The EU agreed to be net-zero by 2050.
Are the 27 member states on track?

Emissions can be shown including or excluding the LULUCF category. The LULUCF category includes carbon emissions and removals from land use, like forests, agriculture, etc. In countries with large forest cover, this category will produce negative emissions, which means storing more greenhouse gases than emitting. In addition to natural sinks, there are also technologies that aim to remove carbon from the atmosphere, often referred to as CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage). Currently, all CCUS projects within Europe (incl. Norway, Switzerland and Iceland) amount to less than 3Mt of CO₂eq removal per year (IEA CCUS database). Denmark and Czechia also included negative emission from CCUS in their projections, see the note in the respective country diagrams.

Reaching net-zero, which the EU plans to do by 2050, implies not emitting more emissions than are being removed within the EU-27 states. This is why the LULUCF category is highly relevant for measuring progress towards net-zero.

Every EU member state must report projected emissions to the EU based on current national and European legislation. This scenario is called “With Existing Measures" (WEM). The most up-to-date scenario considers the climate impact of laws enacted by a given date. Countries also report their policies and measures (PaMs) alongside the projected emissions.

Calculating emissions under the "With Additional Measures" scenario is optional. It relies on a somewhat vague assumption, considering laws likely to be enforced soon. Currently, 18 of the 27 EU countries have projected their future emissions using this scenario. The WEM scenario offers a more cautious estimate of emissions trends by not accounting for laws enacted at a given date. In contrast, the WAM scenario provides a more optimistic projection, assuming that additional laws with higher ambition will come into effect.

Data of the future projections is taken from the EEA Data hub, which provides a summarised version of the 27 raw data files, but currently contains less detailed sectoral data than the raw data. We used the “EU data hub” data in the EU-27 overview chart, as it includes a WEM Scenario for every member state until 2050. The raw data of the countries doesn't.

Raw data: For our detailed visualisations of each sector and country, we used the raw data that can be downloaded from the European Environment Agency's (EEA) e-Reporting platform for environmental and climate data reporting (folder: "1a1b5a5b"). Only Romania did not provide any data, the data for the overview diagram of Romania originates from the gapfilled EEA Data hub dataset.

The EEA provides an overview website for the emissions data.

Historical emissions data was downloaded from the UNFCCC.

The historical data will be updated every year. Each of the EU-27 countries must report its emissions with more than 100 subsectors to the UNFCCC by January of the following year. For example, the national emissions data for 2024 will be updated in summer 2026.

Data on projected emissions was last updated in 2026, with the next scenarios expected in 2027.

The EEA provides a Policy Database Link: To display all policies and measures which are part of the WEM scenario set the filter “Status of implementation” to “Adopted” & “Implemented”. Similarly, for the WAM scenario set it to “planned”. To get a summary, see the policy overview website of the EEA.

Any legislation that came into force after a specific date is not included in the WEM (with existing measures) scenarios. We are currently in contact with the EEA to clarify the exact date.

On the path to its 2050 net-zero goal, the EU has committed to reducing net emissions by 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. This overarching target is distributed across member states through an effort-sharing methodology (ESR), which requires individual emission reductions of between 10% and 50% compared to 2005 levels, depending on the member state.

The EU has also adopted a 2040 target of a 90% net reduction compared to 1990. From 2036 onwards, high-quality international credits may account for up to 5 percentage points of this 90% target. Before the adoption, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change recommended a more ambitious reduction of 90–95% compared to 1990, and achieved without reliance on international carbon credits.

The Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to reach net zero by around 2050, with deep cuts by 2030. The first Global Stocktake, concluded at COP28 in 2023, found that current national commitments fall far short of that trajectory and called on all parties to submit more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Against this backdrop, the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) rates the EU's current policies and action as "Insufficient", meaning that if all countries followed the EU's approach, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C climateactiontracker. This inadequacy also has a legal dimension: in its 2025 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded that states are legally obligated under international law to limit warming to 1.5°C. The EU's current targets therefore fall short not only scientifically, as CAT's "Insufficient" rating makes clear, but also legally.

This website presents a more regional stocktake, ranking all EU member states against the EU’s own climate targets.

Further Reading

• Global Stocktake Synthesis Report
• Climate Action Tracker: EU Rating

Countries report their emissions to the UNFCCC according to a fixed format, the so-called CRF (Common Reporting Format). We allocate the sub-sectors to the sectors as follows:

• Energy
• 1.A.1.a Public Electricity and Heat Production 
• 1.A.1.b Petroleum Refining 
• 1.A.1.c Manufacture of Solid Fuels and Other Energy Industries
• 1.A.3.e Other Transportation (Please note: This sector includes emissions from pipeline operations (1.A.3.e.i) and ground activities at airports (Mobility: 1.A.3.e.ii) because the sector is not broken down into i & ii in the countries' projections.
• 1.B.1 Solid Fuels 
• 1.B.2 Oil and Natural Gas 
• 1.C CO₂ transport and storage
• Agriculture
• 1.A.4.c Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing
• 3.A Enteric Fermentation 
• 3.B Manure Management 
• 3.C Rice cultivation 
• 3.D Agricultural Soils 
• 3.E Prescribed burning of savannahs 
• 3.F Field Burning of Agricultural Residues 
• 3.G Liming 
• 3.H Urea application 
• 3.I Other carbon-containing fertilisers 
• 3.J Other
• Industry
• 1.A.2 Manufacturing Industries and Construction
• 2.A Mineral Industry 
• 2.B Chemical Industry 
• 2.C Metal Industry 
• 2.D Non-Energy Products from Fuels and Solvent Use Electronics Industry 
• 2.E Product Uses as Substitutes for ODS 
• 2.F Other Product Manufacture and Use 
• 2.G Other
• Buildings
• 1.A.4.a Commercial/Institutional 
• 1.A.4.b Residential
• 1.A.5 Other
• Mobility
• 1.A.3.a Domestic Aviation 
• 1.A.3.b Road Transportation
• 1.A.3.c Railways 
• 1.A.3.d Domestic Navigation
• Waste
• 5.A Solid Waste Disposal 
• 5.B Biological Treatment of Solid Waste 
• 5.C Incineration and Open Burning of Waste 
• 5.D Waste Water Treatment and Discharge 
• 5.E Other
• Memo
• Memo.1.D.1.a International Aviation 
• Memo.1.D.1.b International Navigation