EU Law Blog

Further to yesterday’s class:

Here is a link to the Commission’s climate change web pages.

There is a voluntary market for emissions trading in Chicago, the Chicago Climate Exchange, which is planning to allow its members to use EU emissions trading allowances on its market.

CO2 emissions in the UK (but not other greenhouse gas emissions) are rising.

Russia, one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases in the world, stands to make significant profits under the Kyoto emissions trading scheme because it had much higher levels of emissions in 1990 and the Treaty scheme requires states to move back to 1990 levels.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change published a Report in February 2006.

The World Wildlife Fund publsihes tips on what individuals can do to address climate change.

You are not responsible for any of the linked material for the purposes of the exam - I’m providing the links in case you are interested in these issues. However, the lecture yesterday does give another useful example of an EU policy area.

I also think that focusing on this material does illustrate another area where some EU policies conflict with others. Article 6 of the EC Treaty provides:

Environmental protection requirements must be integrated into the definition and implementation of the Community policies and activities referred to in Article 3, in particular with a view to promoting sustainable development.

However, increasing the amount of free trade in goods and increasing the movement of persons around the EU (workers and people travelling to benefit from tourism-related services) has implications for the environment. Could a Member State validly set up a policy of encouraging people to buy local produce and justify the policy on environmental grounds (cf. Buy Irish, Austrian Trucks case)?

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As I announced this morning, the week after next we will focus on EU environmental law. On Thursday 6 April we will move to Room 352 to hear from Margot Wallstrom, a Vice President of the EU Commission.

On Tuesday April 4 we will meet in our normal room and hear from Tomas Grönberg on the subject of the EU’s Climate Change Policy. Before the class please could you listen to this interview of Tim Flannery, an Australian paleontologist by Terry Gross (the audio link is at the top of the page).

Tomas Grönberg (B.A. with honors in Russian and Russian and Eastern European Studies, Grinnell College, 1982; Master of Arts in International Relations, Yale University, 1985) is EU Fellow for the academic year 2005/06 at the University of Miami European Union Center. A Swedish national, he represents the European Commission in Brussels, where he has been an administrator on environmental issues since 1996. Most recently he has worked as a political advisor (“Member of Cabinet’) to the European Commissioner for Environment with a particular responsibility for the preparation of new legislation on chemicals and for relations with the European Parliament. He was active in the “Yes to Europe” campaign before the Swedish referendum on whether to join the EU in 1995 and prior to that he was political advisor to the Swedish Minister for Culture and Immigration Affairs. He started off his professional career as Program Specialist at the U.S. Information Service at the American Embassy in Stockholm.

It’s not required for the classes or for the exam, but if you are interested in exploring EU environmental policy you can find some information on the Commission’s environment web pages (information on climate change is here).

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The Jego Quere case illustrates (among other things) the EU’s concern for the conservation of fisheries. France has for a long time (since 1991) not been complying with EU fisheries rules (in particular in relation to ensuring that undersized hake are not sold (cf. Jego Quere, incidentally a firm established in France)) and the Commission just issued a decision imposing a fine on France in respect of its default. The ECJ ruled last year that France should pay a fine and that if it failed to bring its laws into line it would be required to pay an additional fine every 6 months. It is this second six-monthly fine that the Commission has decided must be paid. The Commission explains:

The task of the European Commission was clear: it had to assess whether or not, at the end of the first six-monthly period following the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling of July 2005, France had fully complied with all the obligations under this ruling. The Commission carried out a thorough and rigorous evaluation of the situation regarding the two failings and found that they had not been rectified at that stage. The result is that France will have to pay the financial penalty set by the Court

France apparently plans to challenge the decision.

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