BRUSSELS — The European Union’s environment ministers struck a deal watering down a proposed 2040 target for cutting planet-warming emissions and set a new 2035 climate plan. Following marathon negotiations all day Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, ministers unanimously approved the bloc’s long-overdue climate plan, rescuing the EU from the international embarrassment of showing up empty handed this month’s COP30 summit. The plan, which is a requirement under the Paris Agreement, sets a new goal to slash EU emissions between 66.25 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels until 2035. That plan is not legally binding but sets the direction of EU climate policy for the coming five years. The range is similar to an informal statement that the EU presented at a climate summit in New York in September. Ministers also adopted a legally-binding target for cutting emissions in the EU by 85 percent by 2040. The deal mandates that another 5 percent reduction be achieved by outsourcing pollution cuts abroad through the purchase of international carbon credits. On top of that, governments would be allowed to use credits to outsource another 5 percentage points of their national emissions reduction goals. Ministers also backed a wide-ranging review clause that allows the EU to adjust its 2040 target in the future if climate policy proves to have negative impacts on the EU’s economy. The deal also foresees a one-year delay to the implementation of the EU’s new carbon market for heating and car emissions, which is set to start in 2027. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland did not support the 2040 deal, while Bulgaria and Belgium abstained. The rest of the EU27 countries backed it. Lawmakers in the European Parliament now have to agree on their own position on the 2040 climate target and negotiate with the Council of the EU before the target becomes law. 

DOUAI, France — The EU’s vision of ending sales of greenhouse-gas-spewing cars by 2035 is under fire. The idea was a key priority of the previous European Commission, which was dedicated to the fight against climate change. But war, a populist backlash, economic stagnation and a car industry hemorrhaging red ink are forcing Brussels to backtrack. Europe’s automakers scored a massive political win this week when Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave in to their pleas for leniency on emission targets that went into force this year and for an earlier review of the 2035 legislation as part of her plan to rescue the troubled car industry. Buoyed by that success, automakers and their political backers want more. “Give the car industry an inch and they’ll take a mile. Before the ink was dry on the automotive plan, there were calls for technology openness,” said Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles at green NGO Transport & Environment. “The Green Deal will suffer a death by a thousand cuts unless lawmakers stand up for it.” While the original measure was approved in 2023 by all member countries (despite last-minute resistance from Germany), it’s turned into a political punching bag. Over the last year, elections across the EU saw national governments, lobbyists and automakers pick up the call to weaken or reverse it. The European People’s Party — part of von der Leyen’s political family and the largest grouping in the European Parliament — promised to reverse the law. In Germany, angst over the auto sector’s decline helped fuel the winning campaign of Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, whose party also has its sights set on undoing the legislation. Germany is keen for an exception for e-fuels — a synthetic alternative to gasoline, but one that is much more expensive than fossil fuels and not made in large quantities. Italy wants the law changed to make an exception for biofuels, despite worries about deforestation, biodiversity loss and soil erosion from using the fuel. Poland also backs that idea. POPPING CHAMPAGNE French policymakers — including Commission Vice President Stéphane Séjourné — went on a victory lap to a Renault factory on Wednesday. European Commission Vice President Stéphane Séjourné presented the EU’s plan to save the car industry in the Renault factory of Douai last week. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO They were celebrating the Commission announcement that it would water down this year’s emissions targets after carmakers complained they could pay billions in fines for missing the target. Now, instead of the target being based on this year’s sales, it’ll be based on a three-year average, which makes it easier to hit for companies that have done less to clean up their fleets. “I have probably been the first one to raise the hand on this,” Renault CEO Luca De Meo told POLITICO at the Renault factory at Douai in northern France. As former president of EU car lobby ACEA, De Meo beat the drum for leniency on emission targets. De Meo also welcomed the Commission’s support for technological neutrality — meaning that not only battery-powered cars can meet green targets — although he insisted he doesn’t want to scrap the 2035 measure. “It opens a window on a logic that we have always supported. Tell us where you want us to go, but don’t tell us how,” he said, noting that “the enemy is not a technology rather than another — the enemy is CO2.” Yet, not every automaker was in a celebratory mood. Swedish brand Volvo, which was bought by Chinese firm Geely in 2010, wanted the targets to remain the same. “Those that have done their homework, should not be disadvantaged by last-minute changes to existing legislation, not least during the year in which they come into effect,” the company said in a statement. Renault’s CEO Luca De Meo, France’s Industry Minister Marc Ferracci and European Commission Vice President Stéphane Séjourné visiting the Renault factory of Douai. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO Paris still defends the combustion engine ban but insists that softening this year’s emission targets will help carmakers to meet the 2035 deadline.  “It was paradoxical to ask manufacturers to pay fines and at the same time to support them,” Séjourné said in Douai. PILING ON The Commission also agreed to move up a review of the 2035 law from 2026 to this year — another key demand from carmakers that makes it easier to undermine the overall legislation. Opponents smell blood in the water. “We have forced the Commission to remove the fines trap and to anticipate the review of the CO2 regulation. Now we must immediately make a common front to overcome the madness of the Green Deal,” Italy’s Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said in a written statement. Czech MEP Filip Turek with the far-right Patriots for Europe grouping, said that Commission’s automotive plan marks the beginning of the end for the 2035 ban. Czech MEP Filip Turek with the far-right Patriots for Europe grouping, said that Commission’s automotive plan marks the beginning of the end for the 2035 ban. | European Parliament Germany’s newly elected Christian Democrats called the Commission’s announcement “half-hearted and unsatisfactory.” “I am convinced that the greatest threat to the European automotive market is no longer competitors from China, but the flood of European regulation,” said Thomas Bareiß, grouping’s transport spokesperson in the German Bundestag. “The emission targets could have been cancelled completely; so far nobody has been able to explain to me conclusively why we need emission targets at all for successful climate protection.” Maintaining the ban, he said, is creating uncertainty in the market and delaying the uptake of alternative fuels.  Bareiß and other opponents of the 2035 legislation are latching on to technological neutrality to further weaken the law, which some automakers and political groups say should allow hybrids and other types of vehicles that combine combustion engines and batteries. Hildegard Müller, president of German car lobby VDA, said more needs to be done to “implement technological openness. This also includes giving greater consideration to the role of plug-in hybrids beyond 2035.” Climate groups say that hybrids still emit CO2, violating the 2035 law. The law’s defenders are fighting a rear-guard battle to keep the legislation from being so watered down that it becomes useless. “The EU Commission is opening Pandora’s box, because the EPP wants to do more than just turn a few screws, it wants to completely overturn the combustion engine ban,” said Green MEP Michael Bloss. Socialist MEP François Kalfon approved the EU auto rescue package but fears the Commission’s review might turn into an effort to kill the 2035 ban. “It has to be a review clause, not a dropout clause, and that’s the risk,” he told POLITICO on a train back from the Renault factory. Gabriel Gavin and Nicolas Camut contributed to this report.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The United States is preparing to announce a stronger target to cut its planet-warming pollution despite Donald Trump’s imminent return, the White House told POLITICO Wednesday. The announcement would fulfill the country’s obligations under the Paris climate agreement — a global pact to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial temperature — and set a 2035 emissions reduction target. Trump, however, has vowed to withdraw from the deal once he re-enters the White House, leaving some to wonder if the U.S. would issue a 2035 target. The plans are due in February, just after Trump will take office. A White House official confirmed that conversations are underway on the new target, dubbed the nationally determined contribution (NDC) in climate diplomacy parlance. “We are doing an analysis on what the United States should do and what is possible with subnational action,” the official said in an email to POLITICO, highlighting the work that state and city governments might do absent the federal government. “This is likely to take the form of an NDC, but no final decision has been made.” The White House made the statement in response to comments White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi gave to Thursday’s POLITICO Power Play podcast on the sidelines of global climate talks here known as COP29. “We are unambiguously showing up here,” Zaidi said. “Every delegation, every door we knock on with a clear message: the U.S. will be advancing a one-and-a-half degree aligned nationally determined contribution, and the rest of the world should do the same.”  Zaidi’s remark comes as President Joe Biden’s administration enters a lame-duck period — and as U.S. diplomats at the United Nations COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan continue to participate in negotiations aimed at curbing rising climate pollution. One big question hanging over the conference has been whether Biden’s team would — or could — do anything on its way out to try and salvage its climate agenda. POLITICO reported on Tuesday that the U.S. had dropped its push to gather countries and jointly pledge sharper emissions cuts.   Green groups have been pressuring the Biden administration to use its remaining time in power to finalize environmental standards and guidance, including the 2035 target, before Trump starts trying to bludgeon Biden’s climate work. Trump has called climate change a hoax and is assembling a cabinet to help him roll back scores of environmental rules. Activists say announcing a 2035 target before Trump’s return would set the bar for what is possible, and send a strong signal to other countries. Yet those countries may also simply dismiss the pledge, knowing it may never be delivered. “It is a nonsense at this stage, unfortunately,” said a senior delegate from a Latin American country. America’s current NDC calls for at least 50 percent emission cuts by 2030 from 2005 levels. Keeping those plans in line with a 1.5C rise would see the U.S. draw a straight line from that target to 2050, when greenhouse gas emissions are meant to be zeroed out. Modeling by the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland shows that a feasible and ambitious NDC would aim for 65 percent emissions reductions by 2035. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called for cuts of at least 65 percent. John Podesta, Biden’s adviser for international climate policy, told reporters earlier this week that it would also send a powerful signal if China’s own 2035 plan is aligned with the 1.5C goal. But Beijing’s lead climate envoy Liu Zhemin has expressed concern that Trump’s election means a reversal in U.S. climate policy.