Germany considers legal action over EU emissions plan
By Honor Mahony
Germany is considering taking the European Commission to court over its proposals for slashing industry carbon dioxide emissions.
According to German daily FT Deutschland, Berlin is currently preparing legal action, although a final decision at the coalition level has still to be taken.
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Joachim Würmeling, the state secretary for energy, on Wednesday said that court action was being prepared so that the emission reductions required by Brussels for Germany would not become set in stone.
Economics minister Michael Glos and head of the Social Democrats Kurt Beck have also raised the idea of legal action.
"Economic growth will not help us if our environment is at risk but we need to achieve these objectives in a way which does not impinge on our competitiveness," Mr Glos said, while refusing to rule out the legal path.
In November last year, Brussels told Germany that their national pollution-reducing plans for 2008-2012 are too weak, demanding from Berlin that it reduce its carbon emissions by six percent to 453.1 million tonnes per year.
This was a far lower threshold than Europe's biggest economy had been considering. Berlin first indicated 482 million tonnes would be its target before reducing that further to 465 tonnes.
At the time, environment minister Sigmar Gabriel complained that the European Commission had kept member states in the dark until the last minute and had not taken into account Berlin's second offer to reduce its emissions.
Pursuing legal action would cast a cloud over relations between Brussels and Berlin - particularly as Germany has just assumed the half-yearly presidency of the EU.
Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and chancellor Angela Merkel made a show of unity at a recent meeting in Berlin saying that "friends" often challenge one another.
However, friction over Brussels' emission trading scheme plans only serves to highlight the fight the commission is going to have between balancing its green plans – which it says will be economically beneficial in the long term – and short term economic competitiveness which countries like Germany are fighting hard to maintain.
This split was clear to see yesterday when the commission's overhaul of its energy policy was unveiled.
Already, industry in large countries is worried about how its competitiveness will be affected if the bloc commits to a unilateral 20 percent reduction in C02 emissions by 2020 when the rest of the world is not singing from the same green hymn book.