The meeting of Russian delegation headed by Deputy Minister of Transport, Valery Okulov, and the authorities of European Commission Climate Action Directorate-General and Mobility and Transport Directorate-General has taken place on January 26-27th, the press-service of the Ministry of Transport reports. AEX.ru

The question of including the civil aviation in the EU system of greenhouse gases emission trading in 2012 has been discussed during the meeting. Russian party believes that these measures force the airlines to buy emission quotes in order to perform flights to EU. This decision by EU has caused a wide resonance in the world all the way to suits in judicial instances. The actions of EU have been appraised as unilateral and illegal by most of the countries. According to V.Okulov, the effectiveness of market-based measures aimed at reducing the emission of civil aviation has not been verified, in fact, it is just a cover for additional tax levies. The question of elaboration of measures for reducing the greenhouse emission of civil aviation is in ICAO’s sphere, the Deputy Minister believes.

The parties have discussed possible ways for solving this problem during the meeting in Brussels, underlining their commitment to reducing the greenhouse gases emission of the civil aviation. According to consummated EU directive, its guidelines may be changed if ICAO will elaborate the global solution for reducing the emission of air transport, the Ministry noted.

Russian delegation has proposed stopping the confrontation and returning the negotiations on ICAO basis for elaborating a common solution in cooperation. At that the Russian party has expressed its willingness to take part in the process along with other leading aviation nations, the representative of the Ministry of Transport explained.

According to V. Okulov, Russian delegation has proposed finding a global solution instead of regional and unilateral one. The way Europe is trying to fight greenhouse gases emission of civil aviation is absolutely unacceptable for Russia.

«We hope that our European partners will take a decision, which will help speed up the corresponding processes in ICAO, instead of holding to this separate approach», - V. Okulov stated.

The Russian party has proposed setting a moratorium on “climate” EU directive, concerning civil aviation, until the making a decision by ICAO.