Wallström cautious over states missing CO2 deadlines

By Karen Carstens

Date: 22/04/04

ENVIRONMENT Commissioner Margot Wallström has been choosing her words carefully when it comes to the sluggish behaviour of member states in submitting overdue emissions-trading plans.Only five EU countries - Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Germany and Austria - met a 31 March deadline for handing in their national schemes for cutting CO2 emissions to the European Commission. Two more member states, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, have submitted their plans since then.

"We are looking at what we have received from the member states," Wallström said at a recent press briefing. "Where necessary, we will take action."

So far, however, there has been no hint of any impending legal action by the Commission against the ten member states that missed the deadline. In the days leading up to 31 March, Commission officials warned that they would not hesitate in acting against any state that did not comply, as it would be breaking international law. Yet concerns over notorious laggards including Spain and Italy were overblown, suggested Wallström's spokeswoman, Ewa Hedlund.

"We know that in all of these countries the plans are now either in the technical pipeline or in the policy pipeline," she said. Some countries, such as the UK, have published their drafts but are still evaluating comments from the public in national consultations, she added.

The ten EU newcomers have their 1 May accession date as a deadline to submit their own plans. Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia have published drafts, but all have yet to send in their final proposals.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament in a first reading vote on Tuesday (18 April) approved the so-called linking directive.

It suggests ways of linking EU climate emission trading, enshrined in a separate emissions trading directive adopted by Parliament last July, with the Kyoto Protocol's two types of flexible mechanisms - joint implementation and the clean development mechanism. These allow for a donor country to invest in pollution abatement measures in a host country in return for "credits" which it may use in meeting its own emissions targets. According to amendments made by Parliament and welcomed by the Commission, the scheme would be compulsory even if the Kyoto agreement never enters into force. But green groups claimed that the EU is undermining its own climate policy by failing to impose limits on outside mechanisms in its emissions trading system.

The linking directive must now come under the scrutiny of EU governments.

Only five Member States met a 31 March 2004 deadline for submitting their national schemes for cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/environment/climat/emission.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/environment/climat/emission.htm

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