What is the impact of loopholes in the Effort Sharing Regulation?

This paper analyses what the impact of the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) text proposed by the Estonian presidency, to be discussed by EU environment ministers on 13 October 2017, will be on greenhouse gas emissions. The conclusion is clear: the proposed text is far from reaching the maximum potential that this most important European climate reform could attain. Ministers have a last opportunity to try to increase the ambition of the text, to at least match the ambition of the European Parliament. Without an ambitious ESR, the chances of the EU sticking to the Paris agreement commitments decrease considerably.