The US Act would be odd enough in its lack of respect for the laws of other countries, had the Act’s beneficiaries (the US airlines) not sought to challenge the legality of the EU measure in the EU Courts – and failed: see my post on the judgment of the CJEU. As will be seen, the EU Court expressly rejected claims (by US airlines) that the rules had extra-territorial effect and conflicted with international aviation conventions. Hence, the scheme was lawfully applicable to US airlines – just as to those of all other countries using EU airports.
The US Act runs to a page and half. The ban applies where the Secretary of Transportation determines that it is in the public interest to apply
taking into account
(1) the impacts on US consumers, US carriers and US operators
(2) the impact on the economic, energy, and environmental security of the United States and
(3) the impacts on US foreign relations including existing international commitments.
Note that there is no reference to taking account of interests other than US interests, nor indeed to environmental benefits of the scheme.
The clash between the EU rules and this ban is postponed for the moment, because the EU Commission wishes to exempt international flights from the trading scheme for 12 months, in an attempt to see whether a deal can be brokered at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in autumn 2013. So the prospect of US airliners being impounded when they land here, and the EU enforceability of this Act being tested at the sharp end, is not an imminent one.
The White House’s justification for this pre-emptive strike is that emissions should be regulated through ICAO processes – an understandable political aspiration, and one which is recorded in the Act. But it is very unattractive for one nation to ban its nationals from obeying the laws of another country applicable in that other country – and to ignore the ruling of a court that the latter was validly made law. Heaven forfend if any other nation sought to prohibit its nationals from complying with US law in the US.
Sign up to free human rights updates by email, Facebook, Twitter or RSS
Related posts:
