Transparency and vested interests within the UNFCCC

13.7.2017

Question for written answer E-004820-17
to the Council
Rule 130
Max Andersson (Verts/ALE)

In order to honour the commitments made in the Paris Agreement, it is clear that world leaders must step up and take ambitious action. To adopt ambitious climate protection policies, we need to be able to take decisions completely independently of those parties which have an interest in blocking progress or maintaining the status quo.

During the last couple of years there have been discussions within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on how to deal with the extensive participation of and lobbying by the fossil fuels industry. This ambition was inspired by the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, of which Article 5.3 was specifically adopted to ‘protect policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry’. After this policy was implemented, the parties to the convention were able to raise their ambitions, and to do so more quickly.

What is the Council’s position on introducing a similar policy within the UNFCCC?

What is its position on introducing a ‘firewall’ between the fossil fuels industry and the UNFCCC, so that organisations whose business model relies on activities that run counter to the objectives of the UNFCCC are not given an influential role in the process?