Strasbourg, 26/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - The report by Yannick Jadot (Greens, France), adopted by the European Parliament (EP) by 504 votes to 78, with 4 abstentions, calls on the EU to amend its trade policies to take greater account of their effect on climate. The Jadot report calls for discrimination of products according to their impact on the climate, a carbon balance for all trade policies and the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels.
In its resolution, the EP calls on the European Commission to relaunch discussions at the WTO on processes and methods of production, in other words, on the possibility of discriminating between goods in relation to their environmental footprint. It calls for reform of WTO anti-dumping rules to include the issue of a fair environmental price and prevent those countries which do not take environmental protection seriously from having a competitive advantage. The EP also calls for a “carbon balance” to be calculated for all trade policies and, in the event of a negative balance, for there to be an obligation that compensatory measures, in the form, for example, of technological cooperation, be taken.
Noting that tackling climate change is one factor in European competitiveness and that few sectors are particularly vulnerable to carbon leakage, Parliament calls on the Commission to better identify these sectors and to make use of instruments such as border adjustment measures in addition to auctioning CO2 quotas.
The EP calls on the Commission quickly to bring forward a timetable for phasing out EU subsidies for fossil fuels, in particular tax exemptions on air transport. Within the G20, the EU should take the lead on this issue. (E.H./transl.rt)