Finland turns up heat on applicants over emissions

Date: 15/07/1999

By Renée Cordes

FINLAND is warning applicants for EU membership to step up their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - or at least maintain them at current levels - so as not to jeopardise the Union's long-term climate change commitments.

Although most of the candidate countries are on track to meet targets agreed at the 1997 Kyoto climate change conference, the Finnish presidency is increasing the pressure on would-be EU members to ensure an enlarged Union will be ready to tackle a tougher batch of requirements after the 2012 deadline for meeting the Kyoto targets.

"The EU enlargement or accession is one of the major factors influencing the European environmental policies in the future," argues Finnish Environment Minister Satu Hassi in a policy paper to be discussed by ministers next week at an informal meeting in Helsinki, to which the candidate countries have been invited.

Hassi says that eastward expansion offers genuine prospects for improving the environment throughout Europe. But she cautions that "economic growth may have detrimental effects on the environment unless measures are taken to avoid this".

Environmental experts agree that it will be no problem for the candidate countries to meet climate change commitments up until 2012. These targets are based on energy levels in 1990, when economic downturns across the eastern bloc forced countries to shut down many of their most heavily polluting factories.

As a result, greenhouse gas emissions in these countries are widely expected to decline by about 8% between 1990 and 2010, matching the commitment made by the Union as a whole for 2012.

But questions remain over what will happen when some of the applicants are admitted into the Union, probably in the middle of the next decade. Although the EU would be legally within its rights to renegotiate the agreement and allow current member states less stringent requirements, environmental experts agree that it would be political suicide to do so. "Politically I see some restrictions on how far the EU could go on this without being heavily criticised by the US," said one.

The real test will come after 2012, when emissions in incoming Union member states are set to explode as economic growth prompts greater energy consumption and thus pollution problems.

"We need efficient infrastructure in the candidate countries so that we do not jeopardise the more ambitious targets that are sure to come in the second phase of Kyoto between 2013-2017," said Liam Salter, an energy specialist at the World Wide Fund for Nature. "We have a big opportunity in eastern Europe to construct an infrastructure which makes economic and environmental sense."

By 2010, private car use in applicant countries is expected to soar by about 60%, compared to the projected 25% increase in member states, causing greater congestion and air pollution.