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A European Union plan to include airlines in a carbon dioxide emission trading system is inconsistent with international law and instead multilateral guidelines to fight climate change should be agreed, U.S. officials familiar with the situation have said. In a deal to be implemented in 2012, the E.U. agreed in principle last week that all flights to and from E.U. airports, including those coming from outside the 27-member bloc, will be part of a scheme to trade CO2 allowances. The scheme will initially force airlines to reduce emissions by 3% compared with an average emission of 2004-2006.
The accord still has to be formally ratified by the E.U. Parliament and the Council. The international civil aviation convention signed in Chicago in 1944 "does not allow this kind of action," one official said. "The fundamental concern is that the E.U. is proposing to apply the plan unilaterally," without the consent of the home countries of the airlines, another official said Wednesday.
The U.S. will seek an international agreement in the context of a 15-country group called to deal with climate change within the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, he said. In a similar case in the U.K. last May, the U.S. sent a letter to the U.K. government, outlining its formal view and expressing "deep" concerns. The U.K. treasury planned to introduce a new aviation tax levied per aircraft rather than a duty that's paid per passenger to ensure the industry gives a greater contribution to the climate change fight.
The 15-country group will meet in two weeks time and the plan is to come up with a range of measures that countries could use to reduce the airlines' impact on climate change, the official said. "We are willing to look at goals of some sort," he added.
The group should be able to make a decision in the second half of 2009, just ahead of a U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen, where countries will be seeking an agreement to continue on the lines of the Kyoto protocol, adopted in 1997.
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