A new CAN Europe report looked into 12 National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) and reveals that most of them urgently need to align targets and benchmarks with coherent policies to at least reach the EU’s climate and energy goals.
As of March 2025, five Member States—Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Poland, and Slovakia—have yet to submit their final updated NECPs, undermining the EU’s collective progress. Among submitted plans, significant concerns remain, particularly in ambition, policy coherence, fossil fuel dependency, and just transition elements such as energy poverty.
A sneak peak
In Bulgaria, renewable energy ambitions have regressed from earlier drafts, coupled with persistent fossil fuel reliance, including costly mega-projects and unproven technologies. Czechia’s final NECP lacks sufficient policies and measures to achieve climate and energy targets and offers no clear roadmap to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, explicitly ignoring Commission recommendations.
Denmark risks policy implementation failures and overlooks families in energy poverty, while investing in technologies delivering uncertain results like CCS. Germany’s NECP falls short on backing up the reported emission reduction targets, particularly in ESR and LULUCF sectors, and neglects just transition aspects including energy poverty.
Finland’s NECP provides inadequate measures to meet EU climate targets, to reverse the decline in carbon sinks and to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. Hungary‘s plan not only misses EU energy benchmarks, but also plans new fossil gas infrastructure, delaying its coal phase-out.
Ireland‘s NECP shows major infrastructure hurdles to achieve its energy benchmarks and insufficient action in agriculture, heavily reliant on voluntary farmer engagement rather than systemic transformations. Italy maintains strong fossil fuel reliance without clear phase-out timelines, and inadequately addresses energy poverty.
Portugal’s detailed investment needs for its implementations, and projected primary energy consumption increases because of hydrogen exports. Slovenia has diluted previous fossil fuel subsidy phase-out commitments, and Spain’s trajectories to fulfil energy consumption and LULUCF obligations are inconsistent with EU requirements.
Sweden‘s NECP does not back up plans with consistent and detailed policies and measures, particularly around energy efficiency, contradicting EU guidelines.
Urgent efforts to meet at least national targets and benchmarks, accelerated fossil fuel subsidy phase-outs, and stronger commitments to a just transition, particularly addressing energy poverty, are imperative. The key recommendations contained in this briefing aim to support and inform the European Commission’s EU-wide assessment of the final updated NECPs. CAN Europe calls on Member States and the European Commission to integrate these critical points into ongoing bilateral discussions, gap-filling mechanisms and decision-making processes.
The EU needs to pave the way and set the right direction towards a timely and accelerated energy and climate policy implementation and framework towards 2030 then to 2040 and beyond, in line with the Paris Agreement commitment.
