France is delaying the rollout of a new climate change law after lawmakers were criticized for drafting a watered-down and vague bill that lacked any real ability to enforce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Officials with French President Emmanuel Macron’s administration disclosed the delay on Sunday, Reuters reports. Macron has had to soften some of positions in recent months after protests broke out in Paris in response to a failed push to increase fuel taxes in support of his climate agenda.
But now critics say the new law to be presented to Macron’s Cabinet on Monday went too far to soften its climate policies.
The delay is expected to send lawmakers back to the drawing board for some fine-tuning to make the bill more stringent in its emission reduction goals, the officials said.
French parliamentary leaders will begin discussing a bill that acts more aggressively in making cuts to fossil fuel use, with the goal of becoming “carbon neutral” by 2050.
The United Nations climate panel issued a report late last year that called for countries to begin cutting their emissions more aggressively, with the goal of being carbon neutral — eliminating as much carbon dioxide emissions as a country produces annually — beginning by the middle of the century.
