an opinion. The rapporteur is Nicolas González Casares.
He asked to have a speech for one minute to introduce the vote.
Nicolás González Casares
Thank you, sir. I will speak in Spanish. Quiero agradecer el apoyo de los distintos grupos a los principales compromisos. Partíamos de posiciones distintas y ahora hemos llegado a buenos acuerdos. Y estos compromisos permiten llevar a los comités de ITRE y SANT un mandato claro de este comité de ENVI en defensa de los principios medioambientales, de seguridad alimentaria y con el enfoque One Health.
Y yo creo que el mandato debe ser claro. La Biotech Act debe ser un reglamento en beneficio de la ciudadanía europea, promoción de la innovación al servicio de la ciudadanía para el acceso a medicamentos innovadores al mismo tiempo que creamos una industria robusta en Europa. Son por ello unos compromisos equilibrados que buscan el consenso incluso en partes polémicas como la extensión de los certificados de propiedad. Quiero agradecer el trabajo de los ponentes y espero pues un buen resultado y mucho consenso. Muchas gracias.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we make a test vote to check if even in our ENVI side everything is fine. I open the vote.
I close the vote. Okay. Okay, now we can start with the compromise number five. Who is in favor? Who is against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number three. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number six. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number seven. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number ten. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Amendment 312. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Rejected. Compromise number 11. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number one. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number eight.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Abstain. Adopted. Compromise number 4.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Abstain. Adopted. Compromise number 12.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Abstain. Adopted. Compromise number 9.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Abstain. Adopted. And now we go to final vote by roll call vote.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. And it's adopted, 53 in favor, 11 against, 5 abstentions. Congratulations to the rapporteur. And now we have the resolution about the UN Climate Change Conference in Antalya.
We start with the compromise number 1. Who is in favor?
Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted. The DEVE 12 amendment. Who is in favor?
Who's against? Who abstain? Check. I close the vote. It's rejected by one vote.
Compromise number two. Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
Compromise number three. Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
DEVE amendment number seven. Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Check again.
I close the vote. Rejected the same way. Compromise number four. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted.
DEVE amendment number two. Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstains? By one of difference, I have to check, otherwise you never know.
I open the vote. I close the vote. And it's adopted in this case. Thirty-eight in favor in this case. Compromise number five.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstains? Adopted. Compromise number six.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstains? Adopted. DEVE amendment number nine.
Who is in favor? Who's against? Who abstains? Check. I open the vote.
I close the vote. And it's rejected. Compromise number seven. Who's in favor? Who's against?
Who abstains? Adopted. Compromise number eight. Who is in favor? Who's against?
Who abstains? Adopted. Compromise number nine. Who is in favor?
Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number eleven, who's in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. Compromise number twelve, who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain?
Adopted. ITRE amendment 1A, who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted.
ITRE amendment 1B, who's in favor? Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted. ITRE amendment 1C, who's in favor?
Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted. ITRE amendment 1D, who's in favor? Who's against?
Who abstain? Adopted. ITRE amendment 1E, who's in favor? It was quite clear. If you need, we can check 1D anyway.
I open the vote 1D. I close the vote. Yeah, it was fifty in favor. 1E, who's in favor?
Who's against? Who abstain? Adopted. And now final vote by roll call vote, the vote is open. I close the vote.
And it's adopted, 50 in favor, 16 against, 3 abstention, congratulations. Now we make a one minute interruption before the next item.
Okay, if we take a seat, we can go on with the next item. I kindly ask all the colleagues and also all the people in the room. We continue our meeting with the consideration of the draft report on the review of the ETS. These two files are important elements of a legislative package implementing the EU's legally binding 2030 climate target. The rapporteur will present his amendment to the Commission proposal and as usual this will be followed by intervention of the shadow rapporteurs and then of the other members.
Unfortunately, Peter Liese cannot be present, so Jessica Polfjärd will speak on behalf of Peter Liese. Please, you have the floor for seven minutes.
Jessica Polfjärd
Thank you, Chair, and on behalf of Peter Liese, he's very sorry that he could not be here due to medical conditions, but I will read out what he has already prepared.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Pardon, Mrs. Polfjärd, I can't ask the colleague to give attention to the speaker.
Jessica Polfjärd
So I'll start over again and I thank you, Chair, for on the behalf of Peter Liese, who cannot be here on behalf of medical conditions, but I know that he really, really would like to have been here with you to also state what is on his mind. But I will try to do my best to read out what Peter's thoughts are about the review. The review on the ETS is extremely important and it's urgent. We need to improve the ETS to address four of the biggest challenges of our time. First, climate change.
We need to meet our climate targets, that is why we need to keep the ETS the most successful climate instrument in the world. Since its introduction, the ETS has reduced emissions by 1,060 tons of CO2 since its introduction. That is more than 137 countries and territories of the world, including EU members like Denmark, Croatia, and Slovakia. And the ETS is now also influencing climate policy beyond Europe together with CBAM. Senator Whitehouse in the US once called CBAM the last lifeboat of international climate policy, and an MIT professor recently told me it is bigger than a lifeboat.
Second, competitiveness and jobs. Tight is right, too tight is broke.
And the ETS is too tight. The ETS needs to give industry more breathing space and a realistic path to decarbonization. That means looking at free allowances, third country allowances, negative emissions, and other issues. Third, energy prices. We need to reduce the cost of energy, especially electricity.
The ETS is not the main reason for Europe's high electricity prices, but a well-designed ETS can be part of the solution. Look at Europe, countries with the same ETS have very different electricity prices. The main problem is our dependency on fossil fuels, especially on gas. We need to invest in clean domestic energy. That is how we will reduce both costs and dependency.
And fourth, resilience. Europe needs to become more independent, including when it comes to defense. It is encouraging to see companies created through the Green Deal now working with European defense companies to produce fuels independently of imports. So how do we bring these four priorities together? It may seem like squaring the circle, but I believe there is one clear answer.
We need investment in clean domestic energy. That is why, in principle, I strongly support conditionality. Trade unions support giving industry more breathing space. They also rightly insist that additional free allowances should be linked to investment and protecting jobs. My draft proposal is not perfect, and I am open to working with all of you to improve it, but we need to work fast.
The timeline is extremely ambitious. We are determined to support the One Europe One Market roadmap by the top of the three institutions, which obliges us to finish early next year. And we cannot be significantly later than the Council. The Council will fix its position on the 8th of December. And there is one issue that should unite us all, including industry and environmental NGOs.
Member states need to use ETS revenues much more effectively. These revenues should drive investment in clean domestic energy. Too much of the money has not been used efficiently enough. If we want that to change, we need to act together, and we need to challenge member states to do more.
A few words on the sectoral issues. On waste, Parliament has repeatedly called for waste to be included in the ETS. I understand that 2028 would be too fast. The Commission's gradual approach towards 2034 is more pragmatic. But we must use this time to prevent landfill from becoming the alternative.
Landfilling must stop. Incineration is better, but it is not the final solution. If we burn waste and emit CO2, we still harm the climate. The current situation is also unfair to the cement industry, which use similar waste but has to surrender allowances. Other industries, including chemicals, also support inclusion.
On maritime transport, I think the Commission has made a good proposal.
We are looking at improvements, particularly to protect European ports against evasion. And on aviation, I also think that the Commission has found a reasonable balance, including intercontinental flights to the US and Asia could have triggered serious reactions from third countries. The 4,000 kilometer approach improves environmental integrity while being fairer to European hubs and tourism regions. But the devil is still in the details. That is why we must work hard and work together to make the text better.
Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we open the floor to the shadow rapporteurs. We start with the S&D, Mohammed Chahim for two... Ah, okay, for with Elisabetta Gualmini for two minutes.
Annalisa Corrado
Grazie, Presidente, parlo in italiano. E grazie al relatore per il lavoro svolto. Partiamo da un'osservazione: l'ETS ha contribuito a ridurre le emissioni, ad alleggerire la nostra drammatica dipendenza dai combustibili fossili e dai loro prezzi fuori controllo, creando un forte incentivo alla decarbonizzazione. L'ETS funziona.
Prima di passare al provvedimento sul settore marittimo, per il quale sono relatrice ombra, due messaggi sulla revisione generale. Il primo: se ci sono delle storture, una è che l'ETS non è una tassa, ma lo diventa se le risorse che genera non vanno a sostenere la transizione, ma sono invece disperse nei bilanci pubblici. Questo è un punto cruciale: perché l'ETS funzioni davvero, i proventi devono sostenere la transizione. Punto secondo: i benchmark devono essere rigorosi e calibrati sulle eccellenze dei settori, ma aderenti alla realtà. Se i dati mostrano distorsioni significative, come stiamo discutendo sui fallback benchmark, non possiamo aspettare anni per correggerle.
Vengo quindi al sistema di monitoraggio, comunicazione e verifica delle emissioni, cosiddetto MRV. Partiamo da una buona proposta della Commissione, che giustamente il relatore preserva: un unico monitoring plan, un reporting più integrato tra MRV e FuelEU, meno duplicazioni. Semplificare deve significare meno burocrazia, non meno informazioni o meno controlli. I dati sono essenziali anche per decidere quando e come estendere l'ETS a nuove tipologie e tonnellaggi di navi, e non possiamo guardare soltanto alle dimensioni: contano l'uso delle navi e i servizi che garantiscono.
Una nave che assicura un servizio essenziale a una comunità insulare non è la stessa cosa di un'imbarcazione ad alto impatto destinata al lusso. Infine, attenzione al transhipment: traffici europei possono essere spostati verso hub appena fuori dall'Unione Europea per ridurre l'esposizione all'ETS. Così non si riducono le emissioni, si rischia di spostare lavoro ed emissioni fuori dall'Europa. La Commissione propone giustamente di rafforzare le regole contro questa elusione. Dovremmo verificare se sia sufficiente e se è necessario fare di più.
Grazie.
Mathilde Androuët
Vous le savez, nous sommes opposés au marché carbone. Pour nous, la compétitivité de nos entreprises et le pacte vert ne sont pas conciliables. Mais nous prenons part au débat pour défendre les entreprises européennes contre l'idéologie verte qui veut leur fin. Si l'industrie a besoin de dizaines de milliards d'euros de subventions pour supporter la décarbonation imposée par l'ETS, ce système est-il réellement viable économiquement ? Assurément non.
Monsieur le rapporteur, nous soutenons les assouplissements proposés pour l'industrie, mais nous voulons aller plus loin. Ramener le facteur de réduction linéaire à 1,7 % de 2031 à 2035, puis à 1,3 % à partir de 2036 pour laisser aux entreprises le temps d'investir.
Nous vous suivrons sur la mise aux enchères de quotas supplémentaires lorsque la trajectoire des émissions ou les conditions du marché le justifient. Nous soutiendrons aussi la prolongation et l'augmentation des allocations gratuites ainsi que le retour d'un maximum de recettes de l'ETS vers les secteurs concernés avec le moins de charges administratives possible. En revanche, nous refusons l'inclusion des incinérateurs de déchets municipaux. Renchérir le traitement des déchets ne les fera pas disparaître. Le surcoût risque surtout de retomber sur les collectivités et les ménages.
Développons d'abord des solutions de tri et de recyclage accessibles. Nous refusons également les conditionnalités et les obligations imposées aux États sur l'utilisation de leurs recettes d'enchères, notamment les seuils minimaux de dépenses. Les États doivent rester libres d'utiliser ces ressources. Pour le transport aérien, nous privilégions CORSIA plutôt qu'une extension de la tarification européenne. Soutenir l'innovation, oui, mais à un rythme soutenable pour l'industrie.
