ETS and the airlines: Part II The EU follows the tabloid herd

Part I of this report addressed the mounting forces that threaten to afflict relations between the EU and foreign governments, as well as the potential for internal divisions, as sanctions are applied to offending foreign airlines.

Meanwhile though there is an array of other matters that the EU should be confronting first, simply to get its own house in order.

For example there is the environmental disaster of the tangled mess of Europe's national air navigation service providers, which the EU appears powerless to act upon. The thousands of tonnes of unnecessary emissions resulting from archaic flight restrictions caused by this unstructured anti-system is a European scandal, quite apart from costing the region's airlines over USD4 billion annually.

Then there is the irony that, although the Commission has gleefully surfed in on the tabloid tide of anti-aviation sentiment, it has completely overlooked the environmental impact of maritime shipping - despite the fact that, by the EU's own reckoning, it is considerably more damaging than aviation.