The Minister for the Environment of France

Ms Dominique Voynet

The Minister for Energy and Environment of Denmark

Mr Svend Auken

cc. EU Heads of Delegations - Climate Change

Concerning: Best Practices Workshop in Copenhagen (April 2000)

Dear Ms Voynet, Brussels, 04 May 2000

Dear Mr Auken,

On behalf of Climate Action Network Europe (CNE) we would like to thank you for hosting the recent UNFCCC workshop on best practices in Copenhagen. We are very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this very useful exercise.

We consider that your efforts in organising and hosting this workshop and your personal presence in particular, were vital to re-emphasise the importance of policies and measures and domestic action in the run-up to COP 6.

CNE agrees with your analysis that domestic policies and measures have a key role to play in the international climate change regime and that they are indispensable for achieving the ultimate objective of the Convention and the Protocol. We were therefore disappointed to see that the umbrella group countries undermined once again the process and importance of co-ordinated policies and measures in the context of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a continuation of the views taken prior to COP 3 and we regard this practice as rather discouraging and destructive.

CNE is glad to see that some of the EU Member States - France and Denmark in particular - have tried to counter these views. However, we were surprised to see how little internal co-ordination had obviously taken place prior to the Copenhagen workshop itself. There was no apparent common EU position on the benefits and substance of the best practice workshop, nor was there a common understanding regarding the future of the process within the UNFCCC framework. We were disappointed to see that the EU failed to position itself with a clear demand for ‘next steps’ towards the end of the workshop. The interventions mentioned above, however constructive, were not sufficiently co-ordinated to result in a written comment to be incorporated in the final report of the workshop on behalf of the EU. The EU also failed to systematically counter arguments put forward by umbrella group representatives such as the US and Canada aimed at degrading the process to a more information sharing exercise. The necessity of a cap on the use of the flexibility mechanisms and the resulting indispensability of domestic action was also not addressed.

In Copenhagen, the NGOs have made it clear that the best practice discussion should not only serve as an information sharing platform, but that Article 2 of the Kyoto Protocol clearly obliges the Parties to enhance the effectiveness of their domestic action and to co-operate and co-ordinate measures to that effect. We therefore supported some of the ideas put forward by EU delegates. However, we are concerned that the focus on language and semantics of ‘best practices’ vs. ‘policies and measures’ may serve umbrella group countries and other laggards in hampering progress and we call on the EU not to get caught up in such discussions.

In view of the above, we would like to draw your attention to some steps that are, in our view, necessary to improve and strengthen the process in the future.

1. CNE concedes that an evaluation of existing policies and measures should be carried out by the Secretariat by June 2001, aimed at assessing their environmental effectiveness, their transferability and their potential for co-ordination. This is in our view also necessary in order to facilitate the demonstration of real progress by 2005.

2. We urge the EU to send a clear political message to and from COP 6 in favour of urgent implementation of co-ordination of policies and measures, especially since countries have to demonstrate progress by 2005 which cannot solely rely on greenhouse gas inventories.

3. We support the proposal to convene sectoral workshops with a view to identify specific measures and instruments which should enhance the transparency, highlight the actual savings achievable and elaborate on how co-ordination of policies and measures could be carried out in practice in these specific areas.

We have welcomed the national Kyoto programmes recently presented by France, Denmark and the UK because they show that the individual burden sharing targets could be achieved only through EU and national domestic measures. We call on others to follow these examples and to present their abatement strategy to the public.

In conclusions, we would appreciate if you could set out for us what future action you intend to take to successfully drive the process forward. In order for us to provide some input for the months to come it would be important to know whether the issue of co-ordinated policies and measures be discussed at a Council meeting prior to COP 6 so that EU Ministers can form a common position for COP 6. CNE believes that the EU should make it clear to its partners in the UNFCCC process that it is the leading partner when it comes to domestic action.

Sincerely yours,

Karla Schoeters

Director CNE