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Published on May 31st, 2017 | by Joshua S Hill

May 31st, 2017 by Joshua S Hill

Leaked documents obtained by GreenpeacesEnergydesk reveal that the UK Government lobbied the European Union to weaken its own energy regulations on the very same day that UK Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, the countrys Brexit out of the EU.

According to the leaked documents obtained byEnergydesk, UK Ministers, part of the British delegation that is formally part of the Department for Exiting the EU, attempted to weaken rules and regulations set out by the EU for energy efficiency and renewable energy governance. Further problematic is that the head of the delegation is Secretary of State David Davis, a long-time climate skeptic with a long and vociferous record of opposing renewable energy and voting against UK climate policy. That Davis is so obviously moving to mitigate the effect of the EU regulations regulations, mind you, that dont even come into effect until after Britain will have left the EU raises concerns that the UK will not carry strict and enforceable climate and energy rules into its own laws.

Specifically, the UK provided a series of amendments it recommends be made to EU regulations that only serve to reduce key renewable energy and energy efficiency targets proposed by the European Commission, make them non-binding and give Member States a lot more leeway to wiggle, or even scrap them altogether (in some cases).

This smells of obstructionism, Jonathan Gaventa, director of environmental think-tank E3G, told Energydesk. The UK is pissing off countries it needs as allies.

The government is trying to lock the rest of the EU into weaker energy policies, just as we are leaving, added Hannah Martin, Greenpeace UKs Head of energy.

The message ministers seem to be sending is that Brexit could trigger a race to the bottom and be used ascover for getting rid of key environmental safeguards. Cutting energy waste and boosting some of the cheapest power sources like wind and solar is crucial to keep bills under control and slash carbon emissions. The UK public, including most Conservative voters, dont want a dirty Brexit. Theresa May should resist any attempts to hamper Britains progress towards a clean, affordable energy future and its promise of lasting jobs and economic growth.

The leaked documents (which can be found here) are essentially annotated EU regulations, with notes from the UK delegation to water down the efficacy of the regulations. Reading through all the documents sees repeated attempts to simply castrate the laws to make them more palatable to the UK, a country which has already shown its growing lack of concern about strong and binding targets.

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Tags: Department for Exiting the EU, EnergyDesk, EU, European Commission, European Union, Greenpeace Energydesk, Greenpeace's Energydesk, Prime Minister Theresa May, Secretary of State David Davis, Theresa May, UK Prime Minister, UK Prime Minister Theresa May

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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UK Lobbied European Union To Weaken Climate Rules - CleanTechnica

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The international organisation, made up of members from 35 countries, said there should be no stumbling blocks to business continuing as normal after the UKs divorce.

And it warns that if the EU shuts out Britain from its business dealings, it risks starving itself of crucial business.

The OECD said: Erecting new barriers to financial services in the post-Brexit environment will not be in the collective interest of the global economy, where London plays such a key role in international banking, bonds and foreign exchange.

For OECD countries, international obligations in the form of the OECD Codes of Liberalisation should present no legal barriers to operating in the collective interest in the post-Brexit environment.

In its annual business and finance outlook, the OECD said that it had taken the City decades to build up its financial expertise and that could not be transferred to another European destination.

It added: Unless UK and EU financial services regimes diverge significantly after Brexit, it can arguably be expected that the United Kingdom would benefit from the sort of selective recognition arrangements provided for by the Codes.

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The converse - recognition of EU financial service providers by the UK authorities as meeting UK standards - is also to be expected, even though the material significance of this may be smaller.

Prime Minister Theresa May is set to hammer out the fine print of the UKs exit from the EU in the coming months - if she wins the General Election on June 8.

One of the issues that keeps cropping up is its access to the EUs single market.

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There is no concrete decision as yet.

After Brexit, the UK will need to renegotiate at least 759 treaties. It's thought that the UK stands to lose much more than the EU after its exit.

There are even fears that London may not survive as a financial centre post-Brexit.

Many international firms chose London as their headquarters to get access to the rest of Europe, so, it's not known if they will change location.

London will stiff face competition from the rest of Europe which will attempt to poach business from the finance hub after Brexit.

More here:
'Ample room' European Union can trade FREELY with UK after Brexit, OECD says - Express.co.uk

The United Nations has already passive-aggressively expressed its frustration with reports that President Trump has decided to back out of the Paris climate agreement, but European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker did not bother to tip-toe around the topic. On Wednesday, Juncker responded to the news by firmly saying, "That's not how it works."

"The Americans can't just leave the climate protection agreement," Juncker said. "Mr. Trump believes that because he doesn't get close enough to the dossiers to fully understand them. It would take three to four years after the agreement came into force in November 2016 to leave the agreement. So this notion, 'I am Trump, I am American, America First, and I'm going to get out of it' that won't happen."

Former President Barack Obama signed the deal in 2015. All but two countries in the world, Nicaragua and Syria, support the agreement. Axios reports that the administration is still "deciding on whether to initiate a full, formal withdrawal which could take three years or exit the underlying United Nations climate change treaty, which would be faster but more extreme."

Juncker added that "we tried to explain that to Mr. Trump in [Taormina, Sicily, where the G7 summit was held last week] in clear German sentences. It seems our attempt failed, but the law is the law and it must be obeyed. Not everything which is law and not everything in international agreements is fake news, and we have to comply with it."

Read Juncker's scathing full statement here. Jeva Lange

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European Union president flays Trump over reported decision to back out of Paris climate deal - The Week Magazine

After a tumultuous week hosting U.S. President Donald Trump, European leaders will look to fare better when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visits Brussels on Thursday.

