On Friday 4 February, the 27 EU Member States, together with 15 other countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Morocco, signed the ‘Toulouse Declaration’ along with several dozen organisations and companies from the aviation sector.
The text, signed under the aegis of the French Presidency of the EU Council on the sidelines of the Aviation Summit in Toulouse on 3 and 4 February, calls on countries around the world - and the aviation industry - to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
The ‘Toulouse Declaration’ comes ahead of the 41st General Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in September. The stated aim of this non-binding text will therefore be to push ICAO member states - of which there are 193 - to “adopt an ambitious long-term goal for international aviation”, the document states.
With this declaration, the signatory countries also hope to encourage other countries, such as Russia and China, to review their carbon neutrality targets for the aviation sector, which have so far been set for 2060.
To achieve these goals, EU Member States are partly relying on some of the proposals in the ‘Fit for 55’ package (see EUROPE 12764/10) presented by the European Commission on 14 July 2021, such as the introduction of alternative fuels for aircraft (‘ReFuelEU Aviation’) (see EUROPE 12881/10).
As a reminder, the European Commission’s proposal on this matter provides for the gradual incorporation of a share of sustainable alternative fuels (SAF) in the fuels used by aircraft, setting the thresholds at 2% in 2025, 6% in 2030, 20% in 2035, 32% in 2040, 38% in 2045 and 63% in 2050.
See the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/77 (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)