EU countries are likely to reaffirm national emissions goals for sectors like buildings, transport, and agriculture, when EU leaders meet for a summit scheduled on 24-25 May.

Climate change will take centre stage at next week’s EU summit as leaders from the 27-nation bloc discuss plans to revise the EU’s carbon market, the emissions trading scheme (ETS).

Carbon prices have soared above €50 per tonne in recent weeks as Europe adopted tougher climate goals for 2030 on its way towards reaching climate neutrality by 2050. The European Commission now wants to extend the ETS to new sectors like buildings and transport and will seek views from EU leaders on how best to achieve this.

At their summit next week, EU leaders will debate the bloc’s effort sharing regulation, which works alongside the ETS to promote decarbonisation in Europe.

The regulation addresses emissions from transport, buildings, agriculture, and waste, which are outside the ETS and cover almost 60% of Europe’s domestic emissions. Every country has a binding target for reducing its emissions by 2030 and a trajectory to get there, based on its GDP per capita.

According to the leaked draft conclusions of the meeting, EU leaders will reaffirm these targets and their scope, stating “the need to maintain national targets under the Effort Sharing Regulation and to preserve its broad scope to stimulate effective measures at national level”.

The distribution effort among EU member states should also be based on criteria defined in the effort sharing regulation – i.e.: based on countries’ GDP per capita – the document adds, stressing the need “to strengthen EU-wide sectoral measures and policies to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions”.

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