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The EU's attempts to get tough with the International Maritime Organization could be torpedoed by some of its landlocked members.
The European Commission has been threatening for years to get tough with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) if it fails to take action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from shipping.
The screws were tightened this week when Siim Kallas, the European commissioner for transport, unveiled the EU's transport policy for the next decade. If the IMO – a notoriously cumbersome intergovernmental body – fails to act by the end of 2011, then the EU will forge ahead with its own policy.
But the EU's ‘get-tough' strategy could prove as cumbersome as the IMO itself. Five EU member states have still to ratify the IMO Convention, and are consequently ineligible to vote in crucial negotiations this June aimed at improving the energy efficiency of ship design. The European Commission is hoping the proposal will be approved, to maintain momentum for a global emissions trading scheme for shipping – but in these knife-edge talks, every vote will count. This is why today's (31 March) meeting of transport ministers in Brussels will feature an urgent call from Kallas for laggard member states to ratify the IMO Convention.
As ever with EU etiquette, the commissioner will not name names. But European Voice is not bound by this rule. The five missing countries are Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, and – just to demonstrate that lacking a coastline is not necessarily the cause of indifference – Malta
Story at:
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/a-policy-that-s-all-at-sea-/70714.aspx
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