Dr. Peter Liese, MEP It was high time that the European
Commission presented a legislative proposal to address the
greenhouse gas emissions of aviation, which have doubled since
1990. Even though the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)
has been subject to enormous criticism because of the bad design
of the EU scheme, the principle of the ETS is good. But it has
to be changed to be more efficient and to be fairer. The first
positive step was taken by the European Commission when it
proposed that for the aviation sector, allowances will not be
distributed by the member states according to opaque and unfair
criteria, but by a European harmonised allocation method. It
means that unlike companies from steel, lime, cement and other
sectors, an aviation company will be subject to the same
criteria in all 27 member states. It is also a big advantage
that the Commission no longer proposed to allocate certificates
according to historical emissions, but by benchmark and
auctioning. But the Commission proposal has a