EU Aviation Policy

New Ground 68
Spring 2005

SERA, Sustainable aviation and EU leadership

On the 17th of March, SERA hosted a high level dinner discussion on sustainable aviation and EU leadership. The dinner brought together 20 key decision makers and opinion-formers from EU industry, NGOs and governments, including Ministers from the UK, Sweden, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic, and high level representatives from Germany, France and the European Commission. UK Aviation Minister the Rt. Hon. Charlotte Atkins, MP gave the opening speech. The agenda covered issues such as night flights, local air quality, and climate change.

SERA supports UK Government efforts to bring intra-EU flights within the EU emissions trading scheme. In the meantime, SERA believes the UK should take unilateral action by increasing Air Passenger Duty (APD) for long-haul flights, generally used by higher income groups. In addition, SERA is calling on Labour to put climate change at the heart of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on poverty reduction. We therefore welcome Franco-German proposals to ring fence aviation tax revenue to boost funding towards these goals.

Our view is that a third term Labour Government should use its EU Presidency to negotiate a short term climate target focused on the EU aviation sector. Longer term, we have the UK government's economy wide 60% emissions reduction target, which will effectively mean slowing down aviation's growth, unless the sector can find a radical technology breakthrough.

It is vital that we secure a credible target - namely to commit to reducing or offsetting EU aviation's CO2 equivalent emissions to 8% below 1990 levels by 2010. This would be in line with the environmental spirit of the Kyoto Protocol, and would recognise all departures from EU airports - not only by EU airlines and not only intra-EU flights. With such a target, EU emissions trading is a serious way to deal with aviation's climate change impact. Equally, without a credible target, aviation linked with EU emissions trading may amount to little more than "smoke and mirrors", underlining the case for interim tax increases.

The SERA EU sustainable aviation policy briefing is available on the SERA website.

Philip Douglas, SERA Vice-Chair