BRUSSELS: The European Union is set to take the lead in climate policy action among the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters this week, with a raft of ambitious plans designed to cut emissions drastically over the next decade.
The policies, if approved, would put the bloc — the world’s third-largest economy — on track for its goal of reducing planet-warming emissions 55 percent by 2030, from 1990 levels.
The “Fit for 55” package being released on Wednesday will still face months of negotiations between the 27 EU countries and the European Parliament.
Other major economies including China and the United States – the world’s top two emitters — have committed to achieving net zero emissions, which scientists say the world must reach by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change.
But the EU is the first to overhaul its legislation to drive greener choices within this decade among the bloc’s 25 million businesses and nearly half a billion people.
“Everybody has a target. But translating it into policies that lead to real emission reductions, that’s the most difficult part,” said Jos Delbeke, a former senior policymaker who developed some of the EU’s flagship climate policies.
By 2019, the EU had cut its emissions 24 percent from 1990 levels. That leaves another 31 percent to reach the 55 percent target – and just nine years to do it.
The European Commission will propose 12 policies on Wednesday, targeting four areas: energy, industry, transport, and the heating of buildings.
Emissions in Europe’s electricity sector are falling fast, but other sectors have been stuck.
Emissions from cars, planes and ships, which make up a quarter of the EU total, are rising. Buildings produce a third of the bloc’s emissions and, like Europe’s factories, many homes use heat produced from fossil fuels.
Put simply, most of the draft measures will encourage companies and consumers to choose greener options over polluting ones.
For example, a leaked draft of one proposal would tax polluting jet fuel for the first time and give low-carbon aviation fuels a 10-year tax holiday. A revamp of the EU carbon market is also expected to hike CO2 costs for industry, power plants and airlines, and force ships to pay for their pollution.
The list of proposals is long. Tougher EU CO2 standards for cars could effectively ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars in 2035. EU countries will face more ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy.
Brussels will also unveil the details of its world-first carbon border tariff, targeting imports of goods produced abroad with high emissions such as steel and cement. That has unnerved EU trading partners, including Russia and China.
The political road ahead will likely be rough, as EU countries and the European Parliament negotiate the proposals.
Already, the plans have exposed familiar rifts between richer western and Nordic EU states where electric vehicle sales are soaring, and poorer eastern countries that are worried about the social cost of weaning their economies off coal.
EU member capitals are particularly worried about the Commission’s plan to launch a carbon market for transport and home heating, potentially raising household fuel bills.
The Commission has promised a social fund to shield low-income households from the costs, and is urging countries to use the EU’s 800-billion-euro COVID-19 recovery fund to help people insulate their homes and create jobs in clean technologies like hydrogen.
The unveiling of “Fit for 55” will make climate policies more visible to EU citizens than ever before, testing Europe’s widespread public support for ambitious climate action.
“There’s no hiding that this package comes in the middle of a massive socio-economic crisis,” said Manon Dufour of independent climate-change think-tank E3G. The EU “has to be even more careful about the social impacts.”
Policymakers are also braced for a storm of industry lobbying. Europe’s steel and cement sectors are already fighting plans to end free CO2 permits and force manufacturers to pay more when they pollute.
Past attempts to tighten CO2 standards for carmakers have faced fierce industry opposition. But with European giants like Volkswagen already committed to ending combustion-engine car sales in Europe in the 2030s, some governments say now is the time to bring laggards into line.
“The Commission needs to basically wake up and smell the coffee — that now is the time to actually cement that into legislation,” an EU diplomat said, of the potential proposal to ban sales of new combustion engine cars by 2035.
With its world-first package, the EU also aims to burnish its global climate leadership position. It is unclear if that will be enough, however, to elicit similarly ambitious action from other major economies at the UN climate conference in November in Glasgow, Scotland.
“The challenge is that other big players – China and the US specifically – will need to be on board,” said Tom Rivett-Carnac, the UN’s chief political strategist in the run-up to the 2015 Paris Agreement. “Whether the EU can achieve this diplomatically remains to be seen.”
Brussels says it is time to take Europe’s climate policies global. Much of the diplomatic lift required will be on the carbon border tariff, which the EU says will put its firms on more equal footing with competitors in countries with weaker carbon policies.
The proposals would also push EU industry to invest in expensive green technologies. Moving early could give European firms a competitive edge in global markets for new products like low-carbon steel produced from green hydrogen, but producing those products will cost manufacturers more.
“At the end of this transformation, our economy will look a lot better, and we can get the climate crisis under control,” Frans Timmermans, the EU Commissioner in charge of climate policy, told CNN last week. “And that’s the whole point.”
Europe’s climate masterplan aims to slash emissions within a decade
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Europe’s climate masterplan aims to slash emissions within a decade
- The EU is the first to overhaul its legislation to drive greener choices within this decade among the bloc's 25 million businesses
Building fire kills 17, injures others in southern India
- Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents
HYDERABAD, India: At least 17 people were killed and several injured in a fire that broke out at a building near the historic Charminar monument in southern Hyderabad city, officials said Sunday.
