Climate change strategy delayed

Date: 22/04/1999

By Renée Cordes

THE European Commission is putting plans to draw up an EU strategy for combating climate change on the back burner because of continuing arguments between member states over how to regulate emissions trading.

Before the turmoil which led to the resignation of President Jacques Santer and his team last month, Acting Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard had planned to unveil far-reaching proposals ahead of the next summit of EU leaders in Cologne in June.

The aim of her plan was to ensure that governments lived up to their pledge to meet the emission reduction targets agreed at the 1997 climate change conference in Kyoto, Japan. The document would have effectively outlined the EU's negotiating position for the next international climate change conference in November.

However, the moratorium on new political initiatives from the Commission and the continuing dispute over the extent to which member states should be allowed to buy the right to pollute from other countries, rather than reducing emissions at home, is holding up work on Bjerregaard's paper.

Aides to the Commissioner said they doubted that the institution would be able to present a united front at the November talks, given member states' inability to reach agreement on emissions trading and energy taxes. "The idea was that we would have the climate change communication ready by June, which would serve as a basis for negotiations with other parties to the protocol," said one.

EU members states are obliged under the Kyoto agreement to cut emissions of six greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, to 8% below 1990 levels by 2012 at the latest.

The German presidency, supported by Austria and Denmark, has been urging ministers to set a 50% ceiling on meeting those targets by buying 'credits' from countries which have undershot their limits.

The move is aimed at ensuring member states meet the bulk of their commitments by cutting emissions at home.

But the UK and some southern member states fear that industry will suffer if it is required to keep emissions below a certain level without any flexibility.

The EU's Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper), made up of member states' ambassadors to the EU, will discuss the issue next Wednesday (28 April), acutely aware that time is running out for a deal.

The German presidency has warned that it will call a special climate change meeting on 18 May if officials fail to hammer out an agreement soon. Diplomats say that the issue may also be discussed in the margins of the informal environment ministers' meeting next month.

" If the Germans had pressed on with this at the March Council, a compromise would have been reached," claimed one diplomat. "This will have to be resolved for the Community to have its position ready by June."

The Bjerregaard aide said the Commission was developing a model Union emissions trading programme, adding: "That would probably strengthen our negotiating position."

He said the institution was still considering the question of whether industry or governments would carry out whatever level of credits trading was eventually agreed.