EU on verge of emissions trading deal

Date: 13/05/1999

By Renée Cordes

EU GOVERNMENTS have reached provisional agreement on a strategy for meeting the Union's climate change commitments.

The accord was due to be approved by EU ambassadors today (12 May), avoiding the need for an emergency meeting of environment ministers which had been planned for next week.

The compromise deal brokered by the German presidency would require the EU's 15 member states to achieve at least 50% of the greenhouse gas emission cuts agreed at Kyoto in 1997 through action at home - an approach championed by Acting Environment Commiss-ioner Ritt Bjerregaard.

The breakthrough came when opposition from the Netherlands and Sweden was overcome by granting them greater leeway to trade emissions. Both had argued they had already made significant reductions in emissions at home before Kyoto and that these should be taken into account.

Commission officials said the deal would send a strong signal to the international community that the EU was capable of mapping out a cohesive strategy for combating climate change. Bjerregaard is due to come forward with proposals to put flesh on the bones of that strategy at a meeting with fellow European Commissioners next Wednesday (19 May).

" It will certainly strengthen the EU negotiating position," said one.

Under the terms of the Kyoto agreement, signatories will be allowed to meet a portion of their emission reduction targets by buying 'credits' from other countries which have undershot their ceilings.

World leaders meeting in Buenos Aires last autumn gave themselves until next year to decide to what extent such machanisms could be used.