Part II - Regional Aviation Issues

Summary

This chapter aims to present the EU perspective on the controversial issue of carbon emission trading and aviation. The article analyses how the EU advanced to the concrete implementation of emissions trading in the aviation sector. It analyses why the EU first proposed and then introduced GHG emissions trading while at the same time seeking multilateral solutions to the issue of climate change contributions from the aviation sector. It highlights the technical issues at stake, the global resistance to what was perceived as a unilateral act by the EU, and how the fact that the EU had introduced the system influenced the 2016 ICAO climate decision to adopt the CORSIA carbon offsets scheme. The article documents how the EU system eventually influenced the global debate and the global compromise that arguably respected the most important sustainable development principles. It reviews ongoing EU policy respecting sustainable development and ends with an outlook on the unlikely scenario that the new ICAO mechanism could fail, in which case the EU’s original scheme could be resurrected under EU law.