He Supreme Court has dismissed this Thursday the appeal presented by Greenpeace, Ecologists in Action-CODA, Oxfam Intermón and NGO Coordinator 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 involves integrating in the commitment assumed by the European Union in this matter.
The appellants requested that is partially annulled the plan regarding the revision 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 per 100 in 2030, with respect 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 sentence, among other arguments, indicates that the Paris Convention, on whose approaches the appellants are based, implies obligations assumed by all parties, also by the Spanish Statewho cannot be blamed for their failure to comply, since they have 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 greater 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 called 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 policy conferred on it by the Constitution, can be accused of arbitrary, quite the contrary”.
In the judgment, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber maintains that “it is true that both the Paris Convention and the community legislation constitute minimum limits, but it must be concluded that this limit entails meeting the commitments, certainly general and not specified, assumed in the Convention, 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” .