For anyone interested in the climate, the Chancellors’ debate on Sunday evening was a complete disappointment. Although we are currently experiencing the warmest January globally since records began and the climate crisis is worsening in many places, the topic played virtually no role. Apart from the question of whether wind turbines are ugly, the presenters did not mention the topic once. And in the absence of the Green Party’s co-candidate Robert Habeck, Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz hardly mentioned the issue themselves. And when they did, it caused more confusion than clarity, for example when Merz mentioned a completely unrealistic figure for climate money, as Malte Kreutzfeldt reports.
The outlook for international climate policy does not look much more positive at the moment. Yesterday was the official deadline for submitting the third generation of national climate targets (NDCs). But only 13 of the almost 200 countries delivered on time. Even if there are good reasons for this, as Bernhard Pötter analyzes, this also shows that climate policy is currently not getting the attention it actually needs.
We also look at the expansion of renewables in Mexico and in an Opinion, Ole Adolphsen and Marian Feist from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs explain why the next German government should maintain its foreign climate policy after the general election.
Stay tuned, climate is always an issue for us!
Nine months before the COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the serious struggle for the outcome of this conference on financing and national climate plans has begun. While only just over a dozen of the almost 200 countries had submitted their plans by the UN deadline for submitting new national climate plans (NDCs) on Feb. 10, the responsible authority, the UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), has informally extended this deadline until September – and is relying on aggressive optimism. Experts expect that important decisions on the NDCs will not be made until summer 2025.
All UN member states were supposed to submit their NDCs for the period from 2030 to 2035 by Feb. 10 – nine months before the start of COP30. According to the UN, 13 countries have done so so far (as of Feb. 9). Among them are only the USA and Brazil as heavyweights and only the UK as an exemplary country for the 1.5-degree pathway – and the USA’s NDC is practically worthless for US federal policy after President Donald Trump took office.
Only 17 percent of all emissions and eight percent of the world’s population have punctual 2035 plans. “So far, governments have not delivered on what they promised ten years ago [when the Paris Agreement was signed, editor’s note],” criticizes Bill Hare from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), “to put the world on a path to 1.5 degrees at the required pace.” A tightening of the 2030 NDCs is also necessary, but so far none of the countries have provided for this.
The reluctance of countries to act has to do with the overall geopolitical situation. This has also clouded over considerably when it comes to climate action:
Despite these uncertainties, Simon Stiell, Executive Director of UN Climate Change, is optimistic: ten years after the Paris Agreement, the expected global warming has fallen from five to around three degrees, even if this is still “dangerously high”. Stiell sees the triumph of renewables as unstoppable – and warns the USA that anyone who pulls out now risks economic losses compared to their competitors: “One country may take a step backwards,” said Stiell, “but others will take its place to seize this opportunity.” According to Stiell, more and more countries and companies are recognizing that it is in their own interest to act on climate action.
Good NDCs are more important to the UN than quick climate targets. After all, the original idea in the Paris Agreement was to present the NDCs nine months before they were adopted at COP30: The countries could then revise and improve them. However, this is unlikely to happen anyway. This is another reason why Stiell is practically extending the deadline for the NDCs by six months: “The Secretariat needs them on its desk by September at the latest in order to finalize the synthesis report.”
In this report, the authority summarizes the collective climate impact that will result from the national NDCs – and came to the sobering conclusion in 2024 that the NDCs would only lead to a 2.6% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2019. According to the IPCC, it is clear that global emissions must be halved by 2030 in order to comply with the 1.5° limit.
There are reasons why many countries are reluctant to set ambitious climate targets:
Petter Lydén from Germanwatch also emphasizes that the quality of the NDCs is more important than the timetable. According to the COP28 resolution, the NDCs for 2035 should for the first time, as agreed in the Paris Agreement, describe the restructuring of the entire economy as uniformly and comprehensively as possible as a consequence of the global stocktake. “The NDCs must describe how the economic reality will change. Those who do not make such long-term investment plans will be left behind. We are currently seeing this in the German automotive industry, for example,” says Lydén.
