On Thursday, 29 October, the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) reiterated its wish to see the maritime sector contribute more to climate efforts during a debate with European Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean.
“It is rather embarrassing that this sector has not taken on its responsibility to contribute to our common objective and efforts to combat climate change”, declared Jytte Guteland (S&D, Sweden), for instance.
As Parliament’s rapporteur on the proposal to amend the regulation on the monitoring, reporting and verification of CO2 emissions from maritime transport (‘MRV’ regulation), Jutta Paulus (Greens/EFA, Germany) excoriated the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) working group’s recent proposals on the subject (see EUROPE 12589/20).
In her opinion, these proposals demonstrate that the IMO has no intention of actually reducing emissions from ships. She thinks that the EU should, therefore, demonstrate leadership by taking ambitious measures at the EU level. This opinion was also expressed by Mick Wallace (GUE/NGL, Ireland).
In response to their questions, Mrs Vălean stated that the EU, while serving as an example, must continue to work with the IMO, since maritime transport is a global sector.
However, she does not expect major progress at the global level in the next 6 to 12 months: the next meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) is to be held via videoconference from 16 November to 20 November.
Even though the Parliament recently voted in favour of a target to improve the carbon intensity of ships by 40% by 2030 (see EUROPE 12560/7), the European institution is preparing an own-initiative report that will incite the European Commission to take action so as to make maritime transport cleaner and more efficient (see EUROPE 12553/8).
Nonetheless, the majority of MEPs welcomed the European Commission’s willingness to include maritime sector emissions in the ETS, the system for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)