14:40 18 June 2020
Poland against financing recovery from emission trading system
Any EU plans to fund the recovery after the outbreak of the coronavirus from revenues from the ETS CO2 emissions would be “absolutely unacceptable” for Poland, Jadwiga Emilewicz, deputy prime minister and development minister told the Financial Times, a UK-based newspaper.
EU leaders are expected to discuss a post-pandemic recovery plan at the Friday Summit, worth €750 billion, and the European Commission has identified a carbon trading scheme (ETS) – which it intends to extend to new industries such as shipping – as one of its finance sources.
In an interview for the daily, Minister Emilewicz said, however, that Poland is strongly opposed to the use of additional income from the ETS to repay loans borrowed by the EU, arguing that increasing the burden of carbon taxes will unfairly hit the Polish economy, which produces nearly 80 percent of its electricity from coal.