Enfin, les objectifs européens de décarbonation restent trop élevés. On ne peut pas reporter les efforts de l'industrie sur l'agriculture et les transports, déjà en difficulté. Il faut revoir les objectifs et leur calendrier. Nous soutiendrons les assouplissements utiles, mais ces petites corrections ne seront pas tenables à long terme. Ce marché carbone est une balle dans le pied de l'industrie européenne.
Viktória Ferenc
Thank you, chair, I will speak in Hungarian.
Az ETS jelenlegi formájában a magas energiaárakhoz és az európai ipar elvesztéséhez járul hozzá. Miközben a Bizottság javaslatának vannak ugyan pozitív elemei, ezek messze nem elegendőek. Ezért a frakciónk több módosítót is be fog nyújtani Liese úr jelentéséhez. Az európai versenyképesség javítása csak akkor valósítható meg, ha rendelkezésre állnak a szükséges infrastruktúrák, technológiák és energiaárak. Az ETS további szigorítása nem történhet meg ezek hiányában.
Sajnos sem a Bizottság, sem a néppárti rapportőr javaslata nem foglalkozik az európai családok fűtési és közlekedési költségeit 2028-tól jelentősen megemelő ETS2 rendszerével. Nem fogadhatjuk el, hogy újabb terheket hárítsunk a háztartásokra, miközben az európai kibocsátások aránya globálisan elenyésző. Ezért mi javasoljuk az ETS2 azonnali hatályon kívül helyezését.
Ami a részleteket illeti, elutasítjuk az ingyenes kiosztások feltételességhez való kötését. Nem fogadható el, hogy az ingyenes kvóták 80 százalékát dekarbonizációs tervekhez és beruházásokhoz kössük, miközben sok európai vállalat számára éppen a magas energiaárak és a karbonköltségek jelentik a legnagyobb versenyhátrányt a szennyezőbb technológiákkal előállító globális versenytársakhoz képest. A lineáris csökkentési tényezők korrekciójára tett javaslat helyes irány, de mi tovább csökkentenénk azt. Eltörölnénk a 2036-ra tervezett korrekciós mechanizmust és automatikusan kiigazítanánk az LRF-et. Ellenezzük a lakossági hulladékégetés ETS alá vonását, valamint fontosnak tartjuk a távhő számára biztosított ingyenes kvóták megtartását.
Sőt, további ingyenes kvótákat tartunk szükségesnek a távhő számára, különösen az alacsonyabb jövedelmű tagállamokban. A földrajzi egyensúly és szolidaritás elvét hatékonyan kell alkalmazni a különböző finanszírozási eszközökben, így javasoljuk fenntartani a modernizációs alaphoz való hozzáférést. Az exportáló vállalatokat is támogatni kell, hogy az európai ipar versenyképessége ne szenvedjen további hátrányt. A CBAM hatálya alá tartozó ágazatok számára a Bizottság javaslatához képest tovább halasztanánk az ingyenes kvóták kivezetését. Tisztelt rapportőr, Európában és az Európai Parlamentben is létezik egy jobboldali többség.
Arra kérem, hogy éljen vele és hozzunk végre olyan döntéseket, amelyek védik az európai ipart, az európai munkahelyeket és az itt élő családokat. Köszönöm.
Mohammed Chahim
Thank you, Chair, you know, in our life as a Members of Parliament we have to be some sometimes in parallel meetings, apologies for me being late. I mean, my main point here is the following. And I've been looking at it for quite a long time and I I can only conclude the following. I don't believe that the Commission proposal nor Peter Liese's proposal will fulfill the climate law that we have supported. It's a very, very simple statement and maybe we should ask the European Climate Council to have a look at it.
When we hit the 55 target for Fit for 55, the ETS sectors contributed 67% of decarbonization to that target. So how do we think to reach the 85 or 90% gross target that we have in the EU by only getting to 88%? That either means that the effort sharing sectors have to do more, agriculture, I'm waiting for the proposal to come from the Commission and I'm also waiting for the EPP to support that approach. It doesn't add up. It doesn't add up.
So I'm either we are making laws that we are willing to break directly and then my conclusion is you're not taking yourself serious, or there's an omission that we are not looking at. Maybe I'm not smart enough, that could be. Maybe and I'm of course I would love to be explained a bit more then how we will get to the 85 or 90% whether you add the 5% of domestic or international credits. It doesn't add up. So let's stick to that because I think that's the fundamental part of this whole debate.
Then we can discuss on what to do, what measures, where to go a bit more, where to create a little bit more flexibility or not. And I told this to the Commission many, many, many times. Therefore I'm a bit also annoyed by it. You cannot say that the 90% target of the EU in 2040 should be connected to a 90% ETS target. It could be, but then the effort sharing sectors have to do more.
That's agriculture, that's transport, that's all non-ETS sectors. That's my main point. Whether I look at the report of Peter Liese or whether I look at the report of the Commission, it doesn't add up. My conclusion is that willingly the European Commission has put that the climate law, we have an agreement from Council and the Parliament to the climate law, and then they come with legislation that breaks the climate law. And I think that's not a good way to do legislation.
Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you, Mr. Chahim. We have for ECR remotely connected Alexandr Vondra. Can you hear us?
Yes, we do.
Alexandr Vondra
You know, you see the cars behind me, so I'm greeting you. We have a ECR study days and we are in the polygon of the Škoda automotive car makers. So many greetings.
Alexandr Vondra
Okay. So look, I wish you could stand here with me, with us, to feel the pride of the European industry what it has achieved and at the same time the shadow of the economic disaster that looms over it.
We discussed various elements of the ETS file and surely there will be two approaches: a defense and conservation of the flagship climate legislation, or an attempt to reform it and adjust it to the current state of affairs in the world. And just to react what Mohammed has said, for us the 2040 is not a gospel, is not a Bible. Yeah, if we are feeding the Chinese monster with that idealistic approach and seeing that the Americans, Russians, Chinese, Indians are not doing the same, so I'm refusing to commit this suicide online. Yeah, so I think Peter as a rapporteur is not among us, so I would address here specifically EPP because it holds the key to the success of the reform of the ETS system. And in fact, the key problem lies within the German coalition that does not allow CDU to fully deploy reform, no matter how much you wish.
And EPP amendments bear all signs of this dilemma, despite the commitments of the EPP leadership to saving industries in Europe. A trajectory of the linear reduction factor is way too quick. The industry needs more time and the curve is supposed to be much, much flatter. The phase-out of the free allowances as proposed will soon put European industries under the tremendous pressure.
They must be kept in abundance with more flexibility for member states and for a longer period of time. The investment conditionality is a no-go. Even softened by your amendment, it's yet another regulatory layer. Free allowances are bridge, not a reward for good behavior. The CBAM factor can progress if and only if we see tangible effects.
Remember, this carbon tariff is a new tool. Let us not use our industry as laboratory rats. The modernization fund is successful tools that's worth to be increased. Support from the modernization fund should be used for investment ensuring security of energy supply. Member states need more flexibility.
And last but not least, there is the challenge to keep the district heating alive and also this waste incineration as it proposes a problem because it will lead just to more landfilling. And that's exactly what the environmentalist would not wish for.
So it all boils down to this: we are ready to make a clear cut and send the world a signal, Europe is still vital and ready to restart itself in a fight for its future or not. If so, count me and on my group in. If the vision is yet another reiteration of a choking law, we refuse to be part of it. Thank you very much.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now the next speaker from Renew Emma Wiesner, you have three minutes and who wants to take the floor as catch the eye can make us a sign.
Emma Ytterell
Thank you so much Chair, I have the privilege of shadowing this file on behalf of Renew Europe group. And I want to thank the rapporteur. We are facing a very tough timeline, but we will have to do it, we will do it, because sometimes you should not do only what's easy but what's necessary. And for this we need necessary in our climate agenda, sorry, it's necessary to have clarity in the climate agenda and clarity for our industries. I think it's very important to look at where we would be without the EU ETS.
We are in the middle of a fossil crisis, and the facts and reports show that without the ETS, we would have had much higher use of fossil fuels in Europe, and we would have have much higher energy prices, a much tougher situation on Europe's industry. Without the ETS, the ETS has been lowering our cost, making us deal with this crisis much better. Without the ETS, we would be more dependent of Putin, of oligarchs, of the Hormuz Strait, but it's thanks to the ETS that we actually manage this crisis without rationing of fossil fuels. So when some of you says you want to protect the European industry by deleting the ETS or delaying it or weakening it, you are not protecting the industry, you're protecting the fossil industry and you're protecting the high prices. Without ETS, it will not be possible to lower energy costs for Europe's citizens.
So at some point, you need to take a firm decision: do you support the ETS or do you don't?
The Commission say they believe in the system but on the other hand they also present an ETS pointed out by Mohammed Chahim here that with the LRF, the changes to the MSR, the benchmark, the CBAM, the international credits, the free allowances, we are weakening it. We're not standing up to what we said in the climate law and we are not providing certainty and clarity to the industry and this cumulative effect of all of these changes is really weakening it and it's not sending the signal that we are backing and supporting the ETS. So that's indeed what I will have in mind. Our industries yes they need certainty, yes they need more investments, yes we can do that with ETS but we cannot also do that by lowering and weakening all of the other parameters building the ETS strong. So that's what we in Renew Europe group will focus on but I want to end on a on a happy note and look at also the good parts of the proposals, the strong ones where we see a positive development.
Renew we always been in favor of including waste incineration and landfill also with a carbon costs. We are positive seeing more revenues directed towards ETS sectors and finally we are seeing a market for carbon removal so the CDR market is a really positive element but indeed with all of these three we want to do more but this is a good step in the right direction. Yes it will be tough but it is manageable and we will do it. Thank you.
Michael Bloss
Thank you very much chair and thank you colleagues.
We are looking forward to a good, constructive debate and I hope we come to good conclusions. And let me start by saying I think it's very telling that Alexandr Vondra sits at the Škoda factory and he's ranting against future technologies. And if you look at Škoda, you see that their electric car has a year-to-year take-up of 75% growth, whereas all of their combustion engine cars are going down. So the question for me is, what do you actually want to achieve? What do you want to support?
Do you want to support those companies that have a future, that create workplaces, that create wealth, or do you trying to protect something where we all know that it doesn't go further? And I think we should choose the future, not the past. And if you look at the Commission proposal, I agree, Mohammed, with you, it's really problematic that we do not reach the climate targets. The Commission proposal alone would add around 2 gigatons of emissions, three times the amount of annual German emissions.
And then Peter Liese's proposal adds another 60 megatons. That's an increase of the overall cap of 45%. And the problem is not only the climate, the problem is that this is the tool, the most effective tool for Europe's transformation and for investment, and we can be really proud of it. It's working. And when you do this, you are destroying the business cases of the frontrunners, the certainty, and that's the least what we need to have in this current economic situation.
My inbox is full of companies that say, please, we need to protect the LRF, we have made investments, from the steel industry, but also from energy industry, from cement industry, because they want to go forward. And now the problem is that Peter Liese says, okay, we give them free allocation, but that doesn't help them because they have made their investments on the basis of the LRF.
