In a vote in Brussels, the proposed update of the EU's climate law was supported by 379 votes to 248.
The issue is now moving on to final negotiations with the EU member states, which also recently agreed in the Council of Ministers that emissions should have been reduced by 90 percent by 2040, compared to the 1990 level.
In parallel, simpler rules and more exemptions from the EU's two sustainability directives, CSR and CSDD, were also voted on, which set requirements for how companies must ensure that their subcontractors outside the EU behave in terms of, among other things, climate and labor law.
Victory for Warborn
Here, Swedish member Jörgen Warborn (M), who was responsible for the negotiations, finally got his line through with 382 votes to 249.
Here too, final negotiations can now begin with the EU member states.
Warborn has negotiated tough and openly announced that he and the conservative EPP group are willing to cooperate with the far-right party groups to get their proposals through. This means that significantly more companies will be exempted from the new requirements.
The fight coincides with an increasingly infected battle over climate issues in the EU Parliament.
Criticism of secrecy
The far-right is pushing to further cut the EU Commission's climate ambitions. In the hope of winning over disgruntled votes from other party groups, it also pushed through several amendments to the 2040 climate target to be voted on via secret ballot.
There is great irritation about it from the others.
What are you trying to hide, Mr. (Jordan) Bardella? What are you afraid of, Mr. (Nicola) Procaccini? asked, for example, the liberal member Pascal Canfin to the colleagues from the National Rally in France and the Brothers of Italy in Italy who have pushed for the secret ballot.
