Brussels, 05/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - In order to comply with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the European Commission proposes that the Community system for the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions should be improved. In so doing, it hopes to give the Union a more practical and more precise system for assessing progress towards achieving its objective - an 8% reduction in emissions between 2008 and 2012. The main innovations proposed on Wednesday by Margot Wallström, Environment Commissioner, and approved by the College, concern the way in which Member States now carry out their obligation to monitor the level of emissions and to report to the Commission on their situation and their projected needs.
The Commission proposes to: 1) restrict the tasks of Member States by making it compulsory for them to only provide information that presents an interest at Community level; 2) modify the frequency of reports to be submitted by Member States: since the programmes for reducing emissions and national projections are not changed each year, a report should be submitted every two years, and no longer annually; 3) require fuller and more detailed information concerning the kind of projections made (policies and measures included in projections should be clearly identified, the methodologies and models used, the underlying hypotheses and the parameters taken into account should be described, etc.; and 5) widen monitoring to the six greenhouse gases covered by the Protocol, to emission permits and to registers established under the Protocol.
These new provisions respect the structure of the Kyoto Protocol and the guidelines of the UN framework convention on climate change which divide up the communication obligations into annual obligations and periodic obligations. Such a system should also provide more information on the forecast emissions at the EU and Member State levels and allow harmonisation of forecasts in the light of experience gained from the current system. The proposal aims to replace Decision 93/389/EC (amended by Decision 99/296/EC), which had set up a mechanism for monitoring CO2 emissions and emissions of other greenhouse gases.