Europe's energy-guzzling core industries deserve special treatment over their carbon dioxide emissions to protect their competitiveness, EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said Friday.
"There is consensus everywhere that energy-intensive industries in the EU need special treatment," opined Verheugen, presenting the conclusions of an industrial-NGO working group on adapting industry to tackle climate change.
"They produce something that cannot be produced without emissions higher than in other industries. It makes no sense to jeopardise the competitiveness of these industries and force them to other parts of the world," he added.
In January, the European Commission will present a raft of legislative measures aimed at reducing European CO2 emission levels, in line with the bloc's commitment to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020.
The "special treatment" should apply to the aluminium, cement, paper pulp and base chemical industries and, perhaps, steel, the Commissioner told reporters in Brussels.
"The specific needs of energy-intensive industry must be taken into account … we had a meeting with (EU) competition ministers and (got) 100-percent agreement that energy intensive industries have their place in the European Union and we should not force them out."
However that is not to say that these core industries shouldn't make efforts to reduce their emissions, he stressed.
"Nobody is of the opinion they can continue with the emissions of today," he said.
Among the possible elements of such special treatment, Verheugen cited "global sectoral agreements" or arrangements within the emissions trading scheme in place in the EU since 1995.
