By Ruth Marsden - 14th October 2010
EU industry group BusinessEurope has had its legitimacy questioned after a call by a group of top European companies, urging the EU to curb its carbon emissions, appeared to directly contradict an earlier statement from the business lobby group's director general.
Companies including Vodafone, Philips, Marks & Spencer and Nike on Wednesday called on the EU to increase its ambition to cut EU emissions to 30 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels.
The current EU target is to cut emissions by 20 per cent. However, the group of companies announced a joint business declaration where they argued that the increase to 30 per cent was needed to boost jobs and strengthen the EU's leadership and competitiveness in the global, low-carbon economy.
The declaration was led by the Climate Group, Cambridge programme for sustainability leadership and the WWF climate savers programme.
Climate Group international policy director, Mark Kember said, "As a global clean tech race gets under way, a critical mass of European businesses and governments are beginning to see clear economic benefits of advancing European ambition to cut emissions."
Jason Anderson, head of European climate change and energy policy, WWF, backed the agreement, saying "Greater ambition on climate policy will help drive systemic improvements in efficiency and capital investment that will benefit both society and forward thinking businesses like these".
Environmental group Greenpeace backed the call saying, "Smart companies want to see the EU lead the global race for green technology and break free of business as usual".
Joris de Blanken, Greenpeace EU climate policy director, said however that the move by the 29 leading companies questioned the legitimacy of EU industry lobby group BusinessEurope, which in a letter from its director general Philippe de Buck, earlier this week warned against any increase in EU climate targets.
"BusinessEurope claims to represent European companies, but is in fact the lobbying front group for a handful of oil and chemical industries holding back European competitiveness," said de Blanken in a statement on Thursday.
"Dirty lobbyists in Brussels present climate action as a choice between the environment and the economy, but they are denying people and businesses new opportunities for jobs, green tech and service."
The attack comes just days after BusinessEurope were nominated in the worst EU lobbying awards for their alleged aggressive lobbying, designed to block climate action.
In its nomination citation, supported by climate groups Climate Action Network Europe, Oxfam and World Development Movement, BusinessEurope was condemned for claiming to support the EU's climate ambitions, yet leading industry efforts to block any rise in CO2 reduction targets.
De Blanken told this website that, "Business Europe is strongly opposed to climate ambition, so when they are speaking about their views, whose behalf are they speaking on and how legitimate are their comments?"
"They are taking away the opportunities of a lot of the other companies and reducing healthy competitiveness."
BusinessEurope declined to comment on the accusations.
