page_title: Miguel Arias Cañete
section_title: European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, 2014–2019
hierarchical_section_title: Miguel Arias Cañete / Career / European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, 2014–2019
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context_page_description: Miguel Arias Cañete is a Spanish politician who served as European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action in the Juncker Commission from 2014 and 2019.
  A member of the People's Party, Arias served as Minister for Agriculture, Food and Environment in the Government of Spain from 2011 until 2014, before being selected to head his Party List in the European Parliamentary elections.
context_section_description: In 2014, Arias was picked by Rajoy to lead the Partido Popular's list in the 2014 European elections. Following the elections, Spain nominated him for the Juncker Commission in August 2014. By early September, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker assigned Arias to the office of European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, where he became the first single supervisor of those two policy areas. He took office on 1 November 2014. In this capacity, he works under the guidance of Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission Vice President for Energy Union.
  He represented the European Union at international climate negotiations starting at the  2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, followed by COP21 in Paris for the signature of the Paris Agreement. Following the agreement, much of his mandate was spent updating EU climate and energy policy to bring it in line with meeting the EU's commitments under the agreement. Cañete also oversaw the introduction of a number of new climate policies during his mandate, including the Effort Sharing Regulation covering non-ETS emissions, a number of transport initiatives, and a regulation on greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). The LULUCF regulation marked the first time the commitment on LULUCF was enshrined in EU law (although Member States had undertaken the commitment previously). On climate policy, Arias Cañete has been responsible for the plan to introduce an overhaul of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, the world's biggest cap-and-trade program.
  In summer 2015, Arias Cañete launched a plan to turn the Mediterranean region into "a major gas marketplace" as part of European Union efforts to reduce dependency on dominant oil and gas supplier Russia. Shortly after, he brokered an agreement between France, Spain and Portugal on the MidCat gas pipeline intended to increase exports of Algerian gas into the European energy mix.
  In June 2019, Arias Cañete announced his will to put an end to his political career once his mandate as commissioner expired on 1 November 2019, vowing to retire to his home in Jerez de la Frontera and to take care of his grandchildren.
caption: Arias Cañete addressing the European Parliament during a debate on climate change in March 2019
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