ROMANIA: Fighting for the ‘Right’ to More Emissions

By Claudia Ciobanu Reprint | | Print |

Claudia Ciobanu

BUCHAREST, Jan 15 2008 (IPS) - Following the example of seven other countries from Central and Eastern Europe that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004, Romania and Bulgaria, the newest members, have sued the European Commission (EC) for lowering their national caps for carbon dioxide emissions.

Echoing arguments used by the other states, the Romanian government claims that the difference between the proposed national plan for allocation of emissions for 2008-2012 and the cap allowed by the EC is “discriminatory” and will stifle development of industry.

The caps are a part of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, aimed at reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Europe by at least 20 percent until 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

While the Commission reduced the proposed caps for 2008-2012 for most European states – with the exception of France, Britain, Denmark and Slovenia – some of the most severe decreases were applied to countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Latvia and Estonia, for example, will only be permitted to produce half of the emissions they declared necessary.

Romania had asked for an allowance of 95.7 million tonnes of CO2, but the EC only approved 75.9 million tonnes, a reduction of 20 percent. For Bulgaria, the cap was limited by 37 percent, from 67.6 to 42.3 million tonnes.

Romania and Bulgaria both filed complaints against the Commission with the European Court of First Instance at the end of December. A decision from the court could take a year to come. Until then, the countries have to adhere to the Commission’s standards.

From the countries entering the EU in the previous enlargement wave, similar actions were taken during the first months of 2007 by Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

While the post-socialist countries insist the Commission has been more severe with them than with older member states, Jan Haverkamp, energy expert for Central and Eastern Europe with Greenpeace, says the EC has used the same basic criteria for all the countries.

“However, many countries – including Romania – came with proposals that were heavily inflated because they feared facing cuts,” Haverkamp told IPS. “The result is that they do face cuts; there is little to be surprised about.”

Countries in Central and Eastern Europe further argue that, as developing economies, they should not be expected to sacrifice growth at the expense of protecting the environment. Iulian Chifu, director of the Centre for Conflict Prevention and Early Warning in Bucharest, says that post-socialist countries, who are currently re-developing their industries, should not be treated with the same exigency as industrial giants.

Even the Romanian minister for the environment, Attila Korody, criticised the EC decision. “If the norms imposed by the Commission are respected, the Romanian industry would suffer insurmountable costs,” he declared.

Iulian Iancu, president of the Commission for Industry and Services in the Romanian Parliament, warned that in these conditions electricity prices for consumers could increase 5-6 percent in the course of 2008, reflecting increases in costs of production.

“But the country has ample possibilities to grow while also lowering its CO2 emissions,” counters Jan Haverkamp. “The electricity sector has a lot of possibilities to improve its efficiency by upgrades, development of centralised (co-generation) capacity and renewable energy sources.”

However, instead of being focused on renewable energy, Haverkamp told IPS, “the Romanian policy energy concentrates on more generation capacity in the form of coal and nuclear energy – siphoning away important investment capital from the areas that could really make a difference.”

One of the main reasons why countries in Central and Eastern Europe protest against the EC caps is that they had placed high hopes on the income they could derive from selling unused carbon credits, within the framework of CO2 emissions trade set up under the Kyoto Protocol.

Many of the post-socialist countries, whose industries collapsed in the early 1990s, still have relatively low emission rates. Taking advantage of this, Japan signed an agreement with Hungary in December 2007 to buy the Central European country’s surplus allowances for emissions. The government in Tokyo is conducting similar negotiations with Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine.

Iulian Chifu told IPS that the reduction imposed by the Commission “can be accounted for by the desire to block the sources of income derived from selling the emissions quota.”

The complaints for losing such money coming from the Central and Eastern European countries hint that they may have indeed intentionally requested caps larger than necessary, which they could later capitalise on.

Governments and businesses are “looking at CO2 trading as a way to make an easy buck,” Jan Haverkamp from Greenpeace told IPS. “But CO2 emissions trading is an instrument to reduce these emissions and to reach the ambitious, but scientifically speaking still quite moderate environmental goals that the EU has set for itself.”