Greece will next month have to explain its poor record in measuring carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the United Nations compliance committee for the Kyoto Protocol, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.
“Our country is the only one (in the EU) to have been indicted to the UN’s compliance committee – this has very serious repercussions for Greece and for the EU,” Dimas said.
Earlier yesterday Environment and Public Works Minister Giorgos Souflias rebuffed strong criticism by Dimas, who had condemned Greece for potentially sabotaging the EU’s emissions trading scheme.
Souflias had stressed that the issue was “a closed case,” and appealed to the commissioner, who is Greek, “to be careful not to wrong our country.”
Souflias also rebuffed Dimas’s questioning of a forecast by Greek authorities regarding the rate by which CO2 emissions will drop by 2012. Dimas said the emissions would drop by around 6 percent, not 16.6 percent as Greek authorities have predicted. Souflias said Dimas’s forecast was “arbitrary” as he had focused on data from only the year 2005 and not for the period 2008-2012.
Dimas did not respond to Souflias’s remarks directly but insisted that Greece was way behind in efforts to curb global warming, compared to its EU counterparts. “Greece is the only country in the EU not to have convinced the UN that it has a credible system to measure CO2 emissions,” Dimas told Flash Radio. “This has to be done subject to UN specifications and the (Environment) ministry has assured me it will be done,” he added. A UN report published at the end of last month questioned the “viability and transparency” of the Greek system of measuring CO2 emissions