And there are analysis that says that the price would drop almost, would drop around 40% with this LRF proposed. So we need, there is a conditio sine qua non for us Greens, and this is the frontrunners, those who are creating the future, they must not have a worse deal with this proposal than beforehand. And currently this is unfortunately not in sight. Now second, then there is those who say, oh, but what, we have huge problems, for instance the chemical industry. And I understand that.
I want the chemical industry to stay. But the chemical industry currently has an effective CO2 price of 10 euros. 10 euros. Not 90, not 100, 10 euros. And the biggest problem is the energy prices.
By the way, they get now 120 million free allowances through the benchmark. So that's around 10 billion euros. And but this even doesn't solve the energy prices. So don't try to fix something with the ETS which you cannot fix with the ETS, which is their high energy price because they have to use fossil LNG gas and they will do so in the future. So for us it's very clear.
If you weaken the ETS like it is proposed like this, you will not be able to achieve the climate targets, you will hurt the frontrunners and the renewable business, and you won't solve any problem. And we Greens, we are in this race to solve the problems. Thank you very much.
Per Clausen
Thank you very much and I will be speaking Danish. Sandheden er den, at Europas afhængighed af fossile brændstoffer er en økonomisk, en social og en klima- og miljømæssig katastrofe, som skal løses. Og løsningen er ikke at svække et af EU's stærkeste klimaværktøjer, som Kommissionen lægger op til her. Der er positive elementer i Kommissionens forslag og i Elises betænkning. Vi støtter, at ETS-indtægterne i højere grad skal bruges til industriel dekarbonisering, og at der indføres stærkere betingelser for tildeling af gratis kvoter.
Vi støtter udvidelsen af ETS til søfart og luftfart samt inkluderingen af affaldsforbrændingen. Men det er stadigvæk dybt, dybt problematisk, at man øger udbuddet af ETS-kvoter og dermed risikerer at undergrave EU's klimamål.
I Left-gruppen vil vi meget gerne arbejde for et kompromis, men vi har også nogle spørgsmål, som vi lægger meget, meget stor vægt på. For det første skal vi fastholde den uændrede reduktionsbane for ETS-loftet frem til 2035. Virksomheder, som allerede har investeret i dekarbonisering, skal ikke straffes ved at svække den uændrede reduktionsbane. Løsningen kan ikke være at sænke klimaambitionerne og i stedet give frontløberne flere gratis kvoter. Vi skal afvise internationale kreditter, fordi de erstatter emissionsreduktioner i EU og samtidig også risikerer at sætte vores investeringer og de arbejdspladser, der følger med, på spil.
ETS skal være socialt retfærdig. Gratis kvoter og offentlige midler skal levere gode arbejdspladser, reelle yderligere emissionsreduktioner og troværdige veje til dekarbonisering. For det tredje bør kulstoffjernelse fortsat holdes uden for ETS-compliancesystem. Kulstoffjernelse bør udvikles gennem separate EU-støtteordninger og lovgivningsmæssige rammer. Det er en forbedring, at udkastet til betænkning kobler kulstoffjernelse sammen med ekstra kvoter, men det fortsat alvorlige problemer med bæredygtigheden.
For det fjerde bør vi ikke forlænge gratis kvotetildeling, hvor CBAM allerede giver beskyttelse. Vi bør fastholde den aftalte udfasning af gratis kvoter og i stedet lukke smuthuller i CBAM frem for at svække ETS. Det vil være en forenkling sammenlignet med betingelserne for gratis kvoter, men i det omfang gratis kvoter fortsat findes, skal de være underlagt strenge miljømæssige og sociale betingelser.
For det femte skal ETS-indtægterne bruges til den grønne omstilling. Vi bør øremærke auktionsindtægterne til yderligere klimaindsatser og en retfærdig omstilling med stærke sociale tiltag, ordentlig gennemsigtighed og overvågning samt uden fossile subsidier. Vores mål er at styrke den europæiske industri, ikke at svække den. Vi ønsker et ETS, der hjælper europæisk industri med at blive grøn, konkurrencedygtig og socialt bæredygtig. Det er der, fremtiden ligger.
Anja Arndt
Danke, Herr Vorsitzender, ich werde auf Deutsch sprechen. Heute geht es um die längst überfällige Revision des Emissionshandelssystems. Dieses System hat massiv dazu beigetragen, unsere Stahl-, Aluminium-, Zement-, Glas-, Papier- und Chemiebranche, aber auch unsere Raffinerien, Fluggesellschaften, Reedereien und alle Verbraucher finanziell schwer zu schädigen. Diese Unternehmen werden seit 2005 mit steigenden und unberechenbaren CO2-Zwangsabgaben überzogen, weil sie CO2, ein natürliches Spurengas, emittieren. Wir reden von über 43 Milliarden Euro allein im Jahr 2025.
Hunderttausende Arbeitsplätze gingen inzwischen verloren.
Sie hier von den Christdemokraten bis ganz links haben das den Bürgern und Unternehmen eingebrockt. Jetzt soll das auch noch auf die kommunale Müllverbrennungsanlagen, kleinere Schiffe und weitere internationale Flugverbindungen ausgeweitet werden. Und das wird immer so weitergehen, weil Sie blind auf das irrationale Ziel der Klimaneutralität hinarbeiten und alles andere ignorieren. Die Revision verlängert zwar die kostenlose Zuteilung und verbessert die Marktstabilitätsreserve, führt aber auch neue Investitionsauflagen für die kostenlose Zuteilung von Zertifikaten ein. Wir unterstützen als ESN jede sinnvolle Schadensbegrenzung und Entlastung, die im vorliegenden Bericht vorgeschlagen werden.
Aber ich möchte heute auch noch einmal darauf hinweisen, dass der von Ihnen angestrebte Effekt aufs Klima ausbleibt. Die vom ETS erfassten Wirtschaftssektoren emittierten im Jahr 1990 rund 2,3 Milliarden Tonnen CO2. Selbst wenn wir diese auf Null bringen, verringert sich die globale Temperatur nur um ein Tausendstel Grad Celsius pro Jahr nach Berechnungsgrundlagen des IPCC. Das sind ganz grobe Überschlagsrechnungen, die ich jetzt hier angestellt habe.
In 100 Jahren sind es gerade einmal ein Zehntel Grad Celsius. Beenden Sie diesen Irrweg. Auf das Klima wirken über 200 weitere Faktoren ein. Klima muss in seiner Gesamtheit verstanden werden. Wir von der ESN bleiben dabei: Das ETS gehört sofort aufgehoben.
Alles andere ist verantwortungslos.
Pierfrancesco Maran
So, we start with the catch-the-eye. First speaker, In't Veld, for one minute and 30.
Ingeborg Ter Laak
Okay. Thank you, and many thanks to Peter Liese and his draft report on the ETS revision. ETS is an important instrument to steer towards this future sustainable economy of ours. And therefore, I think the report really makes an effort for companies that actually invest in carbon decarbonization. And so I'm so glad the carbon removals are given place in the ETS.
But it's important to have some improvements in the report as well. On free allowance, I understand the principle of gradual phase-out. But I think it's important that the question, what are we doing during the transition?
Peter Liese's report makes a useful link between free allowances and actual decarbonization efforts. Companies that invest in cleaner production should have clear pathways and should not be treated the same way as companies that do not invest. And I would support a very strong focus on frontrunners. We should make sure that companies investing today in technologies such as electrification, clean hydrogen production are not just put at a disadvantage. ETS should create an incentive to move faster.
And third, the carbon removals. They play a role, particularly for emissions that are generally difficult to eliminate, but they should not complement emission reduction. They should not become an alternative to them. So there are lots of good elements in Peter Liese's report. The challenge now is to get the right balance.
And also, we entrepreneurs have a horizon of five, 10, 15 years of investment. We should be trustworthy in our policies. Thank you.
Thank you. And I will speak on behalf of myself and it's a quite important distinction because I will start by being quite honest and I'm a little bit disappointed and I was expecting more. If we really are serious about meeting our climate targets, we cannot lower the ambitions of the ETS.
Jessica Polfjärd
I think that we as politicians should not pick winners. We should instead set clear rules for the ETS. Then we should let the market reward the companies and technologies that reduce emissions most effectively. But this draft report now does the opposite by suddenly changing the rules and weakening the ambition of the LRF. That reduces the rewards for decarbonization.
And it punishes those who did exactly what we asked them to do. The draft report also does not address the problems with the Commission's proposal investment booster, the risk that we end up supporting companies making new investments rather than companies that have already taken the risk. That means that we are indirectly punishing companies that have already built the facilities and invested billions in low-carbon technologies. That means we are indirectly punishing the frontrunners. And I think that they move first, what signal are we sending to next investor?
These are the investor that we depend on to deliver the green transition.
If Europe wants to remain globally competitive, we cannot pull the rug out from their European companies already leading the transition. And we cannot weaken the ETS and undermine their investment incentives. If we want Europe to lead the transition, we must reward the frontrunners, not make them regret that they moved first. Thank you.
Heléne Fritzon
Thank you chair, I will continue in Swedish because this is a really important debate in my country. Låt mig vara tydlig, förslaget är en attack på våra klimatambitioner och vi måste vara ärliga. Förslaget minskar takten i klimatomställningen och bygger in väldigt många osäkerheter. Internationella krediter, ja men det är ju bara kreativ bokföring. Förslaget är också ett hårt slag mot de företag som har gått före i den gröna omställningen.
De företag som har gjort allt rätt, som har gjort precis det vi ville med vår lagstiftning. De har investerat stort i klimatomställningen och de behöver nu ett fortsatt välfungerande förslag. Den här debatten gör en sak väldigt tydlig. Detta redan dåliga förslag blir mycket värre och många röster här inne höjs ju för att vi ska istället för att bekämpa klimatförändringen så vill vi tydligen bekämpa ETS. Man måste ju ställa sig frågan: varför vill vi ändra på ett system som fungerar bra och som är berömt i hela världen?
Det är dags att lyssna, lyssna på de som går före, det konkurrenskraftiga gröna näringslivet som tydligt kan visa att det krävs investeringar och innovationsförmåga och då, då går vi faktiskt framåt. Jag ska ändå säga att det finns några delar i förslaget som faktiskt är bra. Att inkludera avfall är viktigt, det är rätt steg att ta, och att pengar ska återinvesteras i klimatomställningen. För övrigt anser jag att alla nu måste höja sina röster för ett ambitiöst fortsatt ETS. Tack.
Anna Zalewska
Thank you.
Przysłuchując się tej dyskusji, mam wrażenie, że państwo nie mają kontaktu z przemysłem, że nie czytają gazet, że nie rozmawiają z Europejczykami. Pierwsze uwagi. Kolega mówi o samochodach elektrycznych, bierze skądś jakieś dane, a jedna marka globalna właśnie zaprzestała produkcji samochodów elektrycznych, bo nie ma dostępu do litu. Mamy opowieść o czystym wodorze. Wszystkie firmy, które zajmowały się czystym wodorem w Europie, właśnie zamykają biznesy, bo uznają, że jest to absolutnie nieekonomiczne.
Kiedy rozmawiamy o tym, że oczywiście mnóstwo instytucji zainwestowało w dekarbonizację, to tak naprawdę mówimy o tym, że będziemy się jako Europejczycy składać poprzez ETS na to, żeby ich dofinansowywać, ponieważ nie wytrzymują absolutnie konkurencji na rynku. Chcę jasno powiedzieć, że uzasadnienie jest absurdalne. Po pierwsze, nie zatrzymamy w ten sposób zmian klimatu. Musimy się do tego dostosować. Po drugie, to Unia Europejska jest odpowiedzialna za wyprowadzenie emisji poza Unię Europejską, za podwyższenie emisji globalnie.
