Argument rages over voluntary energy-saving industry accords

Date: 04/05/2000

By Renée Cordes

ARGUMENTS within the European Commission over the basis for voluntary industry agreements on energy-saving measures threaten to blow an embarrassing hole in the Union's climate change strategy.

While environment officials and Commission lawyers are calling for the establishment of a far-reaching legal framework giving the EU executive proper authority to negotiate such accords, their transport and energy counterparts are pressing ahead with talks on future agreements.

Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio said last week that she would push for voluntary agreements with a number of industries - including the steel, paper, cement and textile sectors - as part of broader plans to boost energy efficiency.

Such accords are seen as an increasingly important policy instrument and more than 300 are already in place, with the number set to multiply significantly over the next few years as the Union struggles to meet the commitments it made at the Kyoto climate change conference in 1997 to cut greenhouse gas emissions. European, Korean and Japanese car makers have already signed up to separate agreements to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.

But with the ink barely dry on these deals, Commission environment and legal service officials are calling for a Union-wide regulatory framework governing all such agreements to be drawn up before any new accords are struck.

"If the purpose of such unilateral non-binding agreements is to be used as a policy tool, then we have to have a legal framework," said one. He added that such a framework would give legal certainty to those involved, but would not detract from the flexibility or voluntary nature of such accords. He also said that agreement on a framework was unlikely to mean that deals already in place would have to be renegotiated.

MEPs have also called on the Commission to create a "judicial framework" for future voluntary agreements and to review existing accords in light of these rules if they are not working properly.

Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström has warned repeatedly that the Union will miss its climate change targets by a long way unless swift action is taken to reduce emissions.

Environmental groups have welcomed the move to introduce a legal framework. "These kinds of agreements do not work if there is no real pressure on industry," said Giulio Volpi of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

But industry has questioned whether this approach would work in practice. "I am not convinced that having a legal framework in place will make it easier for industry to join such agreements," said Camille Blum, secretary-general of the car lobby group ACEA.

Arguments within the European Commission over the basis for voluntary industry agreements on energy-saving measures threaten to blow an embarrassing hole in the Union's climate change strategy.