Deutsche und Europäische Klimapolitik

Is the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism a trade barrier that burdens the economies of the countries concerned? Or can it be a driving force for sustainable energy and industrial transformation, benefiting both trading partners and the climate alike? Our discussion paper analyses the impact of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on Ukraine and the Western Balkans and identifies how these countries can use the CBAM to accelerate their energy transition and industrial transformation.

The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is designed to ensure that European industrial companies remain competitive despite rising carbon prices. The CBAM thus enables ambitious European climate policy. However, it only covers imports into the EU: The question of whether and how the EU should take action to secure the competitiveness of exporting companies is still unresolved. This study offers answers to precisely this question.

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU has committed to making European product markets more sustainable, with circularity playing a key role. To achieve this goal, the EU is planning to introduce a Digital Product Passport for a wide range of products. In the future, the Digital Product Pass could foster new market opportunities for business models that strengthen the circular economy. To do so, it must be designed in such a way that it is particularly empowering for actors in the fields of product life cycle extension.

The book ‘Shaping Digital Transformation for a Sustainable Society’ shows how society can become digitally sustainable. It contains 28 contributions from 68 authors hailing from civil society, research, and practical experience, discussing challenges of digitalisation and how digital politics can and must be designed for sustainabilty.

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is comparable to a comprehensive digital index card or a “digital CV” that the EU seeks to introduce for a wide range of products. It is intended to provide information needed, for example, for more efficient repair and recycling of products. We believe that the DPP has a significant potential to pave the way towards a more circular economy as it can address the information deficit along a circular value chain that often impeded circularity.

Steering the steel industry towards a climate-neutral future is a major challenge. However, it is also a great opportunity: steel sector is responsible for approximately 30% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Germany – and, by extension, for 7% of national emissions. This means that a climate-neutral steel industry will allow us to take a major step closer to meeting the German and international climate targets. This policy paper highlights how we can get there and which technologies will play a key role.

In the EU, reform of the Stability and Growth Pact is on the agenda. German and French civil society organisations therefore call in their joint letter to the German Federal Minister of Finance and his French counterpart for the relaxation of the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact in combination with the establishment of a new EU climate and biodiversity fund. Investments in the green and just transition are essential to ensure the resilience, prosperity, and social justice of our economies and societies.

On April 18, the European Parliament will vote on the reform of the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the new Social Climate Fund (SCF). European NGOs, including Germanwatch, have published a joint statement emphasising the importance of the new fund to ensure social justice. However, Germanwatch and the other signatories call for a substantial increase in funding to ensure that European climate action is fair and just.

On Friday, 10 March 2023, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) adopted its conclusions on climate and energy diplomacy for this year, entitled: ‘Bolstering EU climate and energy diplomacy in a critical decade’. In this blog post, we present the key priorities to which the Council agreed and highlight the areas where the EU needs to provide more clarity and increase its ambition.

The LIFE TogetherFor1.5 project aims to align the EU’s climate action with the 1.5°C objective of the Paris Agreement. 13 national CSOs and CAN Europe (the leading climate NGO coalition in Europe) have been building on climate and energy policy revision opportunities, such as the finalisation of the ‘Fit for 55’ legislative package, national energy and climate plans (NECPs), and the revision of national long-term strategies.