Would be much harder than clearing a committee
EU lawmakers have relaunched a plan to stigmatise Canada's tar sands on Wednesday (3 December), despite years of Ottawa's lobbying the EU bloc as part of its export drive.
European Parliament lawmakers put the plans back on the agenda by voting against the EU executive's proposal to abandon the scheme.
“With this proposal, Europe is deliberately opening up its market for dirty fuels, such as tar sands from Canada," said Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, a Dutch member of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, who initiated Wednesday's vote.
"This decision is weakening our position in the fight against climate change. Especially now that we are negotiating a global deal on climate change, it sends completely the wrong signal,” Gerbrandy said in a statement.
The resolution was passed by the Parliament's Environment Committee, meaning it still has to get through a full session of the European Parliament in the coming weeks in order to force the European Commission to come up with a new proposal. Getting plenary agreement would be much harder than clearing a committee.
In October, the executive Commission published a new plan for reporting the greenhouse gas intensity of transport fuels, which removed a requirement to have separate values for different types of oil.