France and Germany will cement their historic post-war reconciliation with the signing of a new Elysée treaty on Tuesday (22 January). But the draft text, seen by EURACTIV, no longer mentions carbon pricing among new bilateral initiatives.

“It is extremely regrettable that pricing CO2 emissions is no longer mentioned in the new treaty,” said Claudia Kemfert, a researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), according to Euractiv.com.

“It would be useful for France to continue supporting this issue and thus allow Germany to further integrate carbon pricing in its regulations,” she told EURACTIV.

Fifty-six years after Charles De Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer signed a post-war reconciliation treaty in 1962, France and Germany will seal a new “cooperation and integration” pact next week in the German town of Aachen, near the Belgian and Dutch border.

One year ago, on the treaty’s 55th anniversary, the German Bundestag and the French National Assembly published a first version of the new Elysée treaty, which mentioned new “comm initiatives” on carbon pricing to fight climate change (paragraph 16).

But the document that will be signed next week, seen by EURACTIV, no longer mentions the idea. Instead, two broader paragraphs address general issues such as sustainable development, climate change, the environment and economic affairs (paragraphs 18 and 19).

France and Germany “are working to strengthen the process of implementing multilateral instruments related to sustainable development, global health and the protection of the environment and climate,” says the new draft treaty, referring to the Paris Agreement and the  United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The two countries intend to “bring forward the energy transition in all relevant sectors,” and “develop their cooperation” to “finance, develop and implement joint projects, particularly in infrastructure, renewable energy and energy efficiency,” according to the revised text.

Overall, France and Germany commit to adopt “ambitious measures to fight climate change” and “act in close relationship” with one another “in order to formulate common approaches and policies”.

But although they declare their intention to “put in place incentives mechanisms for the transformation of their economies,” they no longer mention carbon pricing as a solution to turn those pledges into concrete action.