Europe is heading for a certain legal showdown with the USA over its plans to include foreign carriers flying to the 25 European Union member states in its emissions trading scheme.
US assistant secretary of transport Andrew Steinberg last week warned at a Brussels media briefing that European Commission proposals to extend the existing scheme to aviation breaches the 1947 Chicago Convention on international air travel, and would fail any legal challenge.
"These proposals, if they include international aviation, do not have much chance of standing an international legal challenge. The objective of reducing aviation's environmental footprint is not a point of big disagreement the question is how to do it," said Steinberg.
He said a challenge could be mounted independently by an airline, by a nation state through its own justice system on the grounds of a breach of a bilateral agreements, or through the International Civil Aviation Organisation's dispute resolution procedure.
Steinberg denied the USA was protecting its own airlines, where two-thirds of traffic is domestic, but pointed to the likely consequence of a large percentage of non-EU-bound traffic using European hubs - such as Asian carriers - electing to avoid Europe.
He said that the USA had "not categorically rejected anything. We just would think that if you want to do something that has never been tried before it should be done in a more studied, deliberate fashion."
US Federal Aviation Administration environment director Carl Burleson added that the USA is poised "to have guidance ready this fall, but on the basis of mutual consent". That guidance would centre on four operational areas, and will be presented to ICAO's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) in time for the organisation's next assembly in September 2007.
The EC, meanwhile, insists its plan - due to be presented on 20 December - is ICAO-compatible and that it was ICAO itself that endorsed the establishment of an integrated trading scheme. A senior EC source said the US official's comments were an example of "bullying scare tactics" designed to influence member states.
Source: Flight International
