The continued effort sharing approach in EU climate law: Binding targets, challenging enforcement?

Abstract

With the Effort Sharing Regulation, Member States are challenged to steer their societies – particularly the agriculture, buildings, waste and transport sectors – towards lower greenhouse gas emissions. The Effort Sharing Regulation illustrates the large extent to which the European Union (EU) relies on the use of hard law for addressing climate change, including binding enforcement provisions. The approach of the Effort Sharing Regulation is, in essence, simple: it consists of individual binding emission reduction targets for Member States, which are given various options to achieve compliance in a supposedly flexible, cost‐effective way. In this sense, the effort sharing approach is a continuation of the regulatory approach put forward by the Kyoto Protocol. The Effort Sharing Regulation can also serve as an example for third countries to adopt binding emission reduction targets, and it can be considered whether it would be beneficial to link such binding targets of third countries with this EU mechanism. However, a closer look at the Regulation highlights the challenges for its implementation, and the correct use of flexibilities, together with the proper application of the monitoring and enforcement provisions will be key for a successful outcome. The reputation of the EU taking leadership for combating climate change hinges on demonstrating compliance and on taking effective enforcement action where needed.

Closing the Implementation Gap: Obstacles in Reaching Net-Zero Pledges in the EU and Germany

“…Given the current heterogeneity in priorities across member states, this is highly unlikely to occur. As far as emission targets of the ESR and the ETS are concerned, they constitute forms of hard governance that can be enforced, e.g., based on Articles 8 and 9 of the ESR (Peeters & Athanasiadou, 2020). National sovereignty is protected in Article 192(2) of the TFEU only to the extent that measures significantly affecting a member state's choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply require unanimous votes.…”

Barriers to achieving climate goals. An external context

“…It should be emphasised that the adoption of GHG emission reduction targets by the EU does not mean that they are not contested by some member states, including Poland, stressing the different financial and technical possibilities and the varying impact of the coal lobby on the speed of the energy transition (https://www.bbc.com/news, 2021). The reputation of the EU exercising leadership in the struggle against climate change is highly dependent on demonstrating compliance and taking effective enforcement action where necessary (Peeters & Athanasiadou, 2020).…”

Sharing the effort of the European Green Deal among countries

“…Considering the case of the European Union, while all large installations are regulated within the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) under an EU-wide cap, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions is tackled under the EU ‘effort-sharing’ approach, which consists of individual binding emission reduction targets for Member States. Basically, the EU has implemented the regulatory approach of the Kyoto Protocol—which included individual emission reduction commitments as well as various emission trading options (flexibility instruments)—among its Member States 6 . Initially, the so-called Triptych sectoral approach 7 differentiated three economic segments: (i) the power sector, (ii) the energy-intensive industry exposed to international trade and (iii) the remaining domestically-oriented sectors, with emission reductions for each calculated by application of different rules (see Supplementary Information section 1 for details).…”