The Supreme Court has dismissed this Thursday the appeal presented by Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción-CODA, Oxfam Intermón and the Coordinator of NGOs for development, among others, against the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan 2021-2030 (PNIEC), approved by Agreement of the Council of Ministers on March 16, 2021, considering that it is adjusted to the law, not arbitrary and supposes joining the commitment assumed by the European Union in this matter.
The appellants requested that the plan be partially annulled in terms of the review of the objectives so as not to exceed a 1.5º C increase in global temperature, and that in no case the reduction of emissions, for the aforementioned period, be less than 55 by 100 in 2030, compared to 1990. And secondarily, they requested that the entire plan be declared null and void, which established reaching a level of emission reduction of 23% compared to 1990 levels.
The judgment, among other arguments, indicates that the Paris Convention, on whose approaches the appellants are based, implies obligations assumed by all parties, including by the Spanish State, which cannot be blamed for its non-compliance, since it has adopted the decision to join the commitment assumed at the level of the European Union and, as stated in all the documents provided, the Union is, worldwide, the one that has led the greatest commitments of the Convention.
“It does not seem -says the High Court- that this decision to integrate into the criteria of the Union can be branded as arbitrary so that by means of the decision that is requested of us we can revoke it. In short, it does not seem that the decision of the Spanish Administration , in the legitimate exercise of direction of national and international politics that the Constitution confers on it, can be accused of arbitrary, but quite the contrary”.
In the sentence, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber maintains that “it is true that both the Paris Convention and the community regulations constitute minimum limits, but it must be concluded that this limit entails meeting the commitments, certainly general and not specified, assumed in the Agreement, in such a way that the policy followed by the Government and the Administration of our Country is to assume, as authorized by the Agreement, the commitments as a member of the Union and subject to its criteria, that is, to the policy designed by the Union in which our country has collaborated to approve”.
The Chamber states that if the GHG emission limits were now altered in the percentage requested in the lawsuit, which would be authorized by the Agreement and community regulations, “the Spanish State would be imposed on the renegotiation of a policy designed, in full harmony , throughout the Union, that is, they would even be affecting the international competences, certainly peculiar in the case of the Union, of the Government”.
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