Brussels, 16/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - Short-term reform of the ETS as it currently stands was rejected by MEPs on Tuesday 16 April in Strasbourg, but this no vote will not be definitive. A small majority (334 votes to 315, with 63 abstentions) rejected the current European Commission proposal to defer the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) timetable through a temporary freeze (backloading) of 900 million quotas on the carbon emission trading market and sent the proposal back to the Parliamentary environmental committee. It is, therefore, not an out and out rejection but a request for improvements, which the European Parliament supports. It thus followed the line advocated in a proposal by Eija-Riitta Korhola (EPP, Finland), the EPP group negotiator on this proposal, and supported by around 40 colleagues, much to the consternation of climate change activists and Matthias Groote (S&D, Germany), the chairman of the environment committee.
During the debate preceding the vote, a division appeared between supporters of urgent intervention to rectify the over-allocation of quotas and to help increase the price of carbon per tonne in an effort to help the ETS provide an incentive to investment in energy efficiency and clean technology and those opposed to any intervention on the market to regulate supply and demand that would involve additional costs for European industry and increased energy prices, which they deemed inopportune and counter-productive in this period of economic crisis.
Groote was convinced that they needed to maintain carbon prices per tonne at a sufficient level to prevent 27 different ways of taxing CO2 emissions and stated that “there was no agreement, which is off message when addressing all the different ETS actors. It is also a bad sign for European climate policy because there was no decision although we really needed one. Parliament has a bad position because we are not going to be able to increase revenue for tackling climate change. This is nothing to be pleased about because China will continue to move towards an ETS, as will other countries. This vote could have a disastrous effect”. He pointed out that it was the European Parliament itself, as part of the energy efficiency framework directive, that had requested the European Commission submit a proposal to immediately rectify the areas in which the ETS was dysfunctional and added that “we have lost time and credibility”.
Korhola, however, declared that she was delighted with the proposal's rejection, which she now considered was already dead and buried. She said that “thanks to the EPP Group we are going to avoid too high energy costs for consumers. This rejection is a good thing but there is not enough room for manoeuvre for a new compromise. In the current economic situation, artificial energy price increases are definitely a bad decision”.
Connie Hedegaard, the commissioner for climate action, was disappointed and expressed her regret but chose to see the glass as being half full rather than half empty. She also said that she was relieved that the immediate rejection of the text had not been supported and explained that Europe needed a robust carbon market and that the Commission remained convinced that backloading would help restore confidence in the ETS in the short term and provide them with the time in which to decide on more structural measures.
Environmental NGOs, such as CAN Europe and the WWF, think that MEPs have delivered a tough blow to protecting the climate and that this vote would continue to undermine investment security in low carbon technologies. Greenpeace sees this vote as a serious U-turn in the EU's climate policy and is now calling for carbon taxes to be introduced at a national level. (AN/transl.fl)