Switzerland is one of the few industrialized countries to have submitted its national climate target (NDC) for 2035 to the United Nations on time: Greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by “at least 65%” compared to 1990 levels in order to reach net zero by 2050. However, several experts and environmental associations have criticized the NDC, as up to a third of emissions are to be reduced abroad. This could in turn violate Switzerland’s Climate Protection Act.
The new NDC is more ambitious than the 2030 target and for the first time includes reduction targets for the individual sectors. However, some of these are set significantly lower than the overall target:
This results in a domestic reduction of only 39 to 45% – or a gap of 10.3 million tons of CO2e or a third of the reduction target, as an analysis by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) shows. The experts from the independent science platform rate the NDC as “insufficient” for meeting the 1.5-degree target, as this gap can hardly be closed in the required period through negative emissions in land use (LULUCF) or reduction technologies (CDR/CCS).
On request, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) explains: “It is not yet possible to say what proportion of emissions reduction each technology will contribute.”
Instead, Switzerland is likely to rely primarily on emission reductions abroad (Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes, ITMOs) in accordance with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. However, the NDC lacks specific details. “By 2030, the domestic share is likely to be around two-thirds; the remaining third will be reduced with measures abroad,” according to the Federal Office for the Environment. According to the NDC, the foreign share should decrease after 2030 – however, the exact share will only be determined in the next revision of the CO2 Act for the period from 2030.
The extent to which emissions reductions abroad will even be possible through ITMOs by 2035 is still unclear at present, says analyst Judit Hecke to Table.Briefings. She is responsible for evaluations on Switzerland at CAT. The framework conditions for Article 6 were only defined at the last COP29 and many details are still being worked out. Nevertheless, some countries are already trading with ITMOs, including Switzerland with a total of 13 partner countries. Bilateral agreements on Article 6.2, however, allow states “a great deal of leeway in the crediting and sale of ITMOs, without the effects on the partner countries are really taken into account,” warns Hecke.
It is particularly problematic that the most cost-effective reductions are often sold first. “This can lead to the host countries only being able to implement more expensive emission reduction measures themselves later on – which makes it more expensive for them to achieve their own targets,” says Hecke. It therefore remains to be seen how the market will develop and how the verification and transparency of CO2 certificates will be ensured.
According to climate researcher Cyril Brunner from ETH Zurich, who primarily researches climate strategies and CO2 reduction, Switzerland uses foreign rather than domestic emission reductions “to a greater extent than almost any other country”. This is based on the assumption that a greater reduction in emissions can be achieved abroad with the same amount of money. This is true from today’s perspective – “but not necessarily if I want to reduce all possible emissions by 2050”, says Brunner. “Otherwise, for example, half of all buildings in Switzerland would have to be renovated in the last five years before 2050.”
Patrick Hofstetter, climate action expert at WWF Switzerland, also points out that hardly any other country is pursuing foreign reductions as actively as Switzerland. “In view of the huge quality problems of foreign reductions and the immense decarbonization potential and need at home, Switzerland’s strategy is incomprehensible,” criticizes Hofstetter. Switzerland’s partner countries now have “an incentive to submit particularly weak NDCs” in order to “sell as many reductions as possible to Switzerland”, Hofstetter fears.
Hofstetter is also a board member of the Climate Alliance. The umbrella organization of climate policy NGOs in Switzerland criticizes the new NDC in its analysis as “completely inadequate“. For example, the country continues to rely on ITMOs – but Article 6 of the Paris Agreement clearly states that “the market mechanism should only be used to raise global ambition and not to replace the national climate efforts of the richest countries”.
Switzerland’s Climate Protection Act also requires that the targets “be achieved as far as possible by reducing emissions in Switzerland”. It has been in force since January 2025 and is a counter-proposal to the “Glacier Initiative”, which freelance journalist and historian Marcel Hänggi worked on scientifically. According to Hänggi, the NDC violates the Climate Protection Act with its high proportion of foreign reductions (the Federal Office for the Environment left an inquiry unanswered) and postpones the necessary structural change. In addition, “transparency is a joke when the NDC annex names measures that the government wants to cancel”.
