BRUSSELS — The European Union won a preliminary victory Thursday for its plan to charge the world’s biggest airlines for their greenhouse gas emissions even as international opposition to the plan grew fiercer and support among European countries weakened.
The opinion by the advocate general at the European Court of Justice strongly endorsed the E.U. push to include global airlines in its Emissions Trading System. The system already covers other heavy industries and represents the Union’s boldest step yet to lead the world in efforts to control climate change.
The opinion also dealt a significant blow to the global airline industry’s effort to avoid being required, starting Jan. 1, to become part of a system that it argues will be ineffective in cutting carbon emissions and lead to higher ticket prices.
The Air Transport Association of America, which brought the case with three major U.S. airlines, said it was disappointed, but that the opinion “does not mark the end of the case.” It said the final opinion still could “vary from the preliminary opinion.” The International Air Transport Association, a global industry body, said so many countries were now opposed to the measures that the Union should drop its plans and restart talks on how to regulate greenhouse gases from aviation at a global level.
“Rather than risking a further escalation of tensions amongst states, I encourage Europe to support a successful, global and effective solution,” said Tony Tyler, the director general of the I.A.T.A.
Mr. Tyler said that more than 20 countries — including India, China, Japan, the United States and Russia — signed a declaration last week vowing to challenge the plan at the International Civil Aviation Organization, an arm of the United Nations.
The I.C.A.O.’s 190 member states passed a resolution in 2010 committing themselves to devising a market-based solution, though without a fixed timetable. Impatient with the pace of the I.C.A.O. talks, the European Union moved ahead with its own plan.
Fitch, the ratings agency, warned this week that the issue had the potential to “escalate into a wider international trade dispute, as airlines and governments grow more vocal over the regulation’s economic impact.”
The case was brought by three U.S. airlines — United and Continental, which merged last year, and American Airlines — and the A.T.A. The parties argued that Europe’s decision infringed on the sovereignty of other countries and conflicted with existing international aviation treaties.
On Thursday, the court’s legal adviser, Juliane Kokott, rejected those arguments.
“E.U. legislation does not infringe the sovereignty of other states or the freedom of the high seas guaranteed under international law and is compatible with the relevant international agreements,” Ms. Kokott wrote.
She also wrote that any flight touching down or taking off from an E.U. airport provided “an adequate territorial link for the whole of the flight in question to be included in the E.U. emissions trading scheme.”
The opinion is not binding on the judges, but the court follows the advocate general’s opinion in the vast majority of cases. A final ruling is expected in the coming months.
The system is due to take effect next year, and the airlines would not have to hand over the first batches of permits until the spring of 2013 to compensate for flights made in 2012. That still could leave room for a compromise over the next year.
The emissions rules were approved by the 27 member countries of the European Union in 2008 and were designed to make airlines speed up adoption of greener technologies at a time when air traffic, which represents about 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, is growing much faster than efficiency gains.
But it emerged on Thursday that the mounting international opposition had sown doubts at least two European countries about the wisdom of going forward with the system.
The Dutch state secretary for infrastructure and the environment, Joop Atsma, had become “very worried about the external resistance in other countries,” his spokeswoman, Karin van Rooijen, said Thursday.
Mr. Atsma “is not against the system,” she said. “But if other European countries think the situation is bad, he is considering supporting a postponement.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2e4d8a0738cf846279c137966d063d03
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.