Return to court considered

  • 2011-05-04
  • From wire reports

TALLINN - The Estonian government may go to court against the European Commission regarding the government’s pollution quota distribution plan that the European Commission rejected last week, reports Postimees. The European Commission announced last Friday that it rejected the Estonian government’s pollution quota distribution plan, which creates a difficult situation for Estonian industry.

Estonia already did this successfully once. The EU first level court declared Estonia the winner in the issue in September 2009. The government then submitted a new pollution quota distribution plan proposal before the European Commission announced its rejection.

Estonia asked 14.3 million tons of pollution quotas a year for 2008–2012 from the European Commission. It has been said earlier that the Commission’s climate officials would allow Estonia to have 12.7 million tons of quota a year, while Estonia’s actual CO2 emissions last year were around 14 million tons. The oil shale industry is the main polluter.
It wasn’t yet clear last week if Estonia will embark on the court path again or will try to achieve a compromise with the Climate Chief Directorate. “We will analyze the decision of the Commission and then will go to the government to choose the most reasonable strategy and tactics,” said Environment Minister Keit Pentus. “The important thing is to get a reasonable and quick solution to the topic.”

The Commission said that there were several reasons for rejecting the plan, but the main one was that the total volume of quota that Estonia intended to allocate to companies during that period was too large, reported Aripaev Online.