As an example, Hänggi refers to the existing building program, which is explicitly mentioned in the NDC, but was only budgeted by parliament for this year with 140 million Swiss francs instead of the 200 million per year provided for by law. The government wants to cut this further. In a Climate Alliance press release, Hofstetter also criticizes the fact that “on the day of the publication of the NDC, in which the Federal Council refers to the impact of the buildings program, the Federal Council decides to cut federal funding for this very program“.
The EU Commission wants to deliver when it comes to cutting red tape. Following the announcement by Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra to exempt the majority of companies from CBAM, German SMEs are satisfied. A spokeswoman for the DIHK said on Friday that the effort involved in CBAM was far too great for many small imports.
In addition, producers often lack the data for the CO2 content of goods, but importers are still responsible: “The fact that the EU Commission is planning to simplify both aspects – through a higher threshold for the reporting obligation and through standard values for the reports – is good news.”
In the current test phase of the CBAM, importers will have to report data on the CO₂ content of imports for goods worth 150 euros or more, and from 2026 they will also have to pay levies. This is intended to compensate for the disadvantage for domestic producers who are subject to European emissions trading and who are threatened by imports from countries where the CO2 price is lower or which have not yet introduced emissions trading at all.
Table.Briefings already reported in mid-January that Climate and Tax Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra is having the de minimis threshold for imports and protection for export goods reviewed. Last Thursday, Hoekstra first made a political statement in the Financial Times and then in the EU Parliament’s Subcommittee on Taxation. One-fifth of importers would have to pay around 97 percent of the levies in the future, said the Commissioner. “Wouldn’t it be wise to let the 80 percent off the hook in terms of the administrative burden? In my opinion, yes.”
The environmental organization Germanwatch also understands the argument. “I do not assume that an exemption for a few percent of imported CBAM goods will lead to significant problems for competitiveness or climate action,” says climate expert Oldag Caspar. However, it depends on the details and trading partners should not get the impression that the EU is dismantling its border adjustment mechanism.
According to “Contexte”, the Directorate-General for Taxation revealed further details at a meeting with stakeholders shortly after Hoekstra’s appearance in Parliament. According to the report, the simplifications are to be part of the first omnibus law to reduce bureaucracy, which the Commission intends to present on Feb. 26, as previously announced. According to a presentation on Thursday, the DG proposes exempting companies from the tax that import products with an annual carbon footprint of less than 100 tons.
According to Handelsblatt, the monetary value will no longer be the sole criterion for calculating the levy. There should also be a simplification of the information currently required on the third country.
According to “Contexte”, a major revision of the regulation will follow in the second half of the year. On the one hand, the Commission wants to address the issue of exports once again. Export-oriented industries have long complained that protection against CO2-intensive imports alone is of little help to them – they would prefer to continue to receive free certificates in European emissions trading. However, the Commission’s tax experts also want to look into including other sectors in the scope of the CBAM – refineries and the chemical and paper industries are being discussed.
So far, the CBAM applies to imports of cement, iron, steel, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen. The Commission now also wants to examine extending the mechanism to products that are downstream of these products in the value chain. Indirect emissions could also be included to a greater extent. The Commission also wants to take measures against the circumvention of the CBAM by third countries.
On Friday, CDU MEP Peter Liese suggested a further possible simplification of the levies on imports. While the carbon footprint of a load of raw steel costing EUR 150 may be relevant, the situation is different for a package of special screws costing EUR 150. “We should therefore also have threshold values for the weight and not just the value of goods,” said the environmental politician.
As was recently seen during the negotiations on the new climate financing target in Baku, international climate cooperation is increasingly characterized by mistrust and adverse circumstances. Before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the moment for constructive cooperation on climate protection seemed relatively favorable – but since the outbreak of war, climate policy has become even more closely intertwined with economic and security policy interests. This is demonstrated by the new focus of the EU’s Green Deal on competitiveness.
It is therefore all the more remarkable that, despite the remaining deficits, concrete implementations such as the Climate Club or the new fund for loss and damage have been successful. Germany has played a central role in achieving these successes. They were made possible not least by the internal changes in the ministerial apparatus, which are part of climate foreign policy.
These include:
This restructuring took time and resources, and it was not always possible to present a united front as “Team Germany”, both internally and externally.
