"The EU has significantly strengthened its climate policies (primarily through the Fit for 55 package) to reach its 2030 target and to respond to new challenges posed by a rapidly changing international environment. Achieving climate neutrality by 2050 will require further development of climate policies. In the context of this strengthened EU climate policy framework, this report aims to provide the EU with scientific advice on policy actions that can support the achievement of climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. With this report, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (hereafter Advisory Board) aims to advise EU policy-makers on how to make the EU's policies and measures 'fit for net zero', by flagging up areas for improvement and gaps in the current framework. To that end, it assesses the progress made towards the EU's climate objectives, as well as the consistency of EU policies with the climate neutrality objective. Where sufficient scientific evidence is available, it also puts forward recommendations to address these gaps. By doing so, the Advisory Board aims to provide an independent input to the stocktake process established at EU level under the European Climate Law, in complement to existing assessments by the European Environment Agency (EEA, the annual Trends and Projections reports (EEA, 2023p)) and the European Commission (the Climate Action Progress Report (EC, 2023ax)). This report is an integral part of the Advisory Board's effort to provide scientific advice on existing and proposed EU measures and their consistency with the EU's climate objectives, and to identify actions and opportunities to successfully achieve these targets, in line with the mandate set out in the European Climate Law (EU, 2021c). The report provides a first general assessment of progress and policy consistency in different sectors (energy supply, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and LULUCF) and for cross-cutting issues (pricing of emissions and rewarding removals, just transition and public engagement, finance and investments, innovation, governance, and skills and capacity building). All recommendations include explanations of the evidence and rationale supporting them."

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ISBN (PDF) : 978-92-9480-612-3