Czech Business Today

On 31^st of March, the European Commission opened a public consultation on the increase of the EU’s 2030 climate targets and actions that are necessary to achieve deeper greenhouse gas emissions cuts. The amendment of 2030 climate targets is one of the crucial parts of the European Green Deal – a key initiative of the von der Leyen’s Commission that aims for climate neutrality by 2050. The goal of the Commission is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, but ideally by 55%, compared to 1990 levels by 2030.

According to the Commission, this step is required in order to meet the carbon-neutral economy goal set in the European Green Deal. The public consultation is currently open until 23^rd of June. However, according to the European business community, it is not a good idea to stick to the legislative plan despite the current COVID-19 crisis.

The spread of the coronavirus has had an unprecedented effect on the entire world and not only European companies have to face a challenge that nobody could have expected. European economy is losing billions of euros daily due to restrictive measures and all of the companies are fully focusing on minimising the impacts of the crisis on their business, protecting employees and avoiding bankruptcies. In the current situation, companies don’t have the necessary capacity to get sufficiently involved in the consultation process.

The European Green Deal is the cornerstone of the von der Leyen’s Commission and one of the most important initiatives that will shape the long-term future of the whole EU. Since the publication of the European Green Deal, European businesses have been supportive of the idea of reaching climate neutrality. It is an important initiative that aims to mitigate the undisputable impacts of climate change. European companies share the idea that the EU needs to be the pioneer in this transformation, and that the competitiveness of the companies will be the key to success in this process. Given the importance of the legislative files related to the European Green Deal and the current COVID-19 crisis, the business community believes that it is necessary to postpone the consultation process of the proposals that have been recently published.

Czech business associations also share this point of view. The Czech Republic has a long and successful industrial tradition and the shift to a carbon neutral economy will affect it significantly. Therefore, the ways of reaching the 2030 and 2050 targets need to be thoroughly discussed with stakeholders in order to make this transition possible without jeopardising the competitiveness of Member States. While the recently opened consultation on the increase of the EU’s 2030 climate targets is one of the most crucial, other important consultations are soon to be closed. These include, for example, the Inception Impact Assessment on Industrial Emissions Directive and the feedback period on the European Climate Law proposal, among others. There have already been some good examples of postponements of other proposals unrelated to the environmental policy, for example, that of the deadline of the consultation on Non-Financial Reporting Directive, therefore others should be considered.

While European businesses hope that the return to “business as usual” will happen as soon as possible, it is clear that the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis will influence the whole economy for quite some time. Therefore, business representatives call on the European Commission to take the above mentioned recommendations into consideration, give companies enough time to recover from the shock the whole world is experiencing right now and provide all the relevant stakeholders enough time to express their views on important legislative proposals that will shape the future of the whole EU.