In summary, however, the positives outweigh the negatives. The reform demonstrates an urgently needed awareness of the problem. Whereas Germany’s actions were previously more fragmented between departments and reacted to developments on an ad hoc basis, the approach to foreign climate policy was to become more explicitly coherent and strategic. The goal was climate diplomacy from a single source that does justice to the importance of climate change for all areas of foreign policy.
However, the success of the new approach was not only immediately apparent in international climate cooperation: After some initial hesitation, the Federal Foreign Office succeeded in linking the topic with existing foreign policy activities. One example: contacts with small island states were used to campaign for support for Germany’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Climate cooperation also plays a key role in dealing with strategically important middle powers, for example in the new transformation partnership with Brazil.
Climate diplomacy can therefore also serve related foreign policy goals and improve trade relations or effectively combine decarbonization and energy security.
Experience has shown that a lot depends on the right personalities at the ministerial management level. Thanks in part to their experience and standing in the diplomatic arena, the German government has been able to act with determination under the leadership of the Federal Foreign Office and has thus signaled that climate cooperation is a priority policy area for Germany.
In view of the pressing challenges facing Germany and Europe, it would be a mistake to sacrifice the gains of foreign climate policy to party political optics. Instead, remaining points of friction in interministerial coordination should be further reduced and the strategic direction of Germany’s climate diplomacy should be sharpened.
Consolidating competencies for international partnerships in the Federal Foreign Office is one possible way to achieve this. National and international climate policy would thus be more clearly separated in organizational terms, which would streamline coordination processes. Continuing the evaluation of Germany’s activities in international alliances and partnerships that have already been initiated would help to find the right balance between the depth and breadth of Germany’s commitment and deploy resources in a more targeted manner.
Instead of abandoning it, the next German government should make strategic use of foreign climate policy. Aligned with climate, industrial and security policy guidelines, international climate cooperation can thus be embedded in the broader turnaround.
Ole Adolphsen is a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and works on international climate policy. Marian Feist is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hertie School and works on global environmental policy, in particular climate negotiations, diplomacy and financing. This text is based on an Ariadne analysis on foreign climate policy, which they wrote together with other researchers.
For anyone interested in the climate, the Chancellors’ debate on Sunday evening was a complete disappointment. Although we are currently experiencing the warmest January globally since records began and the climate crisis is worsening in many places, the topic played virtually no role. Apart from the question of whether wind turbines are ugly, the presenters did not mention the topic once. And in the absence of the Green Party’s co-candidate Robert Habeck, Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz hardly mentioned the issue themselves. And when they did, it caused more confusion than clarity, for example when Merz mentioned a completely unrealistic figure for climate money, as Malte Kreutzfeldt reports.
The outlook for international climate policy does not look much more positive at the moment. Yesterday was the official deadline for submitting the third generation of national climate targets (NDCs). But only 13 of the almost 200 countries delivered on time. Even if there are good reasons for this, as Bernhard Pötter analyzes, this also shows that climate policy is currently not getting the attention it actually needs.
We also look at the expansion of renewables in Mexico and in an Opinion, Ole Adolphsen and Marian Feist from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs explain why the next German government should maintain its foreign climate policy after the general election.
Stay tuned, climate is always an issue for us!
Nine months before the COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the serious struggle for the outcome of this conference on financing and national climate plans has begun. While only just over a dozen of the almost 200 countries had submitted their plans by the UN deadline for submitting new national climate plans (NDCs) on Feb. 10, the responsible authority, the UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), has informally extended this deadline until September – and is relying on aggressive optimism. Experts expect that important decisions on the NDCs will not be made until summer 2025.
All UN member states were supposed to submit their NDCs for the period from 2030 to 2035 by Feb. 10 – nine months before the start of COP30. According to the UN, 13 countries have done so so far (as of Feb. 9). Among them are only the USA and Brazil as heavyweights and only the UK as an exemplary country for the 1.5-degree pathway – and the USA’s NDC is practically worthless for US federal policy after President Donald Trump took office.
Only 17 percent of all emissions and eight percent of the world’s population have punctual 2035 plans. “So far, governments have not delivered on what they promised ten years ago [when the Paris Agreement was signed, editor’s note],” criticizes Bill Hare from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), “to put the world on a path to 1.5 degrees at the required pace.” A tightening of the 2030 NDCs is also necessary, but so far none of the countries have provided for this.
