Regulating aircraft emissions: leadership and market power

This article examines the process of including commercial aviation in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) relative to claims about the EU's leadership in international environment policy-making.

It argues that in order to understand the politics and the emerging shape of specific regimes concerned with atmospheric pollution, scholars must examine the nature of the pollutant and the polluting process concerned, the commercial characteristics of the polluting industry, its regulatory framework and any competing mandates held by other international organizations. These factors explain the rationale for the EU's inclusion of aviation in the ETS and the resulting dilemmas faced by the Commission. They also explain the resistance of non-EU carriers to their inclusion in the ETS and the EU's ambiguous success in making them comply.