Jednocześnie mówimy tutaj o tym, że to jest droga do tego, żeby ograniczyć, zmniejszyć uzależnienie od paliw kopalnych. Jeszcze raz przypominam, uzależnienie od paliw kopalnych jest mniejsze niż uzależnienie od metali ziem rzadkich. Mówią o tym wszystkie europejskie instytucje i te wszystkie koncepcje, o których państwo tutaj mówią, są właśnie związane z metalami ziem rzadkich. Biznes potrzebuje rozsądku. Europejczycy nie wytrzymają takich cen energii.
Potrzebują naszego wsparcia. Poważnie rozmawiajmy na ten temat.
Emmanouil Fragkos
Thank you. Always for ECR, Emmanouil Fragkos.
Σας ευχαριστώ. Την προηγούμενη πενταετία έγιναν πολλά λάθη λόγω βιασύνης στην επιβολή της πράσινης μετάβασης. Δυστυχώς τα λάθη αυτά τα πλήρωσαν οι πιο αδύναμοι πολίτες, όπως είναι αυτοί που πληρώνουν πάντα. Πρέπει όλοι να καταλάβουν ότι οι νησιώτες δεν αντιμετωπίζονται εκ των πραγμάτων ως ισότιμοι πολίτες. Οι νησιώτες δεν επωφελούνται μιας ενιαίας αγοράς ούτε καν στα όρια της Ελλάδας.
Πολλοί θεωρούν ότι τα νησιά εύκολα επικοινωνούν μεταξύ τους. Αυτό είναι μία τελείως λάθος πεποίθηση. Κάθε νησί είναι και μία ξεχωριστή αποκομμένη αγορά, άρα οι νησιώτες χρεώνονται υπερβολικά προϊόντα και υπηρεσίες.
Για τους νησιώτες η μετακίνηση στο ηπειρωτικό κέντρο αποτελεί μία οικονομική αιμορραγία κάθε μήνα. Όλοι ξέρουμε ότι τα πιεστικά χρονοδιαγράμματα προϋποθέτουν γρήγορες και ακατάλληλες υποδομές τις οποίες πληρώνουν οι πολίτες δηλαδή οι νησιώτες μας. Και τις υποδομές όπως και τα πρόστιμα δυστυχώς πάλι οι νησιώτες θα τα πληρώσουν. Όλοι μας στο Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο συμφωνούμε ότι η πράσινη μετάβαση κατά την προηγούμενη πενταετία ήταν ένα λάθος που το πληρώσαμε ακριβά. Και αυτή την πενταετία η συζήτησή μας επικεντρώνεται στη διόρθωση.
Στην Ελλάδα λέμε ότι όποιος βιάζεται σκοντάφτει. Η νησιωτικότητα και η εδαφική συνοχή πρέπει να διαπερνούν όλες τις ευρωπαϊκές πολιτικές. Σχετικά με το ETS η ίδια η ευρωπαϊκή νομοθεσία προβλέπει σταδιακή απανθρακοποίηση έως το 2050 ενώ κρίσιμες λιμενικές υποδομές αναπτύσσονται ακόμη και έως το 2035. Η ίδια η Επιτροπή αναγνωρίζει ότι το κόστος καθαρών καυσίμων και η ωρίμανση τεχνολογιών μηδενικών εκπομπών αποτελούν πραγματικά μεγάλα και επίμονα εμπόδια. Επομένως για τις γραμμές των μικρών νησιών ζητούμε παράταση της εξαίρεσης έως το 2040 ώστε να υπάρξει επαρκής χρόνος για ανανέωση του στόλου και ανάπτυξη των υποδομών.
Να επαναλάβουμε η κατάσταση με τα νησιά δημιουργεί τεράστιες προκλήσεις πρωτίστως στην ενιαία αγορά και τεράστιο κόστος για τους κατοίκους.
Η εξαίρεση δεν πρέπει να αποκλείει την πρόσβαση σε γενναία ευρωπαϊκή χρηματοδότηση για κάθε σχετική επένδυση στο χώρο της ναυτιλίας. Σας ευχαριστώ.
Stine Bosse
Thank you. For Renew, Stine Bosse.
Thank you very much. First of all, it is really depressing sometimes to again and again listen to that energy prices is connected to how we deal with our transition. That is also the case. But what has happened since the Green Deal is of course that we now see two wars, one on our continent and one close to our continent. And they are fueling the energy prices.
And that's what we need to get out of. I want to praise also the words from my colleague who's now leaving the room from Greece. I just came back from Greece and I find it very encouraging to see how much wind, how much solar is now really all over popping up in Greece. That is exactly brilliant and that is how to deal with these things. Let me give you a piece of information on electrical vehicles.
The growth in new sales of electrical vehicles across Europe is 63% during the last year, which takes up the total now in new sales to 22%.
This is the future. If you have the image in front of you of the horse carriage and the car when we did that transition, what we're talking about here trying to go backwards, it's like putting horses in front of a car. It's not really looking into the new future and the new technologies. And then finally, the first, when we will in a moment debate what is also affecting Greece dramatically, Spain, France, also even last summer, what we will be debating in a moment is of course the consequences of the climate changing. So the first line of defense, the first thing we should do is to lower emissions.
That is what we are talking about here. It's not some constructive thing around competition and everything. It is actually trying to lower our emissions. The second is what we're going to be talking about just in a moment, that's preparedness. And then finally of course there is also crisis management.
Final comment, let's favor the ones who go forward. Let's favor the ones who actually take initiative and take the risk into the future.
Thank you very much.
Jeannette Baljeu
Thank you. For Renew, Jeanette Baljeu.
Thank you so much. I'd like to specifically say something on the maritime paragraph, as we have a very strong maritime sector in Europe and of course the ports are of very important infrastructure to Europe. Specifically on the maritime issues, I think we should really look into helping our ports to have a level playing field with ports outside the EU, so that could be maybe a stronger wording on that. When we want the maritime sector to be truly sustainable, then we also have to look at lead markets within Europe for sustainable fuels for the maritime sector. And there's still a discussion on the tonnages when it comes to maritime services and other sectors.
I think this can be more clearly defined, so we have to look into that. And from the calculation system of the MRV, this is also something that is now hindering the sector because it's unclear and it doesn't reflect the reality on the water, if I may say, not on the ground but on the water.
So this is something we either have to stop for a moment or make sure that we make it right. So these are some of the comments that need to be explicitly mentioned on the maritime part.
Volker Schnurrbusch
Thank you. For ESN, Volker Schumburg.
Thank you very much. As a member of the Transport Committee, I want to focus also on the maritime transport sector. We attended the same events, Madame Boyer, and we have the same interests, I hope. So, in actually speaking of that, there's one positive aspect in the draft report, that is the objective of reducing duplication. Currently, operators must deal with overlapping monitoring and reporting requirements under the MRV regulation, the ETS, and the FuelEU Maritime.
Creating one system and one compliance workflow can indeed reduce administrative burdens. But the proposal also extends the scope of the MRV framework to additional energy use data, provides for further delegated and implementing powers for the Commission, and envisages a targeted extension of the EU ETS to more categories of ships. And for an industry operating in a global market, every additional compliance requirement has a cost.
And those costs ultimately affect European operators, consumers, and the competitiveness of our maritime sector. If we want a genuine level playing field, we should also be asking how these measures interact with international rules, particularly the IMO framework, rather than continuously adding European requirements on top of it. Simplification should mean fewer obligations, fewer reporting burdens, and greater legal certainty, and not more regulation. Thank you.
Niels Flemming Hansen
Thank you. We go back to EPP, Nils Torvalds.
Thank you very much, and thank you to Peter for this draft report. On several key points, it must be a good starting point for our negotiations. We all know the challenge: Europe must decarbonize while keeping our industry, investment, and jobs here, and for me, those goals belong together. First, the reduction pathway. We need to send a clear signal that we mean business.
Predictability matters, but it must not mean postponing the hard costs, and we cannot pull the rug from those who already invested. It's simply not decent. Second, international credits.
They sound good on paper, but will they, will they be there at scale and at quality? They can complement European action, but they can never replace them. Free allowances. They should come with conditionality, real investment in electrification, CCS and clean production, not plans on paper, and I'm open to a pragmatic and simple design, but when you get something for free, it's fair to expect something in return. One could say there is no thing as a free lunch.
Fourth, maritime. Flexibility where it's generally needed, ambition where clean technology is available. Finally, I strongly support the report on revenues. Money raised from energy-intensive industry should go back into their transformation, grids, electrification, CCS, innovation and such. If ETS money is raised for the transition, ETS money should deliver the transition and not boost national budgets.
Thank you.
Radan Kanev
Thank you.
Always for EPP, Radan Kanev.
Thank you, Chair. I will speak in Bulgarian. Ще се спра само на два въпроса, които Европейската комисия пое като обещания към Парламента и не изпълни с този доклад. За съжаление не са достатъчно отразени и в доклада на д-р Лизе. На първо място решението в подкрепа на износа и на второ място решението в случай на външни ценови шокове.
Нещо, което обсъждахме в рамките на СВАМ, поводът конкретно тогава беше торовата промишленост, но проблемът не е само в един сектор, разбира се. Това е особено важно, защото цялото законодателство за търговията с емисии, бих казал цялото ни климатично законодателство остана неадекватно на глобалната икономическа ситуация след 22-ра година. То просто не предвижда какво се случва в период на глобална икономическа криза, криза на доставки, криза на цените. За съжаление обръщахме внимание на господин Тимерманс преди няколко години за това, той категорично, натрапчиво пренебрегна очевидните рискове, включително пред това законодателство. И тук искам да обърна внимание само на едно нещо.
Представете си, че не бяхме отложили ETS 2 за транспорт и отопление за 28-ма година. Представете си действително, че при сегашните цени на дизела някое правителство можеше да излезе и да каже: „Ще сложим 15, 10 цента отгоре“. Това щеше да е мигновена революция в почти всяка европейска държава. Просто защото ценовият сигнал е вече там. В България, апропо, продажбите на електромобили са се удвоили за една година.
Основно по икономически причини, защото ценовият сигнал вече го има. Няма никаква нужда от следваща такса, за да се разбере икономическата логика. Благодаря.
Jadwiga Wiśniewska
Dziękuję bardzo, panie przewodniczący. Chciałabym zwrócić państwa uwagę na taki oto fakt, że od 2008 roku przemysł stalowy w Europie stracił 30% swoich mocy produkcyjnych. Zamknięto huty, odlewnie, 100 tysięcy pracowników tego przemysłu znalazło się na bruku.
I dzieje się to, proszę państwa, w całej Europie, a jest to konsekwencją polityki klimatycznej, którą proponuje Parlament. Kiedyś tutaj koledzy z Niemiec zawsze byli bardzo aktywni w tej komisji, to dla nich dedykuję te dane. Kiedyś potężna gospodarka Niemiec dziś chwieje się na nogach, przez ostatnie lata traci średnio 15 000 miejsc pracy w przemyśle miesięcznie. Prognozy wskazują, że w 26 roku straci kolejne 100 000. Oczywiście jeszcze większe koszty ponoszą obywatele państw Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, szczególnie Polski, która ma miks energetyczny zdominowany przez węgiel.
