MEPs capitulate over EU marine sulphur limits

Environment Daily 1858, 13/04/05

The European parliament has reached a compromise deal with EU governments on new ship fuel quality legislation that ditches its earlier attempts to introduce tougher controls on sulphur content. The agreement was hammered out last week and approved by MEPs at their Strasbourg plenary session on Wednesday.

Under the deal, all ships entering three EU sulphur dioxide emission control areas - the Baltic and North Seas and the English Channel - will have to burn fuel with a sulphur content lower than 1.5%. The current average is 2.5-3%. The tighter 1.5% limit also will apply to all ferries across the EU.

EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said the agreement meant "clean shipping really has the wind behind it". But disappointed campaigners at the European environment bureau said the new directive would cut air pollution from ships by only 10%. Emissions "could be reduced much further at low cost," they said.

The 1.5% limit for the three control areas was proposed by the European Commission in, and will now apply within 12 to 24 months of the new legislation entering force. But a first-reading parliamentary demand for the standard to be extended to all EU waters has been dropped.

Parliament's earlier demand to move to a 0.5% limit within a decade has also failed to make it into the law. Though the proposal was backed by the environment committee only last month, EU sources said the large centre-right EPP group was against, as were almost all member states.

Instead the European Commission is review the "merits of a possible 0.5% standard by 2008. The review could include economic incentives to achieve the shift, a Commission declaration accompanying the new directive states.

Follow-up: European parliament http://www.europarl.eu.int/,

press releases from European Commission http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/428