JEF Finland demands that the European Union and Finland make a U-turn in their climate policy. Instead of postponing climate action, we must start accelerating it. EU institutions must be given the power to sanction member states that repeatedly breach the climate targets set for them. There must be no flexibility whatsoever on the 2050 carbon neutrality target — it must be the backstop for climate action both nationally and across the Union. Finland must actively promote this more ambitious climate policy in the Council and bear its own national responsibility for reducing emissions.
Global warming has become an unavoidable fact that threatens our very existence. The Paris Agreement’s goal is to prevent warming of 1.5°C, a threshold that will likely be exceeded in the coming years. As a result of global warming, extreme weather events and biodiversity loss will not only become more frequent but also more severe. Planetary boundaries are being tested ever more extremely through overconsumption and overproduction.
Despite these threats, recent years have shown that climate targets have been softened and pushed further into the future. In Europe, emissions trends have been more moderate and have in places even declined. In 2025, however, climate policy has also taken steps backward in Europe: the targets of the environmental legislation package were watered down with the European Parliament’s approval, competitiveness is being partly bolstered through new emission sources, and several member states are falling short of their national targets.
In Finland, Petteri Orpo’s government has made contradictory decisions when it comes to climate. According to the Natural Resources Institute Finland, increased clear-cutting has turned Finland’s forests from a carbon sink into a source of emissions. Climate-harmful corporate subsidies have not been cut — for example, fur farming is still being kept on life support with state subsidies. Changes to the tax treatment of electric and hybrid vehicles may slow the electrification of transport. Neither the state nor the Union has done anything to limit the expanding volume of cheap Chinese online retailers on the Finnish and, at the same time, European market. The tsunami of climate legislation has been replaced by waves of cheap plastic junk. The EU must develop policy instruments and, where necessary, sanctions to safeguard the EU’s environmental and accountability standards.
On a global scale, wars, economic problems and social instability have absorbed most of the attention of states and the international community. At the same time, however, these are also major environmental catastrophes. As a result of climate change, we have already witnessed record heatwaves, droughts and annual species extinctions. The impacts are already here, which stands in stark contrast to political passivity.
“A more active EU climate policy would demonstrate global climate leadership, which is needed at a time when great powers are focusing on an arms race instead of climate policy. As a leading nation in overconsumption, Finland has an opportunity to change course through an ever more ambitious clean energy policy, larger nature conservation areas and sustainable food production. National borders have already received the attention that should rightly belong to planetary boundaries”, states JEF Finland’s newly elected President Pieta Päivänen.
JEF Finland demands that the European Union and Finland set a course toward a more ambitious climate policy. Climate action is being delayed on borrowed time, and the world can no longer afford that.
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Pieta Päivänen
President of JEF Finland, 2026