Photo: 350.org/flickr

This Wednesday the European Union (EU) Parliament will again vote on the proposed EU Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), a modest climate measure to reduce emissions from transport fuel by six per cent by 2020.

This is the latest in what has become a long, drawn-out, multi-year saga for what should be a straightforward decision.

And it’s entirely Canada’s fault.

OK, perhaps that’s a slight overstatement.

It’s entirely the fault of multi-million dollar lobbying and public relations campaign on behalf of the Canadian and Albertan governments and industry. The goal is to stop the FQD from assigning specific carbon intensity to tar sands crude. In other words, to stop a tar sands value recognizing it as a particularly carbon-polluting crude to produce.  

Not only could this be a model for other countries and jurisdictions to follow in discouraging the use of climate polluting fuels like tar sands, it could present a barrier to EU tar sands imports.

Shipments of tar sands crude have already started to reach European shores, and the EU is faced with a potential flood of tar sands crude if TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines are approved. Both would facilitate exports from the Gulf of Mexico, Saint John New Brunswick and potentially Cacouna, Quebec.

This lobbying and PR campaign is well documented. “We are not opposed to the goal of the fuel quality directive. However, we remain strongly opposed to Canadian oilsands crude being unfairly discriminated against. Canada wants to ensure that any directive or policy that emerges in regard to the fuel quality directive is fair,” stated (then) Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver.

Right… because recognizing something affirmed by the study commissioned by the EU by a Stanford University professor alongside numerous other credible (independent) scientific studies, amounts to discrimination.

Full-page ads. Wining and dining events. Special envoys. Glossy pamphlets.

Over 110 lobbying events were organized by Canadians on tar sands and the FQD between Sept 2009 and 2011.

And it doesn’t end there.

The Canadian government has gone so far as to threaten the EU with World Trade Organization action as well as using bilateral trade negotiations towards the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) to put pressure on the EU to remove all disincentives to imports of tar sands oil.

With this level of pressure, it was not a shock to learn the European Commission removed direct references to the tar sands from the FQD (instead demanding refiners report an average emissions intensity for oil they process) this past October.

But that didn’t end the debate. This decision was rejected by members of the Environment Committee, highlighting MEP’s support for legislation that doesn’t cave to this lobbying pressure and actually does what it sets out to do — discourage the use of high-carbon fuels in order to reduce pollution from the transportation section.

This move forced the EU FQD for vote before the European Parliament again, expected this Wednesday.   

It’s unclear to us what the outcome will be.

Of course, we condemn this lobbying effort and support a strong EU FQD. We have for years. Our interventions have included releasing a legal opinion on CETA and the FQD; issuing an open letter endorsed by key civil society organizations calling on the Harper government to stop its lobbying; sending a letter to all Members of the European Parliament urging support for the FQD; supporting newspaper ads in the U.K., Netherlands and France backing the FQD; lobbying EU embassies in Ottawa; and meeting with government representatives in Paris, The Hague, London and Berlin.

Whatever the outcome, we have a responsibility to expose, and ultimately hold the Harper government accountable for its shameful role in this regretful saga.

Photo: 350.org/flickr