LONDON: The United States threw its weight behind the idea of imposing levies on aircraft for their carbon emissions on a regional basis when negotiations were being held to come up with an alternative to the European Union's unilateral scheme to charge airlines for the full duration of flights using EU airports, according to an official letter seen by Reuters.
The show of US support for a regional approach, given in a letter written in July 2013, comes as European lawmakers prepare to vote on Thursday on whether to bow to international pressure and continue to confine EU aircraft emission laws to domestic flights only.
In 2012 the European Union started charging all airlines for emissions for the full duration of their flights into and out of the bloc via its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) but the confined application of the ETS to domestic EU flights only after complaints from countries including the United States and China which said that it breached sovereignty rules.
The letter was subsequently sent in the run-up to negotiations at the UN's aviation trade body ICAO for a global agreement on curbing the rising output from aviation of heat-trapping gases blamed for causing climate change.
"The United States considers that the framework should urge States-groups of States implementing an MBM (market-based measure) to apply such MBM.
That portion of an international flight of an aircraft registered in a foreign state that takes off or lands in the implementing State-groups of States within the airspace of that State/groups of States," said the letter, which was sent by a senior US official to Roberto Kobeh as , president of the ICAO council.
The airspace approach was ultimately rejected in September, when the nearly 190 nations at ICAO agreed to design a global scheme by 2016 but rejected letting states or regions apply their own plans in the meantime.
EUROPE'S STRUGGLE:
Just weeks after the ICAO meeting, the European Commission revived its proposal, insisting Europe was within its rights to regulate aircraft emissions within its own airspace, which must be endorsed by member states and the bloc's parliament to become law.
But EU member states are against the plan, fearing it will ignite tensions with major trading partners and jeopardise reaching a global aviation emissions agreement by 2016.
The Parliament is more divided, with some members unwilling to weaken further a 2009 EU law agreed ahead of Thursday's binding vote.
Environmental campaigners say the US letter provides further evidence that fears the EU proposal will anger other major economies are unfounded and that the bloc's major trading partners accept Europe's right to regulate its own airspace.
"The clamour surrounding a 'looming trade war' is nothing but hyperbole," said Aoife O'Leary, of campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E), adding that the airspace proposal would only regulate three additional international carriers compared to 142 with transit flights covered under current rules.
She said that this and last week's decision by China to unblock orders to buy European-made Airbus planes, which had been cited as a potentially retaliatory measure for the emissions plan, had removed any further political or commercial excuses standing in the way of the proposal.
Last Wednesday, watched by visiting President Xi Jinping and his French counterpart Francois Hollande, Chinese officials in Paris unblocked orders for Airbus jets valued at more than $6 billion.
But dashed some European hopes by failing to expand purchases of a new design specially tailored for China's domestic market.
The US state department did not respond to a request on Friday to comment on the document nor on the EU proposal to regulate airline emissions within its airspace.
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