Ministers make scant progress on EU climate plan

2557, 05/06/08

EU governments came no closer to reaching agreement on a proposed package of EU climate and energy legislation at a lengthy debate of the plans by environment ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.

In a public exchange of views series ministers outlined their positions on the main elements of the package, with most suggesting amendments that they would like to see introduced (EED 23/01/08 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/24681).

A group of central and eastern European states led by Hungary and Poland repeated their call to base planned "burden-sharing"

legislation setting national greenhouse gas targets (EED 23/01/08 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/24684) on 1990 emission levels, rather than the 2005 baseline proposed by the European commission (EED 28/05/08 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/25511).

The countries argue that this is necessary in order to take account of emission reductions achieved during the 1990s when their economies were restructured following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But most other delegations rejected the move, saying it would require a complete rethink of the burden-sharing proposal and severely delay its adoption.

A significant number of ministers called for the introduction of more flexibility in the burden-sharing legislation. Several countries backed a Swedish proposal to allow member states that beat annual interim emission targets to sell the difference to countries that are falling behind. EU environment chief Stavros Dimas said the commission would "investigate the possibility further".

But Mr Dimas flatly rejected a proposal to allow countries to trade emissions credits between the EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS) and the non-ETS sector. He warned that such a move could undermine the EU ETS and "must be avoided".

The German delegation said the package lacked concrete measures to implement an EU goal to cut energy consumption 20 per cent by 2020 (EED 19/10/06 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/21881).  France suggested making the 20 per cent efficiency goal binding on member states.

ENDS Europe Daily will report further on Thursday's ministerial meeting in tomorrow's issue.

Follow-up: EU council of ministers http://www.consilium.europa.eu/, tel: +32 2285 6211, plus meeting agenda

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/envir/100841.pdf.

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