EU to commit to tight legislative deadline for green goals
The EU wants the upper hand when it comes to international climate change talks next year (Photo: Council of the European Union)
RENATA GOLDIROVA
14.03.2008 @ 01:54 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU leaders have indicated they will try and get legislation on the bloc's far-reaching climate change goals agreed by the beginning of next year.
"There is a very ambitious time-line," Janez Jansa, speaking on behalf of Slovenian EU presidency, said after the high-level meeting on early Friday morning (14 March).
According to Mr Jansa, the green package – which sets out how to cut carbon dioxide emissions and boost the share of renewable energy sources in overall energy consumption by 2020 - should receive full political backing by all EU governments by the end of 2008.
"Then we have to find common language with the European Parliament - in the first month of 2009 at the latest," he added.
The European Parliament has also said it will work to this tight deadline, with complicated legislation such as this normally taking years to get through the Brussels legislative system.
Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering earlier in the evening pledged that his institution would do its best to see that the legislation is in place "before the European elections in 2009".
The main reason for the accelerated process is to give the 27-nation bloc a better negotiating position at the United Nations climate change conference.
To be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, it will kick off international talks on greenhouse gas emission reductions for after 2012, when the current Kyoto agreement expires.
Fight over emissions trading scheme
Despite the general political backing for the timetable, a potential fight is emerging over the fate of member states' energy-intensive industries in the face of one of the commission's key proposals: buying carbon dioxide permits by auction.
Several EU states are against the idea that the electricity generation sector should be subject to full auctioning from the start of the new regime in 2013, as envisaged by Brussels. Instead, they have suggested a gradual process, reaching full auctioning by 2020.
The gradual approach is supported by Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. They argue that it is necessary to maintain a balance between green goals and competitiveness of their economies.
Financial tools
On another front, a joint call for reduced VAT rates on eco-friendly products by UK prime minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has failed to gather sufficient support among EU leaders.
"Some member states don't accept the idea," the commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said, underlining that "anything on taxes requires unanimity" in the EU.
He said that while the commission is open to the idea of "positive discrimination in favour of environmentally friendly goods" it has "doubts" about using VAT, suggesting that an impact assessment would first need to be carried out.
As an alternative to the VAT idea, Mr Barroso mooted discounts or rebates on such goods.
