BRUSSELS, July 2, 2025 — Amid record-breaking heat across the continent, the European Commission today unveiled a dangerous new proposal that backslides on climate ambition, embraces loopholes like carbon offsetting, and compromises the integrity of the EU’s climate goals, according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
The new proposals to amend the European Climate Law encourage reliance on carbon removal technologies (such as BECCS and DACCS) and permit carbon offsetting to reach the EU greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 90% (by 2040 compared to 1990 levels) [1].
Rachel Kennerley, CIEL’s International Carbon Capture Campaigner, issued the following statement:
“The Commission’s proposal for a 2040 target is 90% in name but not in nature. The target appears to just meet the minimum recommendation of the EU’s own climate scientists, but reliance on loopholes like carbon offsetting and speculative technologies leaves it hollow [2].
At a time when Europe, the fastest-warming continent, is boiling, policymakers are increasingly bending under the pressure of corporate lobbyists and some political parties to water down environmental protections [3]. The EU needs to uphold climate obligations and the rule of law instead of bending further.
We must reject attempts to hide emissions through accounting tricks. International offsets turn climate ambition into smoke and mirrors—paper promises that let polluters off the hook and shift the burden onto those least responsible for the crisis, while failing to produce any meaningful impact. Beyond offering polluters a convenient escape hatch, carbon offsetting threatens human rights, endangers Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty, and puts fragile ecosystems at further risk.
Encouraging reliance on carbon removal technologies is an additional dangerous misstep. This gamble on speculative, expensive, and risky removal technologies only distracts further from real climate action. In fact, courts are increasingly ruling that governments and companies should not rely on carbon offsets or unproven technologies to fulfill climate obligations [4].
The EU must ramp up climate ambition and focus on swift, fair, and human rights-based solutions that prioritise people and planet over pollution. We need no more accounting tricks. No more empty promises. No risky bets. Europeans deserve to be protected with just and real climate action now.”
Media Contact
Niccolò Sarno, CIEL Global Media Relations: [email protected] + 41 22 506 80 37
Notes to editors
[1] Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches such as BECCS, DACCS and marine CDR are geoengineering technologies. Their role in delaying climate action is explored in CIEL’s Fuel to the Fire report.
[2] In 2023, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC) recommended EU emission reductions of 90–95% by 2040, relative to 1990. In June 2025, it updated and reissued this recommendation, stressing that the emissions reductions should be met domestically, without the use of international offsets.
[3] In an interview published today in The Guardian, EU green transition chief Teresa Ribera said that although the effects of the climate emergency were becoming increasingly apparent, they were still not translating into proper action. A major part of the problem, according to Ribera, is that some political parties “continue to insist, quite vehemently, that climate change does not exist”, or else say that taking decisions to adapt to environmental realities is too expensive, according to the interview.
[4] In an increasing number of court cases involving both States’ and companies’ reliance on offsets or speculative technologies, courts have ultimately rejected the reliance on these risky schemes as inadequate mitigation measures.