The reluctance of countries to act has to do with the overall geopolitical situation. This has also clouded over considerably when it comes to climate action:
Despite these uncertainties, Simon Stiell, Executive Director of UN Climate Change, is optimistic: ten years after the Paris Agreement, the expected global warming has fallen from five to around three degrees, even if this is still “dangerously high”. Stiell sees the triumph of renewables as unstoppable – and warns the USA that anyone who pulls out now risks economic losses compared to their competitors: “One country may take a step backwards,” said Stiell, “but others will take its place to seize this opportunity.” According to Stiell, more and more countries and companies are recognizing that it is in their own interest to act on climate action.
Good NDCs are more important to the UN than quick climate targets. After all, the original idea in the Paris Agreement was to present the NDCs nine months before they were adopted at COP30: The countries could then revise and improve them. However, this is unlikely to happen anyway. This is another reason why Stiell is practically extending the deadline for the NDCs by six months: “The Secretariat needs them on its desk by September at the latest in order to finalize the synthesis report.”
In this report, the authority summarizes the collective climate impact that will result from the national NDCs – and came to the sobering conclusion in 2024 that the NDCs would only lead to a 2.6% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2019. According to the IPCC, it is clear that global emissions must be halved by 2030 in order to comply with the 1.5° limit.
There are reasons why many countries are reluctant to set ambitious climate targets:
Petter Lydén from Germanwatch also emphasizes that the quality of the NDCs is more important than the timetable. According to the COP28 resolution, the NDCs for 2035 should for the first time, as agreed in the Paris Agreement, describe the restructuring of the entire economy as uniformly and comprehensively as possible as a consequence of the global stocktake. “The NDCs must describe how the economic reality will change. Those who do not make such long-term investment plans will be left behind. We are currently seeing this in the German automotive industry, for example,” says Lydén.
Switzerland is one of the few industrialized countries to have submitted its national climate target (NDC) for 2035 to the United Nations on time: Greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by “at least 65%” compared to 1990 levels in order to reach net zero by 2050. However, several experts and environmental associations have criticized the NDC, as up to a third of emissions are to be reduced abroad. This could in turn violate Switzerland’s Climate Protection Act.
The new NDC is more ambitious than the 2030 target and for the first time includes reduction targets for the individual sectors. However, some of these are set significantly lower than the overall target:
This results in a domestic reduction of only 39 to 45% – or a gap of 10.3 million tons of CO2e or a third of the reduction target, as an analysis by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) shows. The experts from the independent science platform rate the NDC as “insufficient” for meeting the 1.5-degree target, as this gap can hardly be closed in the required period through negative emissions in land use (LULUCF) or reduction technologies (CDR/CCS).
On request, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) explains: “It is not yet possible to say what proportion of emissions reduction each technology will contribute.”
Instead, Switzerland is likely to rely primarily on emission reductions abroad (Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes, ITMOs) in accordance with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. However, the NDC lacks specific details. “By 2030, the domestic share is likely to be around two-thirds; the remaining third will be reduced with measures abroad,” according to the Federal Office for the Environment. According to the NDC, the foreign share should decrease after 2030 – however, the exact share will only be determined in the next revision of the CO2 Act for the period from 2030.
The extent to which emissions reductions abroad will even be possible through ITMOs by 2035 is still unclear at present, says analyst Judit Hecke to Table.Briefings. She is responsible for evaluations on Switzerland at CAT. The framework conditions for Article 6 were only defined at the last COP29 and many details are still being worked out. Nevertheless, some countries are already trading with ITMOs, including Switzerland with a total of 13 partner countries. Bilateral agreements on Article 6.2, however, allow states “a great deal of leeway in the crediting and sale of ITMOs, without the effects on the partner countries are really taken into account,” warns Hecke.
It is particularly problematic that the most cost-effective reductions are often sold first. “This can lead to the host countries only being able to implement more expensive emission reduction measures themselves later on – which makes it more expensive for them to achieve their own targets,” says Hecke. It therefore remains to be seen how the market will develop and how the verification and transparency of CO2 certificates will be ensured.
