EPSU backed amendment ensures "just transition" is part of EU's mandate for COP21

(19 October 2015) The European Parliament has adopted an amendment - strongly pushed for by EPSU which guarantees that the call for a “just transition” is part of the Parliament’s Roadmap for COP21. The demand for a “just transition” had been previously left out of the original report – “Towards a new international climate agreement in Paris” authored by Gilles Pargneaux of the S&D group in the Environment Committee. The Greens with support of others introduced it. It is now an integral part of the resolution on the mandate for the EU’s delegation to December's UN climate change summit.

The EPSU backed amendment "(c)alls insistently on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that the Paris Agreement recognises that respect for, and protection and promotion of, human rights, encompassing gender equality, full and equal participation of women, and the active promotion of a just transition for the workforce to create decent work and quality jobs for all, are a prerequisite for effective global climate action". (For the report)

It also concurs with the demands of the Trade Union Climate Summit held in September which called on governments “to put back the language of a just transition that has been stripped from the draft agreement”. The Commission and the Member States must now step up to the plate and respect the need for a just transition as part of a positive agreement at COP21.

In addition, the text - which was adopted by 434 votes to 96, with 52 abstentions - calls for the EU to demand a reduction of at least 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, a 40 per cent energy efficiency target and a 30 per cent target for renewable energy by 2030. It also requests that any agreement reached in Paris should be legally binding and should aim to phase out global carbon emissions by 2050. The resolution calls for a general reinvigoration of the EU’s climate policy in line with the upper limit of the EU’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050.