EU revives airlines emissions proposal
Print Edition
The European Union on Wednesday revived a proposal to charge foreign airlines for emissions over European airspace, drawing the ire of airline groups who say it goes against the spirit of a recent global aviation deal and could reignite trade tensions.
The proposal from the European Commission to cover the 2014-2020 period represents a retreat from an existing, though frozen, EU law that would require all planes using EU airports to pay for emissions for the full duration of their flights through an Emissions Trading Scheme.
But airline groups said it threatened to unravel a fragile agreement cobbled together during two weeks of tough negotiations at the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, which ended this month.
EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the bloc was within its rights to regulate aircraft emissions within its own airspace.
“It is a sovereign right to regulate aviation in and around our own EU airspace,” Hedegaard said. “I very much hope our partners will see this in the spirit in which it is being presented.”
The International Air Transport Association, which represents some 240 global airlines, issued a statement expressing “concern and surprise” at the proposal from the EU executive.
“The Commission is now recommending a course of action that has the potential to undermine the goodwill that has brought us to this point,” IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler said.
US airline lobby group Airlines for America said requiring foreign carriers to participate in the EU trading scheme without the agreement of the airlines’ country of registry “flies in the face” of the ICAO agreement.
“As this proposal is only an initial draft, we urge the European Council and Parliament to use their deliberative process to revise the proposal in line with the global agreement,” said spokeswoman Katie Connell.
Speaking in Brussels last week, one of the ICAO negotiators warned any charges on non-EU airlines would be a problem.
“If the EU decides, and I hope they do not, they will nevertheless want to capture emissions of non-European airlines, then we will be back to trade wars,” said Abdul Wahab Teffaha, secretary general of the Arab Air Carriers Organization.
The latest EU proposal marks a retreat from earlier legislation imposing a levy on the full length of flights in and out of the EU. The European Commission decided to review its law after the ICAO agreement in Montreal.
Non-EU nations, led by India, China and the US had complained the EU legislation was breaching national sovereignty and forced the bloc to freeze it for a year to give the ICAO the chance to table an alternative.
(Reuters)
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