Developing the EU Long Term Climate Strategy – Policy Paper

Date: 18 April 2018

AUTHOR(S): ANDREI MARCU AND GEORG ZACHMAN

Much has changed since the European Commission published in 2011 “The roadmap for moving to a competitive, low carbon economy in 2050.” The Paris Agreement created a new global framework to address climate change, and many of the assumptions—including technological and scientific ones— on which the 2050 roadmap was built have changed. In March 2018, the European Council invited “the Commission to present by the first quarter of 2019 a proposal for a Strategy for long-term EU greenhouse gas emissions reduction in accordance with the Paris Agreement.”

This policy paper seeks to develop a series of consistent choices upon which the new European Long-Term Climate Strategy can be built. It is produced under the project “Developing the EU Long-Term Climate Strategy, ” a joint initiative of Bruegel and the European Roundtable Climate Change and Sustainable Transition, and is accompanied by a technical paper. The policy paper is the outcome of a year-long effort, which included a series of stakeholder engagements in five EU capitals in early 2018.