By Emily Smith - 29th April 2004
Europe’s ten new members have until Saturday to get their plans to fight climate change to Brussels.
The bets are on to see whether they will manage something better than last month’s shoddy performance from the current member states, when ten out of fifteen missed their 'emissions trading' deadline altogether.
Slovenia is currently top of the class, having handed its homework in early, whilst Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are on track for a gold star, with draft plans already on commission desks.
Nonetheless many of the new countries will have their work cut out to clean up the legacy of heavy industry-friendly communist rule.
Eight of the ten have had to be given extra time to sort out air pollution from large combustion plants.
Latvia and Slovenia are again the greenest in this respect, with no deadline extension needed.
Commission environment chief Margot Wallström said this month that the acceding countries were “really interested” in the emissions trading scheme, and that as a result “I don’t expect this to be a problem for the new member states”.
“I hope that all of them will be able to deliver.”
The current member states cannot expect such glowing reports.
The UK government was expected to hand its proposal in on Friday – a month late.
Britain was one of the first to send a draft to Brussels, but industry at the time complained that this was too environmentally-friendly.
Greens fear that as a result it may have been dramatically altered, but the contents of the plan will not be made public for another week.
Portugal, Italy and Belgium have already sent their drafts to the commission.
There is so far no sign of anything from France, Spain or Greece.
Under the emissions trading scheme companies can buy and sell CO2 quotas from each other – thereby ensuring that ‘greener’ companies benefit financially from selling their excess allowances and the overall level of emissions does not go up.
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