According to climate researcher Cyril Brunner from ETH Zurich, who primarily researches climate strategies and CO2 reduction, Switzerland uses foreign rather than domestic emission reductions “to a greater extent than almost any other country”. This is based on the assumption that a greater reduction in emissions can be achieved abroad with the same amount of money. This is true from today’s perspective – “but not necessarily if I want to reduce all possible emissions by 2050”, says Brunner. “Otherwise, for example, half of all buildings in Switzerland would have to be renovated in the last five years before 2050.”
Patrick Hofstetter, climate action expert at WWF Switzerland, also points out that hardly any other country is pursuing foreign reductions as actively as Switzerland. “In view of the huge quality problems of foreign reductions and the immense decarbonization potential and need at home, Switzerland’s strategy is incomprehensible,” criticizes Hofstetter. Switzerland’s partner countries now have “an incentive to submit particularly weak NDCs” in order to “sell as many reductions as possible to Switzerland”, Hofstetter fears.
Hofstetter is also a board member of the Climate Alliance. The umbrella organization of climate policy NGOs in Switzerland criticizes the new NDC in its analysis as “completely inadequate“. For example, the country continues to rely on ITMOs – but Article 6 of the Paris Agreement clearly states that “the market mechanism should only be used to raise global ambition and not to replace the national climate efforts of the richest countries”.
Switzerland’s Climate Protection Act also requires that the targets “be achieved as far as possible by reducing emissions in Switzerland”. It has been in force since January 2025 and is a counter-proposal to the “Glacier Initiative”, which freelance journalist and historian Marcel Hänggi worked on scientifically. According to Hänggi, the NDC violates the Climate Protection Act with its high proportion of foreign reductions (the Federal Office for the Environment left an inquiry unanswered) and postpones the necessary structural change. In addition, “transparency is a joke when the NDC annex names measures that the government wants to cancel”.
As an example, Hänggi refers to the existing building program, which is explicitly mentioned in the NDC, but was only budgeted by parliament for this year with 140 million Swiss francs instead of the 200 million per year provided for by law. The government wants to cut this further. In a Climate Alliance press release, Hofstetter also criticizes the fact that “on the day of the publication of the NDC, in which the Federal Council refers to the impact of the buildings program, the Federal Council decides to cut federal funding for this very program“.
The EU Commission wants to deliver when it comes to cutting red tape. Following the announcement by Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra to exempt the majority of companies from CBAM, German SMEs are satisfied. A spokeswoman for the DIHK said on Friday that the effort involved in CBAM was far too great for many small imports.
In addition, producers often lack the data for the CO2 content of goods, but importers are still responsible: “The fact that the EU Commission is planning to simplify both aspects – through a higher threshold for the reporting obligation and through standard values for the reports – is good news.”
In the current test phase of the CBAM, importers will have to report data on the CO₂ content of imports for goods worth 150 euros or more, and from 2026 they will also have to pay levies. This is intended to compensate for the disadvantage for domestic producers who are subject to European emissions trading and who are threatened by imports from countries where the CO2 price is lower or which have not yet introduced emissions trading at all.
Table.Briefings already reported in mid-January that Climate and Tax Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra is having the de minimis threshold for imports and protection for export goods reviewed. Last Thursday, Hoekstra first made a political statement in the Financial Times and then in the EU Parliament’s Subcommittee on Taxation. One-fifth of importers would have to pay around 97 percent of the levies in the future, said the Commissioner. “Wouldn’t it be wise to let the 80 percent off the hook in terms of the administrative burden? In my opinion, yes.”
The environmental organization Germanwatch also understands the argument. “I do not assume that an exemption for a few percent of imported CBAM goods will lead to significant problems for competitiveness or climate action,” says climate expert Oldag Caspar. However, it depends on the details and trading partners should not get the impression that the EU is dismantling its border adjustment mechanism.
According to “Contexte”, the Directorate-General for Taxation revealed further details at a meeting with stakeholders shortly after Hoekstra’s appearance in Parliament. According to the report, the simplifications are to be part of the first omnibus law to reduce bureaucracy, which the Commission intends to present on Feb. 26, as previously announced. According to a presentation on Thursday, the DG proposes exempting companies from the tax that import products with an annual carbon footprint of less than 100 tons.
