WTO warns EU against tariffs on climate damaging imports
June 16, 2008
The Head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Pascal Lamy, has warned against the idea of unilaterally imposing EU tariffs on non-climate-friendly imports, in the event of the lack of an international accord on how to combat climate change.
Pascal Lamy was speaking at a European Parliament Climate Committee hearing on competitiveness, trade, financing and sustainable employment when he said that, compared with an international deal on climate change, tariffs would be "a distant second best".
Mr Lamy told the committee members that the climate change problem "will not be changed by one player" and that unilateral steps "would only divert trade patterns", without making a "significant change" on a global scale.
He said, "I would caution against a spaghetti bowl of measures that achieve neither trade nor environmental goals", and added that "a consensual international accord on climate change, one that embraces all major emitters" is, from the WTO perspective, the "optimal outcome".
In the event of the lack of a deal on a global climate change framework, measures discussed included a tax on exporters, although Mr Lamy indicated that the WTO would never support such a measure.
Other measures mentioned were a tax on importers of products from countries that do not subscribe to international climate change norms and even the possibility of imposing tariffs on non-climate-friendly imports, so as to prevent some countries from "free-riding".
However, Mr Lamy also warned against assuming that the WTO could offer an alternate route to a climate change agreement, should it prove impossible to reach one within the United Nations.
He said, "If people think that if it's difficult under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, then we can do it under the WTO, they are wrong."
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