EU sees opportunity to defuse aviation emissions row with China, US

Feb 7, 2012, 17:17 GMT

Brussels - The European Union is ready to amend a controversial carbon emission scheme for airlines, which is causing frictions with the United States and China, if international negotiations on the issue progress within six to eight months, an official said Tuesday.

The EU decided to go-it-alone on aviation sector emissions, with cap-and-trade measures introduced on January 1, after claiming that international negotiations on the issue had gone nowhere over the past decade.

But Jos Delbeke, head of the European Commission's climate change department, said airlines would not have to pay EU charges until April 2013 - giving one more chance to agree on global measures at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

If 'in the coming six to eight months' ICAO talks show that 'a meaningful instrument' to curb global aviation emissions could be agreed before the April deadline, a suspension 'could be considered for one or the other elements' of EU rules, Delbeke said.

That would likely defuse a looming confrontation with the US and China, which have both threatened retaliation if the EU insisted on including foreign airlines in its carbon-dioxide (CO2) emission permit scheme.

But the US deputy ambassador to the EU Thomas J. White, speaking alongside Delbeke at a panel debate organized by a network of environmental groups, said the suspension of the EU scheme should come before the launch of ICAO talks, rather than after.

'It's very difficult to imagine how the negotiations can go very far while unilateral EU regulation is hanging over the head of every ICAO member state,' he said.

That move, Delbeke shot back, was 'out of the question.'

In December, the US lost an appeal before the EU Court of Justice against the application of the emission permit scheme to non-EU airlines.

In retaliation, the US Senate is considering a bill preventing US airlines from taking part in the EU scheme, which has already been approved by the House of Representatives. President Barack Obama could not stop it unless the EU gave something in return, White said.

China is also retaliating. On Monday its civil aviation authorities ordered its airlines not to pay for the EU permits. US, Chinese, Russian and Indian representatives are set to meet in Moscow on February 21 to mount a united front against the measure.

But Delbeke stood firm. He noted that so far all foreign airlines have applied for the 85-per-cent quota of EU emission permits that are being handed out for free. Those which will refuse to pay for the remaining 15 per cent will be taken to court, he pledged.

Equally, countries taking retaliatory measures will be taken to the ICAO or even to, as a last resort, the World Trade Organization, Delbeke said.

'If there is retaliation we are going to react ... we are going to be damn serious,' he warned.

British Airways representative Jonathan Counsell - another panel member in Brussels - said airlines would be badly affected by such a trade war. 'We are very concerned about the issue of non-compliance and retaliation,' he said.

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