Ja mam wrażenie, że państwo kompletnie nie zwracacie uwagi na to, co dzieje się w przemyśle. Nie zestawiacie ze sobą kosztów, jakie ponoszą europejskie przedsiębiorstwa, z kosztami firm w Stanach Zjednoczonych czy w Chinach. To przecież europejskie firmy płacą od dwóch do trzech razy więcej za prąd niż konkurenci w Stanach, a za gaz od czterech do pięciu razy więcej. Europejski rynek zalewa chiński przemysł samochodowy. Naprawdę tego chcecie?
90% komponentów instalacji OZE pochodzi z Chin. Mam wrażenie, że przede mną przemawiali chińscy patrioci, a nie europejscy.
Apeluję o pewną rozwagę. Dziękuję.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we leave the floor for three minutes to the Commission. We have Rosaline van der Vlies, Director of Clean Planet, Carbon Markets and Clean Mobility.
Rosalinde van der Vlies
Thank you very much, Chair, and good morning everybody. It's a big pleasure and honor to be back in this committee after many years, and thank you also very much for this very rich debate. It's very clear that the ETS is a very successful instrument that we have been developing over the past 20 years. The ETS has been very successful not only in driving down our greenhouse gas emissions, it also has generated a lot of revenue for our European economy, and it has been setting an example for the rest of the world. Many countries, including China, are actually modeling now their own ETS system towards our European system.
So I think this is an instrument that we can be very proud of.
At the same time, we all have an opportunity here to unleash the potential of this well-developed system in order to support our European competitiveness, to create more secure European jobs, to also reduce the costs. The ETS is not the main driver of the costs, but it can be an important instrument in our toolbox for a solution. And the ETS can also be part of our independence story for the European Union. So the Commission overall welcomes very much the rapporteur's draft report. We feel this is very much aligned with the objectives of the Commission proposal on ETS, not only to drive and continue our pathway on decarbonization, but also to support investments, innovation, competitiveness of our industry.
But at the same time, we need to make sure that we have continued solidarity in the European Union and that we support a better level playing field for our ETS sectors. I would like to highlight in particular four elements of the draft report of the rapporteur that we welcome very much. First of all, the overall ambition of the draft report, which will continue to ensure that the ETS will be doing its proportionate fair share and will remain fully aligned with our European climate law.
Secondly, the rapporteur's clear support for the inclusion of permanent domestic carbon removals, which is in line with our European climate law and which will add additional flexibility for our European industries. Thirdly, the support for strengthening circularity and the decarbonization of maritime and aviation sectors, which will create new business opportunities, but also at the same time addressing the risk of circumvention and also providing coherence with international developments. And fourthly, the rapporteur maintains a strong focus on investments and innovation through continuing the innovation fund, the new industrial decarbonization bank, better targeting the national revenues of ETS, and supporting dedicated support mechanisms for sustainable maritime and aviation sectors. This is really a key objective of the Commission proposal. We want to build on the well-functioning ETS but turn it into an engine for investments inside the European economy, in our European companies, in Europe.
However, we would like to highlight today three concerns that we have in the draft report. The first are the proposed changes to excessive price fluctuation mechanism, Article 29a. Let me underline that the ETS is and should always remain a market-based system.
This is really a key to its success, it is a key to investment predictability, and it is a key to cost-effective decarbonization. The proposed changes to this excessive price mechanism go directly against this. By trying to engineer a carbon price through frequent market intervention, this will lead to less cost-effectiveness and will reduce market and investment predictability, and it will ultimately weaken our well-designed ETS system. Carbon prices have demonstrated over the years that they are overall stable, which is also confirmed by the annual reports of EMSA, and we recently have proposed changes to the market stability reserve to ensure stability of the market for the next decade. Secondly, and this has been mentioned by many of you, free allocation conditionality.
We welcome the support for the principle of the free allocation, but we also believe it is important to make sure that we can no longer give out a free lunch. We need to build on the system, but we also need to learn lessons and improve it.
Free allocation was from the start intended as a transitional measure to give the industry the time to research, develop and implement sustainable decarbonisation solutions, which is the best protection against carbon leakage. 14 years and 255 billion euros later, however, too little has happened in investing in our decarbonisation for our industry. So we need to now make sure that we are really putting the money where it should go to strengthen our Europe, to strengthen our industry and to make our Europe fit for the next decade. So we are proposing to continue and even expand the free allocation. But we want to stop being in the business of handing out free lunches.
We acknowledge the efforts by the rapporteur to try and balance the different viewpoints that were also expressed today, but the proposed changes, in particular the broad exclusion of the 40% of installations, would reduce the investment volume significantly. It would halve the investment volume compared to the Commission proposal, and this will significantly impact the effectiveness and investment drive of conditionality.
Thirdly, it is key that the ETS sticks to the ambition of the European Climate Law. As also President Ursula von der Leyen said in the State of the Union address, we can, must and we will stay the course on our climate ambition. And in our proposal, the ETS will continue to play its fair share. It will continue to make a proportionate contribution to our overall economy-wide climate targets. And we will make sure that the ETS is a coherent part of our wider policy puzzle.
This is why the underlying impact assessments for different proposals use the same modelling system to make sure that in the end we stay the course and we deliver on our climate ambitions. We also propose in our ETS review to use two flexibilities that are enshrined in the European Climate Law: the international credits and the carbon removals. It is very important that we have, however, a check-up point on the availability and the reliability of international credits to ensure that the ETS continues to be aligned with our 2040 target, but also that we preserve the environmental integrity.
So to conclude, we would like to thank Mr. Liese for a very solid report, which we believe also provides a very strong basis for further negotiations. We are really looking forward to advance this file in line with the ambition set out in the One Europe, One Market roadmap, and we believe that we are very, very well placed to work together to a final result that is robust, market-based, and without unnecessary complexities for our industry to make sure that the ETS is one tool in our toolbox to deliver on decarbonization, competitiveness, and independence. Thank you very much.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you, Director, and congrats for your new position. It's a very interesting moment to become Director of DG CLIMA. So we go back to the rapporteur, Jessica Polfjärd, on behalf of Peter Liese. I know we will see again Peter on Monday in Strasbourg, so we wait for him.
Jessica Polfjärd
Exactly, and I know that he's listening too, so I will just send some comments to you as well from Peter. And of course, he's looking forward to see you all in Strasbourg. And he also says that he hopes that everyone is willing to compromise when you meet up to have the negotiations, and that is of course important.
And he also says that he has figures and he can show the calculation how to get and reach the 2040 target, so he will also present that. And of course, he also thinks it's important that you will work fast and like the shadows also has stated that it's a tight schedule, but it's not always easy, but it can be important anyway. So he totally agree with that and he wishes all the best for the weekend and see you in Strasbourg on Monday.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. So now the deadline for amendment will be the 6th of October at 5:00 PM. The vote in ENVI will be the 1st of December, while in the plenary, we will go to the plenary of December. Now we skip to the next item, that is the workshop on managing climate risk on the road to a climate-resilient Europe, organized by the Policy Department. I'm delighted to welcome you today for this workshop that was requested by the ENVI Committee in June 2026.
In its 2026 work program, the Commission announced a European integrated framework for climate resilience. The main objective is to establish a more ambitious, comprehensive and coherent EU approach to climate resilience and preparedness, covering Member States and the EU as a whole. The proposal should follow European Parliament demands, notably our September 2024 resolution on the Central and Eastern European floods. We called on the Commission to table an ambitious climate adaptation law with measurable targets across water, health, infrastructure and spatial planning. EP also asked the Commission to put climate resilience into a more central position across all EU policies and funding schemes.
The upcoming framework will include both non-legislative and legislative measures. The Commission adoption is planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. Some elements of the proposal were already announced by the Commission, among them a three degrees common climate reference scenario, improved support for local authorities and closing the insurance protection gaps. For this important topic, we have the pleasure to welcome three expert speakers. The workshop will start with presentations by the speakers.
There will be then a Q and A session followed by a statement from the Commission updating the committee on the climate resilience framework proposal. We will now start this workshop with a presentation by the Dr. Jaroslav Mysiak, principal scientific and founding director of the risk assessment and adaptation strategies division from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. Please, you have the floor for ten minutes.
Jaroslav MYSIAK
Thank you very much, Chair, honorable members, ladies and gentlemen. I have prepared a full briefing, but in my short talk I will focus on three topics: Europe climate risk, policy landscape and what the new resilience and risk management framework could or should deliver. Next slide, please. Between 1980 and 2025, weather and climate extremes cost the EU around 930 billion. This is about 5% of GDP of the whole Union in a single year.
If these losses were economy of a country, it would be the sixth largest in the EU. More than a quarter of the damage was recorded over the past five years alone.
But the physical damage is only tip of the iceberg. These estimates leave out business interruptions, lost production, environmental damage, and lasting effect on people and communities. These are not projections. The 2021 flood in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands cost about 46 million in damage. The 2022 drought was probably the worst in 500 years.
In 2025, more than 1 million hectares burned. This year, Western Europe experienced the hottest summer on record. Next slide, please. Climate change did not cause these events, but it changed the condition in which they developed. Warmer air holds more water and higher temperature dry soil faster.
In Valencia, climate change made the rainfall more intense about one-fifth. But the scale of the disaster was not only about the intensity of the rain. Fragmented coordination, late warning, not acted upon, and people caught on the roads, all contributed to making the outcome worse.
A hazard becomes a disaster through exposure, vulnerability, and governance, and in Valencia, all three played a role. A few major disasters like Valencia account for the bulk of the losses. A single disaster causing more than 100 billion in damage is now plausible. The right side of the slide shows how the impact of a local disaster becomes systemic. Contexts such as pre-existing inequalities, governance gaps, past land-use decisions, and aging population shape who is exposed and how well people can cope.
Then failure in critical systems such as power, water, transport, healthcare, transmit losses through interconnected sectors. Supply chain breaks, production stops, debt rises, creditworthiness declines, and trust in institutions is eroded. This is how risk becomes systemic, and at that point, no one is responsible for managing it. Thanks to the investment in Copernicus program and Destination Earth, and assessment series like PESETA and European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA), we know more about these risks than ever before. What we miss is a framework that turns that knowledge into consistent decisions.
Next slide please. Europe has built advanced policies, but in disconnected areas of practice. In climate adaptation, the European Climate Law made adaptation a legal obligation. Today, all 27 Member States have an adaptation strategy or plan. But monitoring still tells us mainly what has been planned and put in place, but not whether the risk has actually been reduced and to what extent.
Disaster risk management has shifted also from responding to emergencies to anticipating them. The Union Civil Protection Mechanism requires Member States to assess risk and their capacities to manage them. The disaster resilience goals adopted in 2023 provide a common direction. The Preparedness Union strategy called for all-hazard, whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach and for a single EU risk and threat assessment, and the proposed reform of the UCPM would also create a crisis coordination hub to cope with complex crises. These are important developments.
But Member States assess climate and disaster risk under different laws, on different cycles, and report to different Commission services. Sectoral laws such as the Flood and the Critical Entity Resilience Directives have their own methods, requirements and timetables. The EU relies more on solidarity than on a robust risk financing strategy and plan. The Solidarity Fund plays an important role, but it does not reduce risk. The insurance protection gap is wide and national systems differ substantially.
