Tick tock goes Denmark’s climate clock
The Danish presidency has under three months to reach a deal on the EU’s next emissions-cutting targets.
By Zia Weisein Brussels
Christian Bruna/EFE via EPA
It’s the climate countdown.
The European Union has less than three months to agree a decade-defining climate law — and it’s Denmark’s job to make it happen.
On July 2, the second day of Copenhagen’s presidency of the Council of the EU, the European Commission will unveil its proposal for the bloc’s next climate milestone: a target to cut planet-warming emissions 90 percent by 2040.
The target is already so contentious that the EU executive is expected to soften it with significant loopholes to ensure the law can pass. Even then, getting all 27 governments to find a common position is a daunting task.
To add to the pressure, Brussels has linked the 2040 goal to the bloc’s 2035 United Nations climate target. Each signatory of the Paris Agreement is obliged to submit 2035 plans in September, which U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell has repeatedly described as “the most important policy documents of this century.”
And let’s not even mention Europe-style summer holidays, during which diplomats can sign off for weeks and many governmental services shift to lower gear.
This intense timeline gives Denmark the near-impossible task of landing a deal that will define the bloc’s economic and environmental policy for the next decade and a half — and will determine whether the EU can claim a leadership role in global climate talks — in less than three months.
“We have to play with the cards that we’ve been given as a presidency — and it is a difficult hand,” Danish Climate Minister Lars Aagaard, the man in charge of this unenviable job, told POLITICO.
Many EU governments are driving a hard bargain. In exchange for their support of the 2040 goal they’re looking to get concessions ranging from legislative changes to promises of financial help, legal loopholes and flexibility in calculating the targets.
If Denmark fails to square the circle by September, the EU’s 2035 plan will not be counted toward the U.N.’s tally of global targets — casting doubt on the bloc’s ability to fill the diplomatic vacuum left by the United States’ withdrawal from international climate efforts, and weakening ability to pressure other major emitters like China to do more.
“We are all aware that our deadline is mid-September … [This] leaves us with a quite tight time window,” said Aagaard.
Dual target conundrum
If it had been up to Copenhagen, the EU would have agreed the target already. Denmark was the first country to endorse setting the 2040 goal at 90 percent below 1990 emission levels. That’s the figure the Commission has been promising for more than a year.
But other governments expressed fears that an all too stringent climate target would hurt the EU’s already floundering economy.
Growing political pushback led the Commission to delay its formal 2040 proposal from March until July, while promising to grant countries more “flexibilities” to reach the goal.
That has prompted governments to send lengthy wish lists to Brussels, including requests to expand the EU’s upcoming carbon tariff scheme, less stringent sub-targets and financial support.
Another point of contention involves international carbon credits. The Commission has drafted a proposal that would allow the EU to outsource some of its climate efforts to poorer countries to meet its targets. Many governments like this idea — though scientists don’t — but nailing down the details is another matter.
These potential roadblocks wouldn’t be a huge issue if it wasn’t for the U.N.’s September deadline to submit plans for reducing emissions by 2035, which will also form the centerpiece of November’s global climate conference in Brazil, known as COP30.
“My ask for member states would be to be well prepared, be concrete, but also show the needed pragmatism, because Europe stands stronger if we stand united,” Aagaard said.
Brussels wants to set the 2035 target halfway between the EU’s existing 2030 goal of 55 percent and the 90 percent for 2040. But some national capitals have argued that the EU should decouple the two to speed things up, though this risks resulting in a lower target.
Denmark is planning to stick to the EU executive’s plan. “The Paris Agreement was made in France, it’s made in Europe … I think we have a responsibility for keeping that process alive,” the minister said.
Aagaard under pressure
When things heat up around the climate goals in coming weeks, the spotlight will be on Aagaard — ramping up the pressure he’s already under.
The 57-year-old politician became a minister in 2022 after 15 years as director of an energy industry association. Just in April, he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote after he withheld information about the state of the national power grid from Denmark’s parliament.
“I think it’s very clear that Lars Aagaard is and has been under a lot of pressure,” said Jens Mattias Clausen, EU director at Danish green think tank Concito. “He definitely needs to be able to show to parliament that he can deliver on this.”
Ahead of parliamentary elections next year, Aagaard’s centrist Moderates party is polling below 4 percent.
Denmark, traditionally the EU’s foremost climate champion, “is one of the few countries in the EU where climate as a political priority still has a lot of weight,” Clausen added. “So if they don’t deliver a strong 2040 target, quite a few of the parties in opposition will use that as a political weapon in the domestic debate.”
Plus, at this year’s U.N. summit in Brazil in November, the Danish minister will co-negotiate on behalf of the EU alongside the Commission — the senior-most role for a Dane at global climate talks since a Copenhagen-hosted 2009 conference.
The 2009 conference is marked in the history books as one that collapsed in disarray. With “Copenhagen” now a byword for calamitous negotiations among climate diplomats, Aagaard will be under pressure to help erase Denmark’s U.N. summit trauma with a better performance in Brazil.
Aagaard downplayed his own, domestic political stakes: “I’m there to serve Europe,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’s on my mind.”
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