A former member of the World Trade Organization’s top court warned Tuesday that the EU could have opened itself up to a legal challenge over its carbon border levy.
The problem lies in the fact that EU leaders in July wrote to the European Commission asking for the levy to repay the bloc’s debt as it pays its way out the coronavirus crisis.
Jennifer Hillman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former WTO judge in charge of settling disputes, explained at a POLITICO event today why this could be problematic.
If the money goes toward “green goods,” such as climate finance to developing countries or green technologies, it would favor the Commission’s argument that this is an environmental measure. But “if all of the revenue is going to be used to pay back EU debts, and again there’s a lot of rhetoric out there that the reasons to do this was to level the playing field, then the concern would be [that] this was really about protecting EU producers and about raising revenue and you did it in a way that it’s discriminatory, and therefore it’s a violation” of WTO rules, Hillman said.
Diederik Samsom, head of cabinet for Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans in charge oRead More – Source
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