According to Handelsblatt, the monetary value will no longer be the sole criterion for calculating the levy. There should also be a simplification of the information currently required on the third country.
According to “Contexte”, a major revision of the regulation will follow in the second half of the year. On the one hand, the Commission wants to address the issue of exports once again. Export-oriented industries have long complained that protection against CO2-intensive imports alone is of little help to them – they would prefer to continue to receive free certificates in European emissions trading. However, the Commission’s tax experts also want to look into including other sectors in the scope of the CBAM – refineries and the chemical and paper industries are being discussed.
So far, the CBAM applies to imports of cement, iron, steel, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen. The Commission now also wants to examine extending the mechanism to products that are downstream of these products in the value chain. Indirect emissions could also be included to a greater extent. The Commission also wants to take measures against the circumvention of the CBAM by third countries.
On Friday, CDU MEP Peter Liese suggested a further possible simplification of the levies on imports. While the carbon footprint of a load of raw steel costing EUR 150 may be relevant, the situation is different for a package of special screws costing EUR 150. “We should therefore also have threshold values for the weight and not just the value of goods,” said the environmental politician.
As was recently seen during the negotiations on the new climate financing target in Baku, international climate cooperation is increasingly characterized by mistrust and adverse circumstances. Before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the moment for constructive cooperation on climate protection seemed relatively favorable – but since the outbreak of war, climate policy has become even more closely intertwined with economic and security policy interests. This is demonstrated by the new focus of the EU’s Green Deal on competitiveness.
It is therefore all the more remarkable that, despite the remaining deficits, concrete implementations such as the Climate Club or the new fund for loss and damage have been successful. Germany has played a central role in achieving these successes. They were made possible not least by the internal changes in the ministerial apparatus, which are part of climate foreign policy.
These include:
This restructuring took time and resources, and it was not always possible to present a united front as “Team Germany”, both internally and externally.
In summary, however, the positives outweigh the negatives. The reform demonstrates an urgently needed awareness of the problem. Whereas Germany’s actions were previously more fragmented between departments and reacted to developments on an ad hoc basis, the approach to foreign climate policy was to become more explicitly coherent and strategic. The goal was climate diplomacy from a single source that does justice to the importance of climate change for all areas of foreign policy.
However, the success of the new approach was not only immediately apparent in international climate cooperation: After some initial hesitation, the Federal Foreign Office succeeded in linking the topic with existing foreign policy activities. One example: contacts with small island states were used to campaign for support for Germany’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Climate cooperation also plays a key role in dealing with strategically important middle powers, for example in the new transformation partnership with Brazil.
Climate diplomacy can therefore also serve related foreign policy goals and improve trade relations or effectively combine decarbonization and energy security.
Experience has shown that a lot depends on the right personalities at the ministerial management level. Thanks in part to their experience and standing in the diplomatic arena, the German government has been able to act with determination under the leadership of the Federal Foreign Office and has thus signaled that climate cooperation is a priority policy area for Germany.
In view of the pressing challenges facing Germany and Europe, it would be a mistake to sacrifice the gains of foreign climate policy to party political optics. Instead, remaining points of friction in interministerial coordination should be further reduced and the strategic direction of Germany’s climate diplomacy should be sharpened.
Consolidating competencies for international partnerships in the Federal Foreign Office is one possible way to achieve this. National and international climate policy would thus be more clearly separated in organizational terms, which would streamline coordination processes. Continuing the evaluation of Germany’s activities in international alliances and partnerships that have already been initiated would help to find the right balance between the depth and breadth of Germany’s commitment and deploy resources in a more targeted manner.
Instead of abandoning it, the next German government should make strategic use of foreign climate policy. Aligned with climate, industrial and security policy guidelines, international climate cooperation can thus be embedded in the broader turnaround.
Ole Adolphsen is a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and works on international climate policy. Marian Feist is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hertie School and works on global environmental policy, in particular climate negotiations, diplomacy and financing. This text is based on an Ariadne analysis on foreign climate policy, which they wrote together with other researchers.