Next slide, please. The EU Mission on Climate Adaptation, which is a research and innovation branch of the adaptation strategy, has brought the subnational and national governments to work side by side...
Jaroslav MYSIAK
Okay. Has brought the subnational and national governments to work side by side with research entities as equal partners to build Europe resilience to climate shocks. And the mission provided them with access to knowledge and tools to assess climate risk and design locally tailored, evidence-based adaptation action and investment.
Next slide, please. Let me turn to what the framework could and should deliver. The Council, the Parliament, the public consultation and the Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change all pointed in the same direction. First point is about scenarios. Today, national and sub-national climate and disaster risk assessment and stress tests describe the same feature in different and incomparable ways.
We need a shared, quality-assured reference for climate risk and resilience scenarios that everyone can use. The second point is about responsibility.
Managing risk involves monitoring, deciding what level of risk is acceptable, planning and financing, implementing, reporting and leading recovery. Different actors carry out these tasks, and risk with cross-border and cross-sector impacts require a European coordination and ownership. The third point is about bridging climate adaptation and disaster risk management. We need to bring these separate reporting and assessment cycles together so that they inform each other, fill gaps in knowledge, and over time converge into a shared assessment guided by common resilience goals. The fourth point is about monitoring.
We need indicators on outcomes, not only outputs, to learn what has worked, what has not, and under which conditions, and use those results to inform future plans and funding. The fifth point is about financial protection. When insurance cover is lost, access to credit and property values decline and pressures on public budget increases. Financial protection is a public policy objective.
It should guarantee access to an adequate level of protection combined with incentives or obligation to reduce exposure and vulnerability. My final point is about innovation. The mission on adaptation has tested transformative solutions. Small and most vulnerable communities need these solutions most. The support provided by the mission should become a permanent part of climate governance in Europe.
Let me conclude. The integrated framework is an opportunity to connect knowledge and policies. We need a shared assessment of risk, clear ownership of those risk and risk financing that rewards prevention and risk reduction and not only recovery. Thank you very much.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. The next speaker talk about insurance also is Dr. Sibylle Steimen, Managing Director Advisory and Services and board member responsible for catastrophe risk management and sustainability from Allianz Re.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, esteemed members of the Parliament, dear guests.
Sibylle Steimen
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in front of you and provide you an insurance perspective on an important topic: climate change and the road to a more climate-resilient future. My name is Sibylle Steimen, I'm working since more than 20 years in insurance and reinsurance, always closely connected to the topics of catastrophe risk management. When I was a young scientist, many, many years ago, during and after my studies, climate change and the causes of potential ways to mitigate the impact of climate change and the possible solution for a low-carbon society were active subjects of research. Now, 30 years later, it is my role to help my company and our customers to deal with the impact of a warming world. Next slide, please.
And more. I would like to start with having a look at something which concerns us all: the so-called insurance protection gap. It is usually measured post-event by looking at the estimates of total economic loss and compare these values to the ratio to the insured losses.
When comparing EU and US, a number of differences jump to our attention. In the EU, we observe an extreme variation of protection gap from very small in countries like Spain and France to very high in certain countries like, for example, Italy in pre-change of the recent budget law for commercial risks. In the US, on the other hand, we observe an extreme dependence on the peril. This means that there is very good coverage for hurricane risks or tornado hail because these coverages are usually bundled with normal household insurance products. While for perils like flood and earthquake, more rare events in the recent past, the coverage is less, but with that that we look at hurricanes mostly, these do not make it to the headlines of protection gap articles notably.
What are the reasons for the relatively heterogeneous picture in the EU? Let's have a look on the next page on the main reasons there have been quite substantial research done on this. 59% next page, please. 59% of citizens rely on state aid post-event according to a recent EIOPA study.
About 50% are skeptical that claims might be paid by insurers. This is of course a very concerning number for an insurance professional like me. 30% think that catastrophes are very unlikely to affect them and 20% do not even know if they are covered. Next page shows the responsibility for the insurance industry. Next slide please.
Customers of course need to know their risk. We need to help them understanding what a flood might mean for their house or what a severe hailstorm could do to their roof and solar panels on it. We should find ways not only in the insurance process to make the insurance customers or potential customers aware of the risk. A very obvious approach could be to mandatorily bundling this to the mortgage process as it is for example the case in high-risk areas for flood in the US. The insurance industry can move to opt-out marketing of their products.
That means that by default the offer would be a comprehensive package of NatCat coverage sold and offered to the customer, and the customer would have to actively step out of the cover. This is widely done for wind covers, and that's why both in Europe and the US we see high pick-up rates on that cover. In general, we as insurers need to explain to our customers much better what the value of a comprehensive NatCat insurance cover brings, and governments must make it clear to their citizens that they need their budgets and the taxpayers' money for other obligations than a bailout after a severe event. All in all, insurance companies should understand their roles as resilience partners rather than pure protection providers. Next page, please.
Because it comes as a challenge ahead of us. Historical losses show an upwards trend, not only due to climate change, but also due to the increasing values, continuous development in high-risk zones, and changes in building materials. Next page shows what this means for the insurance industry as such. Next page, please.
The insurance industry wants to keep as much of the total portfolio as possible insurable. This means stringent portfolio management, technical assessment and deep understanding of the risks and the impacting factors. Collaborating with science needs to keep the insurers up to date, also with regards to the impact of a changing climate. Next page please. This leads me, next page please, to the second part of my presentation.
As an insurer, we understand our role broader than to only pay losses post event. We can be a protection provider and a resilience partner. We can also contribute with what we insure and how we streamline our products to the net zero transition. Build back better or greener solutions can be a piece in the puzzle. Next page please.
So while we as an insurer of course need to understand our bread and butter work, we collect data needed, we translate it into risk adequate pricing, we engage in cross market collaboration to provide prevention know-how for our customers. Customers need to enhance services in times of a change.
Severe weather warnings help them to better be prepared. Digital tools to assess the customer's risk profile can help educating them, and self-service assessment tools and advisory services can be a meaningful add-on to the classic insurance covers. A very important third pillar of this system is the so-called societal resilience pillar. With this, we mean a functioning system which prevents construction activity in high-risk zones, the constant upgrading of building codes, adjusting to the new realities of a warmer world where certain NatCat events become more frequent, public investments into natural hazard resilience, and the availability of good quality, high-granular open access data on hazard, risk, built environment and the like. With these pillars in place, insurance remains available and largely affordable.
Next page, please. On the middle pillar, the customer resilience, I have two examples here how it can be done. Customers need warning like SMS alerting messages, they need comprehensive information like portals where they type in their address to find out their exposure and to access more information.
Next page please. With this I come to my closing recommendations. Science has proven that every euro invested into prevention and adaptation measures comes back in multiples. The cost of doing nothing might be too high to bear, not only for insurance market but also for society as such. Next page please.
This leads over to my messages on what needs to be done now. Prevention and adaptation helps us reducing the risk and by that keeping markets insurable. The built environment needs to be de-risked in times of changing climate. We need to stop building in high risk zones. Building codes need to be up to date and most of all enforced.
Closing the protection gap is a joint effort. Public authorities need to pay their part as we as an insurance industry have and as the customer has. Next page please. I would like to close my talk by reminding us all on which role everyone has to play.
The state sets the boundary conditions for a sustainable insurance market by making data available, supporting science to produce the latest insights into the hazard and risk situation, building codes enforcement, land use planning and enforcement, infrastructure resilience. The insurer needs to provide services and adequate products to the customers, so that the customer understands the need for protection and sees the value of it. The marketing is adjusted to the urgent need, provides services and adaptation and resilience. Customers need to take ownership and invest into the extent possible to adaptation and resilience on their property. Be risk aware, understand adaptation and purchase adequate covers.
With that, I'm at the end of my short presentation and thank you for your attention.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Our last speaker is Mrs. Axel Griffon, Senior Policy Advisor on Environmental Circular Economy and Mobility Council of European Municipalities and Regions. Please, you have the floor.
Axel GRIFFON
Dear Chair, dear members, thank you very much for inviting me. So I'm working at the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, CEMR. We bring together national associations of local and regional governments across Europe.
My central message today is that climate resilience is built locally, but it cannot be managed and financed locally alone. Next slide, please. The European Climate Risk Assessment identifies 36 major climate risks affecting health, ecosystems, food, infrastructure, and the economy. We also observe that climate events such as heat, floods, drought, and wildfire affect territories differently across Europe. As it was just mentioned by Mr. Misiak, the floods in Valencia in 2024 illustrates how one single event can disrupt multiple services.
Homes, schools, hospitals, transport networks, and businesses suffered extensive damages. And the consequences continued even after the floodings as recovery was slowed down by damaged facilities and disrupted transport. So depending on the national framework and the country, municipalities and regions have various competencies and responsibilities.
Land use, public building, transport, water services, civil protection. Their responsibility extend from prevention to maintaining the services during an event and to restoring them afterwards. These responsibilities involve difficult choices. Where should housing be built? Where must space be left for water?
And how can authorities protect both the residents and the ecosystems? A European or national map can identify a hazard. But the decisions about a neighborhood, a road or a catchment also require local knowledge of who is exposed and what which services are interconnected and interdependent. So that's why local and regional governments must participate in this risk assessment and management from the outset. Next slide please.
In the last decade, Europe has strengthened its adaptation policies. It was also mentioned that member states have national policies in place and we are also advancing at regional and local level. For example, in Ireland, it is required to have a local climate action plan. In Greece, regional adaptation plans are mandatory.
European initiatives also help a lot. The Covenant of Mayors provides a framework for integrated adaptation in local climate plans, and it's very successful. Mr. Miziak also explained how the EU Mission on Adaptation helps participating regions and communities. So, having a plan is already a great starting point, but it does not establish preparedness. Implementation, financing, and monitoring still remain uneven across Europe.
For example, a municipality can have mapped flood exposures and risk, but lacks staff and funding to prepare an investment project to protect the territory.
So these barriers are especially significant for smaller authorities where they have limited capacity and the same staff is handling planning infrastructure and emergency response at the same time. Next slide on the financial challenges. It is estimated that adaptation across the EU requires 70 billion annually up to 2050. Major investments are needed in infrastructure and ecosystem. It includes measures such as protecting roads, public building, restoring wetlands to manage floods, creating green spaces to reduce urban heat.
Municipalities and regions have an important role in planning and delivering this. But they face tremendous costs during this process. They must finance adaptation while also meeting recovery costs after extreme events. Insurance covers part of the loss. It is estimated by the EEA that less than 20% of EU economic losses from weather and climate-related extreme events were privately insured from 1980 to 2024.
It puts a lot of pressure on public recovery support and higher premiums or reduced coverage can compound that pressure. Recovery spending may then absorb the need for prevention.
The Climate Insurance Alliance that was announced in the State of Union offers an opportunity to address affordability and protection gaps, including implications for local public finance. And as it was said just before, insurance must work alongside prevention. Reconstruction funding should also allow authorities to reduce future risk rather than simply restore an asset. Sometimes the appropriate response will require redesign, reallocate, and such decisions need funding, evidence, and dialogue with stakeholders. Next slide, please.
So, what should the future framework provide, particularly for cities and regions? First, a common basis. A common European warming trajectory will support coherent planning and investment. The EU reference scenario that is envisaged aligns with our recommendation. But it must translate into usable territorial information and allowing authorities to adapt these measures to local conditions.
And on this basis, we identify three priorities.
