Mandelson rejects call for EU eco-tax

Peter Mandelson has rejected calls, backed strongly by France, for a tax on goods imported into the EU from countries that refuse to tackle climate change. 

Speaking via a podcast on the EU’s trade policy website, the trade commissioner said that a so-called Kyoto tax would be “highly problematic under WTO rules and almost impossible to implement in practice”.

The idea of an eco-tax was first floated by an EU advisory body earlier this year, and received strong support from France, where environmental issues are rising rapidly up the political agenda in the run-up to next year’s presidential elections.

But Mandelson said that such a tax was “not good politics” and that dealing with climate change required international cooperation not “coercive policies”.

“How would we chose what goods to target? China has ratified Kyoto, but has no targets because of its developing country status.”

“The US has not ratified, but states like California have ambitious climate change policies.”

Mandelson urged the EU and its trading partners to see international trade as part of the solution to the threat of climate change and not simply a cause of it.

“Transport using carbon-based fuel is an inherent part of modern trade, and transport accounts for about a third of all carbon emissions,” he said.

“But it is also essential to establish that economic growth – and the trade that drives it – are not inherently at odds with sustainable climate policy.”

He said that economic growth allowed companies and governments to invest in new technology to tackle climate change.

“Governments will accept emissions targets, but reaching those targets will depend on the technologies available to their industries.”

“Maximising exchange and trade in green technology is what will ultimately drive emissions down…so an important hidden imperative behind Kyoto is the creation of an open global market in environmental technologies.”

He stressed that the EU – along with other countries such as China and India – already does good business in green technologies, and called for the WTO to take sustainable trade into account.

“WTO members should agree to go even further in key industries and technologies like clean power generation or renewable energy.”

“It should be possible to agree a zero per cent tariff deal for these key goods,” the commissioner said.

He added that he would be writing to WTO director general Pascal Lamy to ask for his support for such an agreement as part of the wider Doha round of trade negotiations.

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