Today’s parliamentary debates on the Treaty start with climate change. There is a lot to fight here because the EU has a terribly ill-conceived framework for thinking about climate change and they have frighteningly worrying and damaging legislation to deal with it.
Oddly enough Article 174 (TFEU) of the Treaty relates to the EU’s environmental policy. According to Article 174, one of the objectives of the Union is to promote “measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems.” The Lisbon Treaty adds to this paragraph an express reference: “…in particular combating climate change.” The Lisbon Treaty recognises tackling climate change as a specific EU policy objective.
In fact, according to Article 174 (2) “Community policy on the environment shall aim at a high level of protection taking into account the diversity of situations in the various regions of the Community. It shall be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive action should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay.”
However, the current EU policy to fight climate change has had a massively detrimental impact on businesses. For instance, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme has been considered to be a failure because it has not yet led to cuts in carbon emissions within the EU. The emissions have not been reduced and industry is incurring massively high costs.
Also of importance is that the EU is imposing such costly measures that do not apply to the major EU competitors. It is likely that the inclusion of a reference to climate change will increase the scope for further measures to tackle the issue, regardless of the negative impact this is having on trade and business within Europe.
