Ladies and gentlemen,

Very good to see you. Thank you very much for your tenacity.

Lars, thank you for doing an amazing job with your team, both on domestic and international topics. Both were very visible on the agenda today.

First, building on what you were saying, I am in full agreement with everything you were just mentioning on COP30.

We have a mandate that will allow us to negotiate at COP30 at a time that on the one hand it is hugely complicated in terms of geopolitics and on the other hand, that provides evidence by the day - as you were saying - that more climate trouble is on the horizon.

Therefore, the world has no alternative than to do more.

I was in Brasília last week. I will be back in a couple of weeks. We will try our utmost to make sure we move the needle: one – on NDC; two – on making sure we push for ever-more carbon pricing and carbon markets; and three – resilience, preparedness and adaptation.

If those are the most important content blocks then I would very much like to echo the message Lars just gave on leadership.

Part of leadership is that we make crystal clear what it is that others can expect of us.

We will continue to be among the most ambitious. We will continue to stand for all of our commitments in terms of financing. But part of leadership is also to articulate what we expect of others. In essence, that message is that solidarity and reciprocity do need to go hand in hand.

That is hugely important in this whole endeavour.

We will continue to work constructively with the Brazilian Presidency, but also with all the progressive developing countries, with vulnerable countries from across the globe, with whom we had the pleasure to meet again recently in New York and last week in Brasilia; and all the major economies because if you do the numbers you will find the vast majority of global emissions are produced by the G20.

That is on the COP.

 

 

 

Then, as I am sure you were aware, we also discussed a range of AOB points, potentially most importantly in my part of the house is ETS2.

As you are aware, a significant group of Member States have shared with us their concerns about the new emissions trading system framework for road transport, buildings and additional sectors, knowingly abbreviated as ETS2 which will start in 2027. 

In our view as a Commission, they have articulated valid concerns about price increase and what it could potentially mean for our citizens finances.

And if you look at it, it is hugely important in general for politicians to be preoccupied with making sure that prices are as low as possible and as predictable as possible.

But particularly, if you want to make sure you are able to see the climate and clean energy and clean transition through you have an additional incentive to make sure that we stay the course.

Yes, we already have strong safeguards in place. We are ensuring Member States invest more in the transition. We are already supporting citizens and small businesses on the ground and helping them to take up new technologies and services.

But we do want to make sure we do even more. The topic is simply important enough to ensure that what we do works. So we are significantly beefing up what in essence is predictability and affordability for our citizens.

Concretely, that means:

  1. We will enhance price stability and predictability, by strengthening the mechanism to release allowances if market prices exceed €45/t CO2 equivalent, with a top-up to double the volume of allowances to be released in the market.
  2. We are going to expand the liquidity and long-term predictability, by keeping in the reserve all allowances that are not released by the end of 2030. Those of you who are in the details of this you probably acknowledge that a lot of the market predictions that are more extreme have been very much driven by the fact that these experts took into account in this whole thing would come to an end in 2030.
  3. We are going to empower additional price stability and predictability, with the reserves earlier and smoother intervention in case of lower market liquidity through gradual injections of allowances into the market by adding a buffer to the lower threshold. That will also again help to stabilise the price signal.
  4. In addition, we are going to propose earlier carbon revenues to support better preparation. That is in order help Member States, citizens and companies to optimally prepare for the start of the new carbon pricing system.  The Commission is therefore going to propose changes to the Auctioning Regulation to allow for an earlier start of ETS2 auctions.
  5. Furthermore, finally in partnership with the Commission, the European Investment Bank is exploring a new financing facility for Member States.

I want to explicitly thank Nadia Calvino and her team for their tremendous leadership in this endevour and being so out of the box in exploring this as part of the solution space. That is usually helpful and potentially is really going to move the needle.