Majority not big enough to be a "qualified majority" against the recent tar-sands-friendly proposal by the EU Commission - so the Fuel Quality Directive for up until 2020 is to be watered down and made ineffective against imports from the tar sands 

          Written by Henry Adams 3jan15, who has studied and campaigned against the tar sands industry for over 5 years

Europe’s transport sector emits 31% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions (within the EU), and this figure is rising (EU data). EU’s Fuel Quality Directive is thus important in its attempt to limit the carbon intensity of transport fuels by limiting import from such sources as the tar sands. The plenary vote in EU’s Parliament on 17th December 2014 culminated 8 years of truly knife-edge battle to get it implemented with an effective mechanism, and a thank you to those of you who emailed our MEPs to vote against the recent tar-sands-friendly proposal for the FQD’s mechanism, resulting from the added lobbying pressure for “free trade” of fossil fuels during the TTIP and CETA negotiations.

Unfortunately, though the MEPs voted by a majority against the tar-sands-friendly proposal, it was not big enough to reach the “qualified majority” necessary to stop the Commission’s proposal, demonstrating a democratic deficit here, as well as the impacts of TTIP and CETA against our ability to tackle climate change by democratic regulatory means. This gives the green light to the import of tar sands products from America until 2020, by which time the FQD will hopefully face a review (rather than be terminated as agreed by Barroso in response to US lobbying for the TTIP).

Conservative MEPs stated that differentiating fuel sources for their emissions would be too “burdensome” for the oil industry, and supported the ineffective proposal. If the Conservatives win the May election it would be disastrous for tackling climate change.

Here is my briefing for MEPs prior to the vote – summarizing its importance:

http://www.dragonfly1.plus.com/FQDtoMEPs.html

The present web-page is an expanded version of a brief article I submitted for the January 2015 newsletter for www.slacc.org.uk

The voting data

337 against the Commission's recent tar-sands-friendly diluted proposal, 12 votes larger than
325 for the diluted proposal
48   abstentions

376 votes were needed against the proposal to be a "qualified majority" i.e. large enough to reject the Commission's proposal.

LibDem’s MEP Catherine Bearder  (SE England) spoke up well against the diluted proposal.
This is in contrast to LibDem ministers in government - Norman Baker and Baroness Sue Kramer - who support the Tory Canadian government's claim that the previous proposed mechanism for the Fuel Quality Directive "discriminated" against the Alberta tar sands industry and was thus against "free trade" principles supported by the WTO and by "Free Trade Agreements" [such as the CETA - between Canada and the EU but yet to be ratified].

The future

The FQD will be terminated or updated in 2020 and we must push again for an effective version.
But if CETA and TTIP are ratified, signed up to and implemented before 2020 without substantial modification (or preferably scrapped), this will make the task of improving the FQD that much harder if TTIP (and/or CETA) result in the creation of an EU-US council for mutually controlling regulatory changes, with the oil industry having an early say (as the US trade rep wants on behalf of Big Oil). Thus we must stop TTIP and CETA.

On the plus side, 2014 has been good for anti-tar-sands activists in Canada and the US in a number of ways, as listed by 'The Dirt', and Obama has spoken out against the remaining un-built section of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Also, the recent big drop in global oil prices has much reduced the attractiveness of the tar sands for investors, as the tar sands on average needs around $80 dollars per barrel to break even, whereas global oil prices have dropped to around $65 per barrel and below.

Reaction to results by Transport & Environment: 'European Parliament adopts a weakened fuel quality law after 8 years of fierce lobbying by Canada and Big Oil': http://www.transportenvironment.org/press/european-parliament-adopts-weakened-fuel-quality-law-after-8-years-fierce-lobbying-canada-and 

More links to articles on this subject are available here:

http://www.dragonfly1.plus.com/#BLOG

(scroll up if you want to read background info on the tar sands and the FQD)

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 Earlier draft (for author's use before deleting it):

Thanks to all of you who emailed your MEPs before Christmas to urge them to vote against the EU Commission’s tar-sands-friendly proposal to water down the Fuel Quality Directive’s mechanism to reduce the carbon intensity of transport fuels. The MEPs voted by a majority against the tar-sands-friendly proposal, but it was not big enough to reach the “qualified majority” necessary to stop the dilution proposal. This is useful to know as it shows the democratic deficit in MEPs’ power to constrain the appointed Commission when the latter has been steered by pro-corporate lobbying. But it is also deeply disappointing that after so many years of battle with the oil lobbyists to try and implement effective legislation to reduce the expanding emissions of Europe’s transport sector, which is responsible for 31% of within-EU emissions, we have lost for now, and the Fuel Quality Directive is to be implemented as an ineffective sham that pretends that the life-cycle emissions of tar sands sourced fuel is no different from conventional-sourced fuel. The diluted proposal for the FQD resulted from pressure from Canada in parallel with CETA negotiations. This gives the green light to the import of tar sands products from America until 2020 when the FQD will hopefully face a review rather than be terminated as agreed by Barroso in response to US lobbying for the TTIP.