MEPs set for emissions vote

Date: 10/10/02

GERMAN MEPs from both the Christian Democrat and Socialist camps are set to challenge a European Commission proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a vote today (10 October).

They argue the draft directive outlining a new EU-wide mandatory emissions trading scheme would abolish a national programme operating in Germany since 1998, based on voluntary emissions cuts by individual companies.

'This is the most successful system in all of Europe,' said Karl-Heinz Florenz, the Christian Democrats' environment spokesman. 'The proposed directive endangers the voluntary self-regulation of German industry.' Florenz, along with German Social Democrat MEP Werner Langen, has crafted an amendment allowing for an 'opt-out clause' to the mandatory scheme.

'We are all in agreement on the goal. We want less emissions, but more selection in methods and measures,' Florenz said.

Meanwhile, a British-backed amendment spearheaded by Chris Davies, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, is seeking to salvage a British national emissions reduction programme adopted in April by allowing it and other national schemes to continue through December 2006.

Davies said he is confident his proposal, which has all-party support in the Parliament, will be approved today.

• MEPS this week welcomed the launch of a group of high-level financial experts to check on the work of secretive committees charged with setting new rules for EU securities markets.

German Socialist Christa Randzio-Plath, who chairs the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee, said the group would scrutinise the two new bodies created to implement reforms aimed at fast-tracking technical rules.

The independent 'Inter Institutional Monitoring Group' was set up after MEPs complained that they would be shut out of the process. As a result of a compromise with the European Commission and member states, MEPs have the right to nominate two members of the six-strong group.

'In the end, only the European Parliament with its long tradition of openness can guarantee the transparency of the process,' said Randzio-Plath.

MEPs nominated finance consultant Graham Bishop and Deutsche Bank executive Norbert Walter for the group. Member states chose the former head of the Italian treasury Mario Draghi and former Swedish finance minister Kari Lotsberg.

The Commission's choices were French stock market regulator Michel Prada and former European Court of Justice advocate-general Walter Van Gerven, a Belgian.

German MEPs from both the Christian Democrat and Socialist camps are set to challenge a European Commission proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a vote on 10 October 2002.