France’s efforts to curb climate damage, though belated, were deemed adequate by a French court on Friday, dealing a setback to environmental campaigners seeking a 1.1 billion euro ($1.21 billion) penalty against the state for purported shortcomings.
Two years after a crucial legal directive required France to fulfill its climate change commitments, the order stressed the importance of the nation taking necessary actions to address ecological damage and halt additional increases in carbon emissions by December 2022.
Environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, filed a motion seeking to impose a penalty on the state.
They claim that President Emmanuel Macron’s government has not taken adequate measures to adhere to the initial court order to reduce emissions.
“The Court first found that the State, in compliance with the injunction issued against it, had adopted or implemented measures capable of remedying the damage in question”, the Paris administrative court said in its ruling issued on Friday.
Despite identified shortcomings in the data for 2021 and 2022, the court asserted that these discrepancies weren’t sufficient grounds for imposing a penalty.
This decision was influenced by a significant reduction in emissions during the first quarter of 2023, effectively offsetting the earlier excess emissions.
The court also dismissed the argument suggesting that the decline in emissions was primarily due to external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened energy prices resulting from the conflict in Ukraine.
The court maintained that these external factors over the past two years did not indicate a failure by the state to implement necessary actions.
