The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)

My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Resource Management, the Local Environment and Environmental Science, Lord de Mauley, represented the UK at the EU Environment Council in Brussels on 17 December 2012. Paul Wheelhouse (Scottish Minister for Environment and Climate Change) and John Griffiths (Welsh Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development) also attended.

Lord de Mauley attended a ministerial lunch, during which the outcomes of the COP18 climate change negotiations which recently took place in Doha were discussed. Member states recognised that overall a good outcome had been achieved at COP18 but, moving forwards, there is still much work to be done.

In the afternoon, several climate change items were discussed under “Any Other Business”. The emissions trading scheme appeared on the agenda in the context of aviation, the recently published carbon market report and the Commission’s proposed measure for changing the auctioning profile for ETS allowances (known as “backloading”). With regards to backloading, Poland presented a paper, based on Commission data, which appeared to show the negative financial impact that backloading would have for certain member states. The Commission responded by questioning the validity of their analysis, and were supported by the Netherlands. A proposal to define the modalities for reaching the 2020 targets to reduce CO 2 emissions from cars and vans was also presented. Most member states who intervened supported the proposal’s ambition in terms of target levels, and most supported looking at longer-term targets post-2020. The presidency also presented information on proposals for accounting rules and action plans on greenhouse gas emissions and removals relating from activities related to land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). Finally, the Irish presented their priorities for the forthcoming Irish Presidency.

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