EU Airline Carbon Tax Hurts Climate Change Fight, Claims China And India

By Nigam Prusty

NEW DELHI, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The European Union's move to charge airlines for carbon emissions violates international laws and jeopardises global efforts to fight climate change, the BASIC group of countries, which includes China, said on Tuesday.

From Jan. 1, all airlines using EU airports have come under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, and any airline that does not comply could face a fine of 100 euros ($128) for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted for which they have not surrendered allowances.

In the case of persistent offenders, the EU has the right to ban airlines from its airports - rules that have drawn protest from airlines around the world. China said it would bar its carriers from taking part.

In a two-day meeting in New Delhi that ended on Tuesday, the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China, known as the BASIC bloc, said the EU rule ran counter to the idea of "multilateralism" and to the provisions of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"Ministers noted that the unilateral action by EU in the name of climate change was taken despite strong international opposition and would seriously jeopardise the international efforts to combat climate change," they said in a joint statement.

"The ministers recognised the threat of similar unilateral measures being considered by developed countries in the name of climate change in the area of international shipping and expressed their concern."

Foreign governments say Brussels has exceeded its legal jurisdiction by calculating the carbon cost over the whole flight, not just Europe.

Non-EU airlines say the levy is discriminatory.

But in December the European Union's highest court said the EU was acting within the law.

The European Commission has also said it resorted to including all airlines in its scheme only after more than a decade of talks at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) failed to deliver a global solution to curb the impact of airline emissions.

Increasingly, governments and the EU's executive European Commission are looking to the U.N.'s ICAO to come up with a worldwide scheme. (Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee, editing by Jane Baird)

Comments

[fhrankluchan]

06:51 PM on 02/17/2012

India and China are concerned with Climate Change?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

[slinkybro]

01:51 PM on 02/17/2012

This is just another protectionist plan by the Europeans. Charging for carbon emmissions will increase the cost of long distance air travel to Asia and the Americas by a lot more then regional travel within Europe. Giving them an economic advantage.

[Bullitt08]

10:35 AM on 02/15/2012

The EU MIGHT have standing to impose a "carbon tax" on aircraft flying over EU airspace.
It hs NO RIGHT whatsoever to impose any such tax on the portion of flights not over it's airspace.

A better solution is to simply raise the tax on aviation full sold in the EU.
There is no way to get around that.

[PaulBardinas]

09:17 AM on 02/15/2012

China and India by the way are two of the world largest CO2 emitters. These developing nations are more concerned about growing their economies then saving our planet. From an immediate practical sense its hard to blame them. For the last 200 hundred years they've lived as 3rd world nations and watched while their Western counterparts have propelled themselves into developed nations with the use of cheap dirty fossil fuels. The US is still the world leading CO2 emitter and we have are heads so far up our ass that we refuse to lead on this issue.

[Luuke]

07:39 AM on 02/18/2012

Maybe their economic development was stunted by lemme guess......Being pillaged by the British for hundreds of years ???

[RJKT]

08:10 AM on 03/21/2012

Absolutely ..

[PaulBardinas]

09:12 AM on 02/15/2012

The EU deserves credit for having the courage to forge forward with "a plan" to start reducing carbon emissions. I would agree that a unilateral move by the EU to penalize airline carriers is not the best solution, but the obstructionists have left the EU with no options. The UN has plently of members simply hell bent on making meaningful CO2 reduction impossible. If we wait for 100% consensus among every member to put forward a comprehensive plan, then we are as good as doomed to failure. Perhaps given these moves by the EU the airlines and obstructionist nations will be persuaded to come to the table to negotiat a more meaningful and comprehensive plan.