Spanish Economy Minister Says Harsh EU Carbon Tax Plans Would Outsource Pollution

Spanish Economy Minister Says Harsh EU Carbon Tax Plans Would Outsource Pollution

Spanish Economy and Enterprise Minister Nadia Calvino said on Monday that the European Union's strict carbon border tax plan, which aims to make carbon use more expensive and help the economies transition to zero carbon emissions, can lead to businesses relocating their production to cheaper sites and thus spread pollution

MADRID (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th December, 2019) Spanish Economy and Enterprise Minister Nadia Calvino said on Monday that the European Union's strict carbon border tax plan, which aims to make carbon use more expensive and help the economies transition to zero carbon emissions, can lead to businesses relocating their production to cheaper sites and thus spread pollution.

In October, then President-elect of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the European Green Deal, the idea of which was to boost EU energy transition toward a zero-carbon economy in a manner that would not hurt any other neighboring country. As part of the deal, the Commission started working on a carbon border levy on polluting foreign firms.

"Carbon pricing, of course, is a key issue, I have seen a lot of focus in this. This is not easy at all and I don't think this in itself is going to be a magical solution," Calvino at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid.

The minister added that the transition to a low-carbon economy has to be carried out on a global level.

"We need to ensure that we don't have carbon leakage, that we do not establish very high standards, for example in the EU, meaning that dirty production is going somewhere else in the world. And that's why we very strongly support working on WTO compliance, CO2 border adjustment mechanisms to ensure that this global challenge is tackled at the global level," Calvino stated.

According to the Spanish economy minister, the so-called Article 6 for carbon markets and other forms of international cooperation that outlines rules for the new carbon trade system, remains a stumbling block on the way for the Paris climate deal to become fully operational.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 with the ambitious aim to bring all nations together under the common cause of combating climate change. Its most well-known premise is to try to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and to ideally pursue an even lower limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The treaty has no compliance mechanism.