BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to adjust key green laws to secure support for a new climate target. 

In a letter to national leaders circulated on Monday, von der Leyen outlined plans to change the EU’s carbon pricing and existing climate targets for forests, among others. 

The Commission president’s unusual intervention comes days before leaders are set to debate the EU’s new overarching emissions-reduction target for 2040 at their European Council summit.

Governments have been unable to agree on the new target, with several EU countries expressing concern about the economic impact of the bloc’s new and existing climate measures. Leaders will discuss the link between competitiveness and climate on Thursday in Brussels. 

In her letter, von der Leyen defends the upcoming target, insists that Europe’s future competitiveness requires a decarbonized economy — and hints that this means leaving some sectors behind. 

“If a robust, resilient, sustainable and innovative economy is our goal, then dogmatically clinging to our existing business models, whatever their past successes, is not the solution,” she writes. “For the EU’s economy to take its rightful place in the global economy, we must be among those who are driving the response to the challenges of our time.” 

Those challenges include “the scientific reality that we are increasingly putting our prosperity and our social models at risk, while our communities risk becoming uninhabitable,” she adds, while warning that the EU cannot afford complacency given China’s accelerating dominance in clean technologies and raw materials. 

Yet von der Leyen also offers several key concessions to leaders, acknowledging that “no one should be able to submit our economic and social fabric to so much tension that it breaks down.” 

Green Deal tweaks

Her Commission has proposed slashing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040, albeit allowing countries to outsource up to 3 percentage points of this goal by purchasing carbon credits from other nations rather than achieving these reductions with domestic measures. 

In her letter, von der Leyen opens the door to an increase in credit use, writing: “Part of the target — 3% in the Commission’s proposal, which ministers will further discuss — can be reached with high-quality international credits. Our domestic target … can be lower than 90%, as long as this is compensated by similar … reductions outside of the EU.” 

She also responded to a key demand from governments to adjust the bloc’s new carbon price on transport and heating, plans that were controversial from the beginning as they are expected to lead to higher fuel bills for most consumers. 

On Tuesday, she writes, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra will announce specific tweaks to the measure, addressing “concerns of too high or volatile prices.” The Commission is looking at a “more robust price stabilisation system” as well as options to provide additional support for households to cope with the increased bills. 

Von der Leyen also said she shared some governments’ concerns about the carbon price the EU currently imposes on heavy-polluting industries such as steel, and promised a “realistic and feasible” future trajectory, without providing details. 

She then pointed to upcoming changes in the EU’s targets for how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests and soils, known as LULUCF. Several governments have described the current goals as unrealistic, with some pointing to increased wildfires and others to the needs of their forestry industry. 

“Already we can see the challenges that several of you are facing …. We are working on pragmatic solutions to alleviate these challenges, within the existing LULUCF Regulation,” von der Leyen writes. 

Carbon markets and the LULUCF rules, together with national emissions targets, are the core sub-targets of the bloc’s climate framework. 

The letter also reiterates already announced tweaks and plans, such as an accelerated review of the bloc’s combustion engine phaseout, and contains a lengthy annex outlining all the upcoming announcements.