Finland wants to upgrade EU climate goals

Nearly all Finnish parliamentary parties have agreed that Finland will start working for stricter anti-carbon policies in the European Union (EU), Finnish media reported on Thursday.

The parties demanded that the EU should reach carbon neutrality before 2050. Carbon neutrality means that the EU should only produce the amount of emissions that the nature can absorb.

Finland would promote the goal during its EU presidency in 2019, media reports said.

The decision made public on Thursday was reached in the round table talks initiated by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä in early November.

The Finnish parties also set as a goal that emissions in the EU should decline by 2030 to a level reflecting at least a 55 percent reduction of the emissions in 1990. The current goal for 2030 is 40 percent less than in 1990.

Local commentators have noted that with these decisions Finland will be positioning itself parallel to countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark that have been backing a tough line.

Of the political parties represented in parliament, only the Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party) did not join in announcing the decision. But local observers noted that they, unlike some other populist parties internationally, do not deny the existence of the climate change.

The Finnish parties suggest that the necessary additional measures to speed up the emission cutbacks should be targeting the emissions trade so that that energy production and industries would make further progress towards low carbon levels.

The round table talks were launched with a view that the parties could agree on such common climate policy goals that would last beyond the four-year parliamentary tenure.

All-party round table preparation is fairly rare in parliament. The opposition Finns Party participated until this week.