The General Court of the European Union rejected on Wednesday an action brought by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Climate Action Network Europe (CAN Europe), which aimed to force the European Commission to review the annual emission limits assigned to Member States by 2030. The two environmental organizations consider that European climate policy is not ambitious enough to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The challenge focused on the so-called "annual emission allocations," i.e., the limits that determine how much each Member State can emit in sectors such as road transport, buildings, agriculture, and waste. The Commission set these quotas for 2023-2030 based on the current European rules. The European target of reducing net emissions by at least 55% by the end of the decade, compared to 1990 levels, is at the center of the dispute, with environmental organizations advocating for a reduction of at least 65%.
The Court decided that the Commission cannot rewrite targets that were decided by the European Parliament and the Council. According to the ruling in Case T-120/24, the organizations were not contesting an error by the Commission in how it calculated the quotas, but rather the climate objectives themselves that the European legislator had approved. If the Commission could alter these targets through an internal review, it would effectively be able to modify decisions made by the Parliament and the Council.
The Court did not declare that the 55% reduction target is sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement, nor that European climate policy is on the right track. The decision is a defeat for the legal strategy of the environmental organizations, but it does not represent a judicial validation of the EU's climate ambition. The Commission can only apply the legislation approved by the European institutions; if the targets need to be changed, that change will have to be made through the European legislative process.
