Europe’s complex climate compromise

In this paper it is argued that the EU's December 2008 agreement raises almost as many questions as it settles. Buchan says that, although passage in less than a year of the post-2012 reforms to take the European Union’s climate and renewable energy programme beyond Kyoto is a remarkable legislative feat, the December 2008 compromise is a step backwards from the Commission’s blueprint of January 2008. Since it is based on far more free allocations of emission allowances than the Commission proposed in its original blueprint.

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