Several people were found unconscious and rushed to various hospitals, according to local media. They said the building housed a jewelry store at ground level and residential space above.
“The accident happened due to a short circuit and many people have died,” federal minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader G Kishan Reddy told reporters at the site of the accident.
Director general of Telangana fire services Y Nagi Reddy told reporters that 21 people were in the three-story building when the fire started on the ground floor early on Sunday.
“17 people, who were shifted to the hospital in an unconscious state, could not survive. The staircase was very narrow, which made escape difficult. There was only one exit, and the fire had blocked it,” he said.
The fire was brought under control.
Prime minister Narendra Modi announced financial compensation for the victims’ families and said in a post on X that he was “deeply anguished by the loss of lives.”
Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents.
PM seeks election win as Portugal campaigning ends
LISBON: Portugal’s general election campaign ends on Friday for a vote that Prime Minister Luis Montenegro is expected to win, but with no guarantee he can form a more stable government.
Montenegro’s center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition is tipped to win 34 percent of the ballot, ahead of the Socialist Party (PS) on 26 percent, according to a poll by the Portuguese Catholic University published by local media on Friday.
The upstart far-right Chega (“Enough“) party could take 19 percent of the vote — almost the same as it did in March 2024 elections — to consolidate its position as Portugal’s third political force and kingmaker.
Montenegro, as a result, risks finding himself again at the head of a minority government, caught between the PS, in power from 2015 to 2024, and Chega, with which he has refused to govern.
“People are fed up with elections, people want stability,” the premier, a 52-year-old lawyer, said during a final rally in Lisbon as he urged voters to give him a stronger mandate this time around.
Sunday’s early election will be Portugal’s third in just over three years.
It was called in March after Montenegro lost a confidence vote in parliament following accusations against him of conflicts of interest stemming from his consulting firm’s business.
As such, “staying in power would already be a good result” for the prime minister, who took a “calculated risk” in the hope of strengthening his parliamentary seat, political commentator Paula Espirito Santo told AFP.
Opinion polls appear to indicate an AD majority is unlikely but Montenegro could win the support of the Liberal Initiative party, which is predicted to secure 6.4 percent of the vote.
The PS candidate, Pedro Nuno Santos, a 48-year-old economist, has accused Montenegro of having engineered the elections “to avoid explaining himself” about his consultancy firm to a parliamentary inquiry.
“We need a change, a prudent one that will guarantee the political stability which Luis Montenegro can no longer provide,” the Socialist candidate said at a final Lisbon rally on Friday.
Faced with the risk of persistent instability, analysts and voters criticized a political class out of touch with voters who are unenthused by the prospect of another ballot.
“I’ve really had enough of all these political games. They don’t do anything for us,” said Maria Pereira, a 53-year-old saleswoman in a working-class district of Lisbon.
“Normally I vote for the small parties but this time I’m not going to waste my time going to vote.”
But Paula Tomas, a 52-year-old dentist, said Montenegro had won her confidence.
“He has the ability to get things done, but he needs time,” she said at an AD rally, waving a white-and-orange ruling party flag.
Under the Socialist Party, Portugal became one of Europe’s most open countries, but Montenegro’s government has since strengthened immigration policy.
Between 2017 and 2024, the number of foreigners living in Portugal quadrupled, reaching about 15 percent of the total population.
Immigration and suspicions about the prime minister might be fertile ground for the far right.
But Chega has also faced embarrassment, including claims that one of its lawmakers in the Azores stole luggage from airport carousels.
Its campaign was interrupted on Tuesday and Thursday when its president, 42-year-old former football commentator Andre Ventura, fell ill while campaigning and was rushed to hospital both times.
He was resting and will not longer appear at the party’s final rally. Instead he released a video message where he once again called for “an end to corruption and uncontrolled immigration.”
All political campaigning has to stop at midnight (2300 GMT Friday) before Sunday’s poll.
World Health Organization looks ahead to life without the US
LONDON/GENEVA: Hundreds of officials from the World Health Organization will join donors and diplomats in Geneva from Monday with one question dominating their thoughts — how to cope with crises from mpox to cholera without their main funder, the United States.
The annual assembly, with its week of sessions, votes and policy decisions, usually showcases the scale of the UN agency set up to tackle disease outbreaks, approve vaccines and support health systems worldwide.
This year — since US President Donald Trump started the year-long process to leave the WHO with an executive order on his first day in office in January — the main theme is scaling down.
“Our goal is to focus on the high-value stuff,” Daniel Thornton, the WHO’s director of coordinated resource mobilization, told Reuters.
Just what that “high-value stuff” will be is up for discussion. Health officials have said the WHO’s work in providing guidelines for countries on new vaccines and treatments for conditions from obesity to HIV will remain a priority.
