Mr. President: The main element of the Commission’s current proposals is the revision of the ETS system. You recognise the problem that you call “carbon leakage”, and I call “driving energy-intensive industries offshore”. And you have decided to give these industries free allowances to redress the balance.
But you have created your own Catch 22. If you give them enough allowances to stay competitive, you have no hope of achieving your emissions targets. But to achieve your emissions targets, you can’t give them enough allowances.
You face a stark choice between competitiveness and emissions targets: you cannot have both.
You have also created a structure which involves perpetual market intervention and distortion, and creates a field day for lobbyists and lawyers, as industries fight each other for an ever-decreasing pot of free allowances.
The proposal to offer a tiered structure for different industry sectors only exacerbates the problem. And the use of the top 10% as a standard implies that 90% of EU industries will be at a competitive disadvantage anyway.
At the same time you shift the bulk of the burden onto smaller businesses — the very SMEs which we constantly promise to help.
We face competition from China with massive cheap coal-fired generation, and from the USA where Donald Trump promises to make low-cost energy the driver of the economy.
A few years ago our new President Mr. Tajani said that our energy policies are creating “an industrial massacre in Europe”. Today’s proposals are the final coupe de grace.
Roger Helmer MEP 
The ETS system was created to economically force the reduction of the perceived problem, carbon dioxide. In turn it created its own problem of Industry moving offshore to where energy is cheaper. To counterbalance the high cost you then arrange subsidies, but who receives them and who bears the cost.. It is usually an open invitation to the scamsters ( witness the N.I. fiasco), thus anther problem arises.
One of these days the technically ignorant political class will discover it was nature performing its climate cycles due to solar activity.
Dear Roger, I suspect the EU has a plan for sourcing cheap electricity – a plan which only a lunatic bureaucracy like the EU could conceive.
Roger
You sway far to easiliy with the prevailing wind, you are willing to accept emission reductions targets even though you are not convinced that they are needed and those easy come, easy go attitudes are not what is needed. Fortunately what we needed just got elected president of the USA and he (and or his advisors) see the real problems and are working to fix them, Trump is a revalation.
Trump has begun to set in motion a defunding of the UN in many areas including climate related issues.
Trump is bringing reality back to foreign policy and he has already stated that China will not be allowed to utilise the bases on the islands it has created in the South China Sea. Do you remember the last time a western leader spoke to China in that way? What do you think China’s response was?
China said it was “highly unlikely” to change its territorial claims in the South China Sea. That is how you get the job done.
Thank God we are leaving this lunatic asylum, lets get fracking for our own cheap energy.
It will be final for some poor souls of Europe. Some are simply waiting to be murdered, raped and so on. Since when did anybody want to fight an enemy on their own territory? Human rights for others dictates that the human rights of the home state are severely reduced/negated…just suffer it and/or die. Trump declares protection of the US and its people…highly recommended!
Thank you Colin,
Clearly the Dutch Foreign Minister is accusing Wilders of creating the difficulties of which he and his govt’s policies are guilty. “The troubles we (Western govts) have had whilst we have been in power are because terrorists think you (Widers etc) have different ideas, and it causes trouble to make them think you would keep them out of our country.”