F-gas agreement unlikely before July

EUROPE: An agreement on the revision of the European F-gas regulation (517/2014) will not be achieved this month, as had previously been hoped.

While trilogue discussions between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Minsters continue in private, the three bodies are thought to still be far apart in coming to an agreement. 

It had been hoped that an agreement could be reached during the current Swedish EU presidency –  which is in favour of stronger F-gas regulations – but this now seem unlikely. On July 1, Spain takes over, a country which is thought to have a more practical stance on the implications of the legislation.

In a pre-recorded video for attendees at today’s 20th European RACHP conference in Milan, Bente Tranholm-Schwartz deputy head of the European Commission’s DG Clima said that it was “hoped” that an agreement on the F-gas text could be reached in July. 

An agreement must be reached before September, as it needs to undergo member state consultation and be published in the official journal prior to it entering into force in January. 

Bente Tranholm-Schwartz said that after an agreement is reached it will take some time to clean up the text and get it translated. “So we hope that we will manage to do that before the end of the year so that the new regulation can start to apply from 1 January 2024,” she said.