First, local and regional governments should have a role in decision. They should help to shape national resilience plan and clarify risk ownership according to existing legal competencies. Responsibility must comes with the means to act and coordination. Second priority is the capacity to deliver. EU assessment tools should provide information authorities can use for land use and investment choices.
Technical assistant must help them to compare options and prepare project. Peer learning can also help smaller authorities. Third priority is investment over time. Funding must cover preparation, implementation and also maintenance. It must be accessible also to these smaller authorities.
We are also exploring how private financing scheme can contribute, but adaptation measures will require sustained public funding.
Next slide, please. The recent European announcement during the State of the Union offer opportunities to put these recommendations into practice. The heatwave plan should help authorities to protect their population and improve cooling of buildings and public spaces. For wildfires, stronger emergency response must go hand in hand with prevention. Local authorities need support to prepare communities and keep their essential services running.
The European water initiative should help to secure reliable water supply, reduce leakage, and protect healthy rivers and wetlands. We have recently joined a coalition of more than 30 organizations calling for nature-based solutions to become a strong line of defense against climate disaster, so this framework should make them a clear priority backed with funding. And finally, some disasters will exceed local financial capacities, even with good prevention. National and European solidarity should help communities recover and reduce future risk. And it should be coordinated across all sectors to provide municipalities and regions clear, simple access to support.
For us, the real challenge is to understand if a municipality or region will be able to use this framework to understand its risks and responsibility. Most importantly, will it finance preparedness and protection over time? If this is possible for both a city and a smaller municipality, we will have made meaningful progress. Thank you.
Next slide, please.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you so much. Now we open the floor to the political group representatives. We start with César Luena.
César Luena
Muy bien, gracias presidente y muchas gracias a los señores Misia y Steiman y a la señora Griffon. Estamos comenzando, el mes que viene tendremos aquí el marco de resiliencia y adaptación y para nosotros, al menos para mi grupo, es muy importante que hayamos empezado con esta, con este grupo de trabajo. Hago notar, hago constar, como en otras ocasiones, que los grupos de derecha y de extrema derecha, por eso somos el primer grupo en intervenir, no han venido. Que quede claro, derecha, extrema derecha, no les importa la adaptación y la resiliencia. Bien, dicen ustedes que la adaptación debe ser la nueva prioridad, tienen razón porque nos asfixiamos en verano, hay inundaciones, sufrimos inundaciones en otoño, sequías feroces, incendios devastadores.
Por tanto, esperamos una legislación ambiciosa sin olvidar la pedagogía que hay que hacer contra el negacionismo. Y ustedes que están también en ese ámbito, no olviden nunca pedagogía porque es un problema añadido. Cinco puntos rápidos, presidente. El mecanismo de reaseguro deben compartirse por los Estados miembros para que sean accesibles a familias, pequeñas empresas, agricultores. ¿Cómo lo hacemos para dos cosas?
Uno, invertir más en prevención y que no lo acabe pagando todo el sector público. Se ha hablado aquí, sobre todo la última ponente, la señora Griffon, sobre recursos suficientes para municipios y regiones porque están en la primera línea de atención a los problemas del cambio climático. Me refiero a financiación, a datos, asistencia técnica. Gracias, se nos ha dado bastante información y creo que debemos seguir ese camino. El tercer punto clave me parece a mí es cómo abordar la escasez de agua y las consecuencias de esta escasez.
Se nos ha dicho ya alguna cosa. Se ha hablado sobre financiación. Decía yo ese plan, ¿y esto quién lo paga? Vale, necesitamos financiación para la respuesta a las emergencias, las compensaciones y las ayudas para las inversiones para adaptación y prevención. Entonces, ¿por qué no un nuevo impuesto a las petroleras y a las gasísticas, a los grandes contaminadores?
Sería una fuente justa y eficaz. El Gobierno de España lo propone, pero si se les ocurren otras vías de financiación para pagar la política de adaptación, por favor, coméntenoslas en el siguiente turno. Dos cosas más, presidente. Lo último que ha dicho la señora Griffon era la naturaleza como infraestructura. Es verdad, hemos hablado de seguros, de emergencias, pero no olvidemos la importancia de contar con unos ecosistemas sanos.
Los humedales retienen agua, los bosques reducen el riesgo de inundación, los espacios verdes urbanos protegen a la población durante las olas de calor. Por tanto, tenemos que buscar integrarlos en esta nueva legislación. Concluyo con seis ideas rápidas: legislación ambiciosa, financiación suficiente, apoyo para los municipios y las regiones, nuevos impuestos a los contaminantes, cuidar la naturaleza, cuidar los ecosistemas y, sobre todo, luchar contra el negacionismo.
Y a ver si en las siguientes sesiones de trabajo tenemos suerte y tanto los grupos del PP como de la extrema derecha por lo menos vienen, porque aprender no les va a hacer daño. Eso se lo aseguro.
Stine Bosse
Thank you very much. And I would indeed echo the former speaker's points about many empty seats and so much to be learned. And and definitely always when we listen to the far right, we hear that they are continuously on the side of the citizens. If that was the truth, they would be here all of them. So so I really think we should also apologize to our distinguished guests that we are not a full committee here today.
But nevertheless, such an important topic and so good that you are all here and thank you very much for your interesting interventions. I would like to to focus on some areas where I think that we should really look for more cooperation. And this is of course preparing in to the next movements in this area. So how can we work easier together?
And some of these questions might be for all of you, to make sure that we get the different perspectives in there. How can we make sure that all the data that sits with the insurance companies across the European Union is actually activated in the way that we think about preparedness and the way that we think about also building codes, how to deal with protecting our citizens in all these areas? How can we activate this data to support each other in the very obvious task that we are facing? I would also like to, and this is perhaps a more specific insurance question, but if you think about uninsurable situations, when will these occur? How is the risk that we will face this?
And do we already know, if we are completely honest with each other, that there are areas, that there are places in Europe that will be developing into uninsurable areas? I know for sure of some in Denmark and we are vocal about it, but should we be more open and talk about this? And I also want to ask you, and that is perhaps for all three of you, what do you foresee if we do not act together, if we do not get this right? What is the future that we are looking into?
And I like the comment on the, the plan is not enough to think about preparedness, you need more than, than just a plan. That is so, so obvious. And how can we join forces in informing people? I find it very tragic that people might think everything is okay, but it's not. And that's not only a question of being insured or not insured, but that's also a question of do I actually live in an area where the risk is extremely high but nobody's really telling me?
So, so could you elaborate a little bit on these pretty open questions? But again, I think if we really want to take preparedness seriously, we should be on the side of our citizens and we should find ways to make sure, one, that they are informed, two, that we can do everything in our power to make prevention real for all of them. Thank you very much.
Kai Tegethoff
I think it's an absolute shame that the complete conservative and right wing is not even showing up to explore how we can react to the current catastrophes and explore solutions for society. Especially in the light of that we have heard a lot of political statements on this matter recently. But we can't lose sight of the hard facts. More than 300,000 people have been forced from their homes in France and Spain alone this summer, many have lost their homes entirely. 35,000 people have lost their very lives and their families are left to reckon with this new reality.
Yes, thank you.
So I am looking forward to a more in-depth discussion on how we are genuinely planning to address this issue and of how to make Europe more resilient. In this context, thank you to all the speakers for your presentations. Dr. Musiak, the framework rests on a common EU reference scenario. From a risk assessment standpoint, what warming trajectory would, should that scenario be anchored to? More importantly, should it require stress testing against more severe, lower probability futures than planning to a single central estimate?
EUCRA already flags risks at critical levels and much of the danger sits in compounding and cascading events that sectoral assessments miss.
Does the current design capture that non-linearity, or are we calibrating to a climate we have already left behind? Dr. Steimann, for you I have the question: the reinsurance sector itself argues that prevention is far cheaper than post-disaster reconstruction. If that's correct, two things follow. First, would Allianz support making resilience a binding design condition for EU-funded assets and linking premiums to adaptation delivery so that pricing actively rewards prevention? Second, on the protection gap: the ECB-EIOPA proposal for EU-level risk pooling is a serious step, but it runs on risk-based premiums, which, as physical risk climbs, is precisely what prices the most exposed households out of cover.
What obligation should sit on insurers to keep offering affordable cover to those households, and should EU-level risk sharing be paired with a mandatory offer obligation so we're not building a pool that leaves the most at risk outside it? Ms. Griffon, everyone agrees the lever sits at EU level, but delivery is local. So the honest question for municipalities is: what do you actually need from this framework?
Is it money, the mandate or data and in what order? How do we stop it becoming an unfunded mandate that the best resourced regions can absorb while the most exposed communities, for example care homes, social housing and schools that need protection first, fall behind? If risk ownership is assigned to the local level, does it come with the funding and capacity to own it? And last but not least, also to Commission Ms. Bartram, you will also still get the floor. The signals point to a duty to consider climate risks and a resilience by design principle.
A duty to consider is a process obligation. A duty to consider is a process obligation. It can be discharged by a box ticked assessment while the vulnerable investment goes ahead anyway. What will make resilience by design substantive with consequences rather than a procedural screen? Will do no significant harm be extended to a do no significant harm plus ensure resilience test for EU spending?
I think it would be great to get your perspective on this as well. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chair.
Leire Pajín
Voy a hablar en español. Quiero empezar agradeciéndole a todos los ponentes que pusieran el ejemplo de la región de Valencia, donde he crecido, como una región de extrema vulnerabilidad donde desgraciadamente vimos las peores consecuencias de no tener buenos programas de prevención y mucho menos una buena respuesta. Hoy la derecha y la extrema derecha, como decía mi colega, no están hoy aquí, tampoco estuvieron cuando más los necesitábamos durante la DANA de Valencia, desgraciadamente, pero debemos aprender de aquello y sobre todo garantizar que no vuelva a ocurrir. Necesitamos mejores mecanismos de prevención y de anticipación y esta misma mañana aquí hemos votado el mecanismo de protección civil, que es un buen paso también en esa dirección. Por tanto, necesitamos un marco común y completo para ello.
Pero a mí me gustaría centrarme en el tema de los seguros. Tengo especial interés en abordar la propuesta que la propia presidenta von der Leyen anunció durante el debate del Estado de la Unión Europea, puesto que, según todos los estudios que conocemos, existe realmente un déficit en la cobertura de seguros en toda la Unión Europea, un 15%. En algunos países mucho más, solo se cubre un 5%. Es verdad que hay buenos ejemplos, España es uno de ellos, pero necesitamos trabajar en esa dirección para que al final los presupuestos nacionales no sean el último recurso de cobertura de esa realidad que hoy ocurre. Pero también porque además es un derecho de las víctimas.
Víctimas a las que hemos escuchado en esta casa y que nos han contado la desgarradora situación cuando ocurre una catástrofe de esas magnitudes. Por eso les quería preguntar si consideran que esta alianza de seguros climática debe incentivar la implementación de dichas políticas por parte de los Estados miembros y cómo ven que va a avanzar. Gracias.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you, and thank you again to our guest speakers. I give back the floor for the answer. We start with Mr. Misek.
Jaroslav MYSIAK
Thank you, thank you very much for the comments, and I would like to apologize for me speaking too fast earlier, and my apologies also to the interpreters there for their hard job.