The two-day summit presents an opportunity for China to demonstrate its leadership on global issues from free trade to climate change at a time when the U.S. is turning inward. Yet European Union officials remain skeptical that China will follow through on President Xi Jinpings commitment to global trade expressed in Davos in January, and the two economic powers remain mired in long-standing tussles over issues such as market access and selling goods below cost.

EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will attend the summit, where China will be looking for progress on the EUs proposal to begin recognizing it as a market economy -- a status that makes it more difficult to impose anti-dumping measures on its exports.The two sides will also seek to work on a stalled investment deal thats seen as a precursor to a potential trade agreement.

The country needs to walk the talk, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom told the European Business Summit in Brussels in May. Whatever President Xi says in Davos, China is still far from a market economy.

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The summit is taking place days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- who will meet with the Chinese premier in Berlin on Thursday morning -- gave her strongest indication that Europe and the U.S. are drifting apart. During his first foreign trip, Trump raised questions over relations with traditional U.S. allies when he hectored NATO nations for not spending enough on defense and called Germanys trade surplus very bad.

The summit gives Chinas leaders the chance to show that their aspirations to lead on economic globalization are sincere, said Mats Harborn, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. He said its time for the two economies to back up their words by moving forward to complete the investment agreement and to offer reciprocal market access.

At the meeting, the EU and China will seek to create momentum for a bilateral investment agreement, according to a European official with knowledge of the discussions who asked not to be named because talks are ongoing. Europeans have said an investment accord is a precondition for any move toward a broader EU-China trade deal.

The Sino-European relationship is up in the air, said Philippe Le Corre, a visiting fellow at theBrookings Institutions Center on the United States and Europe. From Brussels, the list of unsolved issues remains: market economy status, bilateral investment treaty, lack of market access to European companies in China.

Three years of talks between Brussels and Beijing on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment have stalled. European businesses remain disappointed with Chinas efforts to level the playing field for companies operating in the nation, the EUs second-largest trading partner, a survey by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China showed on Wednesday.

Half of European companies feel less welcome in China than when they first entered the market, according to the survey. More than half reported that they are treated unfairly compared to domestic Chinese companies.

A January report conducted by Rhodium Group and the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies estimated that Chinese direct investment in the EU surged 77 percent to 35 billion euros ($39 billion) in 2016. In contrast, the value of EU transactions in China decreased for a fourth straight year to only 8 billion euros.

At the Brussels meeting, the EU will press the Chinese government to accelerate steps to open up the domestic economy, according to the official, who also said Europe would raise sensitive trade matters such as demands for China to cut steel overcapacity.

We all know European companies investing in China face difficulties and discrimination,EU Trade Commissioner Malmstromsaid. Its not fair competition or fair trade when the playing field is tilted against you, with dumping and subsidies.

China is also complaining. Beijing has alleged the EUs method for calculating anti-dumping measures against Chinese products including steel violates agreements at the World Trade Organization, which has begun investigating the issue, Bloomberg reported in April.

The European Commission drafted legislation late last year that would abolish the non-market-economy label the EU assigns to China when probing alleged below-cost imports. The measures, which would make it more difficult to impose high anti-dumping duties, need the support of EU governments and lawmakers in a process that can take months or years.

The EU should avoid causing negative impact on the development of China-EU trade and economic relations, Wang Hejun, director of the Chinese commerce ministrys Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau, said in a statement objecting to the EUs extension of anti-dumping measures relating to photovoltaic products in March.

Aside from trade and investment, other potential sticking points may include tensions over Chinas construction of military facilities in the East and South China Seas. Leaders at last weekends Group of Seven summit urged parties to pursue demilitarization of disputed features in the disputed waters.

The meeting may yield more common ground on combating climate change, with both the EU and China already signaling their intentions to advance the Paris Agreement. Trump failed to commit to the global pact at the G-7 gathering and announced on Twitter on Wednesday that he would make a decision on whether to remain in the accord over the next few days.

Regardless of the U.S. presidents decision on the Paris Agreement, the EU and China will pledge to stand by their commitments on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the European official.

As China-EU economic and trade relations continue to grow, some existing differences between them may be eliminated while others arise, according to Ambassador Yang Yanyi, head of the Chinese mission to the EU.

This is just natural,Yang told Chinas official Xinhua News Agencyin an interview before the summit. The key is to understand how to manage and handle these differences properly.

With assistance by Keith Zhai, and Peter Martin

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EU Leaders Turn to China After Trump Visit Clouds U.S. Relations - Bloomberg

A withdrawal by the United States from the Paris climate deal would be disappointing but the European Union stood ready to take global leadership on this issue, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

United States president Donald Trump is expected to make an announcement on whether he will stay in the agreement this week, with media reports on Wednesday suggesting he had made up his mind to withdraw.

Representational image. Reuters

"If they decide to pull out it would be disappointing but I really do not think this would change the course of mankind," said European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic.

"There is a much stronger expectation from our partners across the world from Africa, Asia and China that Europe should assume leadership in this effort and we are ready to do that," Sefcovic added.

Earlier on Wednesday, an Axiosreport suggested that Trump has decided to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, citing two unidentified sources with direct knowledge of the decision.

Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, refused to endorse the landmark climate change accord at a summit of the G7 group of wealthy nations on Saturday, saying he needed more time to decide. He then tweeted that he would make an announcement this week.

Fox News also cited an unidentified source confirming the pullout.

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European Union says ready for climate leadership if US pulls out of Paris deal - Firstpost