One WHO slideshow for the event, shared with donors and seen by Reuters, suggested work on approving new medicines and responding to outbreaks would be protected, while training programs and offices in wealthier countries could be closed.
The United States had provided around 18 percent of the WHO’s funding. “We’ve got to make do with what we have,” said one Western diplomat who asked not to be named.
Staff have been getting ready — cutting managers and budgets — ever since Trump’s January announcement in a rush of directives and aid cuts that have disrupted a string of multilateral pacts and initiatives.
The year-long delay, mandated under US law, means the US is still a WHO member — its flag still flies outside the Geneva HQ — until its official departure date on January 21, 2026.
Trump — who accused the WHO of mishandling COVID, which it denies — muddied the waters days after his statement by saying he might consider rejoining the agency if its staff “clean it up.”
But global health envoys say there has since been little sign of a change of heart. So the WHO is planning for life with a $600 million hole in the budget for this year and cuts of 21 percent over the next two-year period.
CHINA TAKES LEAD
As the United States prepares to exit, China is set to become the biggest provider of state fees — one of the WHO’s main streams of funding alongside donations.
China’s contribution will rise from just over 15 percent to 20 percent of the total state fee pot under an overhaul of the funding system agreed in 2022.
“We have to adapt ourselves to multilateral organizations without the Americans. Life goes on,” Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to Geneva, told reporters last month.
Others have suggested this might be a time for an even broader overhaul, rather than continuity under a reshuffled hierarchy of backers.
“Does WHO need all its committees? Does it need to be publishing thousands of publications each year?” said Anil Soni, chief executive of the WHO Foundation, an independent fund-raising body for the agency.
He said the changes had prompted a re-examination of the agency’s operations, including whether it should be focussed on details like purchasing petrol during emergencies.
There was also the urgent need to make sure key projects do not collapse during the immediate cash crisis. That meant going to donors with particular interests in those areas, including pharmaceutical companies and philanthropic groups, Soni said.
The ELMA Foundation, which focuses on children’s health in Africa with offices in the US, South Africa and Uganda, has already recently stepped in with $2 million for the Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network known as Gremlin — more than 700 labs which track infectious disease threats, he added.
Other business at the assembly includes the rubber-stamping a historic agreement on how to handle future pandemics and drumming up more cash from donors at an investment round.
But the focus will remain on funding under the new world order. In the run up to the event, a WHO manager sent an email to staff asking them to volunteer, without extra pay, as ushers.
Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large
WARSAW: Poles are voting Sunday in a presidential election at a time of heightened security concerns stemming from the ongoing war in neighboring Ukraine and growing worry that the US commitment to Europe’s security could be weakening under President Donald Trump.
The top two front-runners are Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a liberal allied with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian with no prior political experience who is supported by the national conservative Law and Justice party.
Recent opinion polls show Trzaskowski with around 30 percent support and Nawrocki in the mid-20s. A second round between the two is widely expected to take place on June 1.
The election is also a test of the strength of other forces, including the far right.
Sławomir Mentzen, a hard-right candidate who blends populist MAGA rhetoric with libertarian economics and a critical stance toward the European Union, has been polling in third place.
Ten other candidates are also on the ballot. With such a crowded field and a requirement that a candidate receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win outright, a second round seemed all but inevitable.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500GMT) and close at 9 p.m. (1900GMT). Exit polls will be released when voting ends, with results expected by Tuesday, possibly Monday.
Polish authorities have reported attempts at foreign interference during the campaign, including denial-of-service attacks targeting parties in Tusk’s coalition on Friday and allegations by a state research institute that political ads on Facebook were funded from abroad.
Although Poland’s prime minister and parliament hold primary authority over domestic policy, the presidency carries substantial power. The president serves as commander of the armed forces, plays a role in foreign and security policy, and can veto legislation.
The conservative outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, has repeatedly used that power over more than the past year to hamper Tusk’s agenda, for example blocking ambassadorial nominations and using his veto power to resist reversing judicial and media changes made during Law and Justice’s time in power from 2015 to late 2023.
A Trzaskowski victory could be expected to end such a standoff. He has pledged to support reforms to the courts and public media, both of which critics say were politicized under Law and Justice. Tusk’s opponents say he has also politicized public media.
Nawrocki, who leads a state historical institute, has positioned himself as a defender of conservative values and national sovereignty.
Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle
- The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning
NEW DELHI: The Indian space agency’s mission to launch into orbit a new Earth observation satellite failed after the launch vehicle encountered a technical issue during the third stage of flight, officials said Sunday.
The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning.
“During the third stage ... there was a fall in the chamber pressure of the motor case, and the mission could not be accomplished,” said V. Narayanan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organization.
Active in space research since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014.
After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole in 2023 in a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold reserves of frozen water. The mission was dubbed as a technological triumph for the world’s most populous nation.