So thank you very much for the questions. I start with the recommendations of the European Science and Advisory Board on Climate Change. What are the warming levels they have suggested to keep in eye? So the you might remember the European Scientific Advisory Board was established by the European Climate Law and it is managed by European Environment Agency. Earlier this year, around February, if I'm not mistaken, they released a set of recommendation.
And they said or suggested the EU to harmonize climate risk assessment across EU and member states and adopt a common reference for adaptation planning taking into account pathways to 2.8 to 3.3 degree of global warming by the end of the century. The report and recommendation also noted that the warming in level will be higher at roughly 1 degree Celsius above the global average.
It also, the scientific board also called for developing common climate scenarios based on the best available scientific knowledge. So more in technical terms, what they suggested is the common reference should be based on the SSP2-4.5, this is shared economic pathways 2-4.5, which correspond roughly to 2.8 and 3.3 degree of global warming on for the mainstream of adaptation. But they also suggested that we should take more adverse emission pathways, SSP3-7.0 for stress testing, so keeping in mind that the things might get worse. So this is the common reference scenario for global warming, this is creating the envelope for all risk assessment to imagine what kind of future we might face. But within this envelope, we also need to make an important choices about what kind of risk scenarios we are going to use in order to get prepared, but also what are our resilience scenarios, how quickly we are developing the response capacity and how quickly our capabilities to manage the risk might develop.
So it's not only the climate scenario that we need common basis, but also on the risk.
And risk is particularly important because the resilient infrastructure directive is imposing a risk assessment by the operators. So we need a common shared vision on what might be the disturbance or disruption scenario. What is the likelihood, intensity? What is the trigger, the climate extreme trigger that might use that? This is also part of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism.
It introduced the hazard scenarios that Europe should get prepared for. So I hope I have tackled the answer the the question. I I will leave to Sibila the question on the insurers and the data that they might release and what we can expect from that. And thank you very much also for all the very good suggestions about what we can do. The environmental and ecosystem protection is an important part of it.
And there are multiple ways how to build upon the synergies between climate adaptation and biodiversity and nature protection.
Yeah, well, I would like to continue with answering some of the questions. Stine Bosse asked how can data be activated that are sitting in insurance companies? That's one side of the aspect, but the other side of the aspect is also how can data be made available which is required for an information flow back to the potential customers.
Sibylle Steimen
So I see the challenge not mainly of making data which is within insurance companies available, making them public access. It's rather that we have to make the right science insight steps available for us as a society to understand the hazard and risk situation. There's a lot of data which is collected on different national or regional levels which is extremely valuable to insurance industry to understand the current and future risk. And to make this in a structured way available to everybody will actually be helpful to keep the market insurable. We are on the other hand also making a lot of data available via our obligatory disclosures, for example to EIOPA, and I think it helps definitely to understand the rising load on cat losses in the recent time.
Stine Bosse, you also asked what happens if we don't manage to act together?
That was part and an important part of my presentation. I'm deeply convinced that this challenge can also only be actually tackled together. And that's why I had closed my presentation with this kind of very simplistic, of course, view on what's the obligation of the state, what's the obligation of the insurer, but what's also the obligation of the customer in in all this. I think we need to go into a dialogue. I also I'm also myself an insurance customer and I also know that what certain people think about us as insurance, that we're not there when it counts and that we we are actually having complex products.
And we listened to that and we as an industry, because I also read of course articles and and talk to colleagues, we try to make our products as good as possible understandable for customers, but we definitely need to do more in kinds of offering services which then also explain risk situation and hopefully give a meaningful message to the customer what they get in return when they purchase an insurance product.
I also believe it's really important that state authorities are transparent with their citizens that they cannot step in after each and every catastrophe and bail them out. This is probably in future not possible anymore. The budgets are planned for for something else and it's much much better to to actually care for for potential catastrophes before they actually happen. There was a question around if Allianz or I would say generally insurers would be willing to actively reward prevention. This is clearly happening in our industry.
We are willing to do so and we are working on concepts how to best do that. An example for example is that we waive deductibles or lower them after an event when it is obvious that prevention measures were in place but could not withhold the damage in place. The risk-based premium topic was also raised. This is the bread and butter topic of an insurer. We have to deal with that.
Risk-based pricing is for us a must because it also gives a certain signal back to the customers. We for that steer our books of business to best possible spread the risk in our books over larger territories. We have reinsurance in place in order to cap certain high values. But denying the or not reacting to the risk which is high in certain locations and lower in others would not be the right signal and also not help us in the long run to keep a market functioning. If there are customers who are say left out in a situation where the premium level is unaffordable, there must be systems in place which can cover these very few cases in my view.
Would you like to comment on that? Okay. And then there was a question on the Alliance of Climate Insurance. Allianz is very much interested in being part of that and listening in what the exact plans are.
We are willing to support and contribute to the extent needed and are actively waiting for interaction.
Axel GRIFFON
Thank you very much for the reaction and for the questions. Reacting to the question of inaction that was raised before, it has a very concrete cost for public sector and particularly local and regional authorities. It has a cost because inaction will continue to damage public infrastructure and continue to have severe disruptions at local level and will continue to generate high cost for recovery.
So, and in addition, if the risk increase, the insurance may also become more expensive for municipalities. So more money will be spent to repair and less money will be spent for prevention. So it's like a vicious cycle. Regarding the question on the needs of cities and regions, first thank you for acknowledging the importance of cities and regions in the process. But given the huge investment need, I would say that funding is particularly crucial.
We are also a bit concerned about the future multiannual financial framework and how the money for the cohesion policy will arrive in cities and regions and if they will be involved in the decisions on what is spent at territorial level. So investment over time is very important. And but it's not the only request we have, the only need we have. We need to be at the table when decisions are made about the resilience plans, about the priorities, about the risk assessment and the risk ownership. We need to be able to decide together.
And we also need to be equipped with tools that are really easy to use at local level. So a map that is not adapted for a city is very interesting but not useful on a daily basis for a city. Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we leave the floor to the Commission, Elina Bardram, Director, Directorate E, Climate Resilience and Information Management from DG CLIMA. Please, you have the floor.
Elina Bardram
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your comments, honorable members and the panelists who really brought some very interesting perspectives to this workshop. The summer of last year has been called by our President a summer of truth. And indeed, it was striking how dramatic some of the eventualities that we saw were. Of course, the situation was accentuated by El Niño, but the summer was not an outlier. It is a point on a trend that will continue.
So things will continue to get worse before they start getting better. This being said, and I always say this, it's very important to note that climate resilience and adaptation will never substitute for mitigation.
Mitigation must remain the first line of defense. It is the most cost-effective means of dealing with climate impacts, and we need to double down on these efforts. At the same time, it is clear that the dramatic impacts require a dramatic effort and action from the public service and from the EU that shows the citizen that we are up to the task, that we can help them deal with the circumstances that have become inevitable and part of everyone's daily life. I was very happy to hear Dr. Murciak referring to the economic figures, because that makes my job easier. I will be able to focus on the action by the Commission.
So we indeed share the views of getting ahead of the impact.
It makes much more economic sense to deal with prevention, to invest into anticipation, than taking care of the damages, which reduce the macro-fiscal space and the government's ability to spend on research and development, on social housing, or investment into industrial innovation. And these are fundamental targets for EU to meet in order to remain competitive in the global context. So just to say a few words about what our framework will contain. And I thank all those who have referred to the common temperature reference scenario. That will be at the very core of our proposal.
And it will be building from the scientific advisory board's temperature levels and the latest science. We have been working on the reference scenario and its translation into an operational tool that allows us to have granular information based on a map or based on a timeframe, so that the decision-makers have decision-relevant material to base their work upon. Another central figure of the legislative proposal will be the duty to consider that reference scenario by public authorities.
It is true that it is a process obligation, but at the same time, when the information and the trajectory is available for the general public, there will be a strong expectation and need for democratic accountability for the public authorities to have delivered on this. There will be also reporting obligations based on certain indicators that we hope to be very understandable, accessible and easy for for the public to follow. In terms of the multiannual financial framework and many of you have referenced to financing, we already included in the recitals for the MFF proposal the notion of resilience by design. And we have to be very clear, resilience by design has to be a principle guiding all our action in the context of investment and policy making, because if we do not follow that principle, we will face disaster by default. And that is not a place where where the EU can afford to find itself, even financially.
We will also be looking at how the do no significant harm can be complemented by elements that resilience proof some of our work in the bigger infrastructure projects and so forth.
It's it's quite important for us that in addition to the duty to consider, we assign risk ownership. And that we assign that risk ownership clearly across the different sectors that are all implicated. Because there is no single sector in the EU that's not in one way or another affected in terms of the policies or compromising investments if we don't decide that we want to get ahead of the impacts. Take an example of energy. What we saw last year with nuclear water being restrained was a lot of shutdowns.
That has a severe implication on the output and the productivity in a region. Similarly, waterways could not be relied on, so supply chains were were jeopardized. And and these kind of extended impacts are not really captured in our methodology in full, as previous speakers have also said. So we also need to work on on a methodology that allows us to measure and manage the risks in a more comprehensive way. So our aim is to really integrate climate risk management and risk awareness and the duty across all EU policies.
That includes public authorities in the member states, but also the Commission. So the duty to consider the risk should also be implemented at the Union level. We will continue to produce Union-level risk assessments and resilience strategies. We will continue to ask member states to deliver on their resilience plans and strategies. This would be in a way simplifying, streamlining the current adaptation plans and strategies.
But in addition to what we have in the climate law, which is a general duty to have a plan, now we will have substantiated to what climatic reality this plan needs to match. And that has not been a feature before. You also heard in the President's State of the Union speech the specific initiatives: the water initiative, the insurance alliance, the 100 most vulnerable territories, the heat plan, the European firefighting fleet. These are all going to be part of our framework.
However, what we want to achieve is awareness about the emergency measures and the need to up those in the context of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. And then the systemic change, the longer-term resilience that has to be built in all our policies and all our measures. So, in addition to the recovery and emergency response, we need to have this whole new risk management culture that has to be adopted among the public authorities, but ultimately also triggering to the private sector and citizens where this ownership is a feature as well. There's quite a lot of gain and potential in engaging in this area. The markets for resilience products and services today stand at somewhere around US 1 trillion.
By 2050, that market is expected to have grown to 4 trillion.
The EU has some of the top-notch technologies, but we need to also make sure that we encourage our innovators, our investors, and industry to move very assertively in this marketplace so that we secure our position globally in the years to come when the markets for risk management and resilience tools will only increase. So by doing more in the area of industrial resilience solutions, innovation, we are not only making the EU better prepared, but we are also positioning ourselves for the future market. It's a question of strategic autonomy, but also long-term competitiveness. I'll leave you with three words. Anticipation: that's going to be at the center and at the heart of our proposal.
Alliances: we need to work with industry, be it the agriculture industry, be it the insurance industry, be it the energy sector, in order to make sure that the deployment of our framework is a real whole-of-the-economy effort. And the final word would be agility. Science evolves very fast, reality sometimes seems to evolve even faster. So we need to be ready to respond in a dynamic way, looking at the facts and the future as we see it and as we should expect it.
I'll finish there, thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thanks so much. So we expect the proposal of the Commission for the end of October. I think we want to stay as a member of the Parliament on this issue, not only when we have to comment some tragic event, but it's something that is also unfortunately a new normality and we want to talk and go on working on adaptation. We don't have any other business today. The next meeting will be in Strasbourg the 5th of October at 7:00 PM.
Thank you.
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