The ECJ Judgment on the Extensions of the ETS to Aviation: An Economist’s Discontent

Henrik Horn

No 980, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: Few EU decisions have caused more international outcry than the extension of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to apply to aviation. The directive was legally challenged by US airlines before a UK court, which referred the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling concerning the compatibility of the directive with international law. This paper discusses the argumentation by the ECJ and the Advocate General from an economic perspective. Such an analysis is warranted in light of the fact that the contested measure is an economic regulation, the international laws that are invoked have clear economic objectives, and the ECJ judgment and the opinion by the Advocate General at least partly rely on economic concepts and mechanisms. An economic analysis also seems warranted from a legal point of view since the quality of the judgment and of the opinion presumably depend on the soundness of their economic reasoning. It is found that the argumentation by the legal authorities is highly questionable in important parts, when viewed from an economic perspective.

Keywords: EJC decision on aviation; ETS; Border carbon adjustment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K31 K32 L93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2013-09-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-eur, nep-hpe, nep-law, nep-reg and nep-tre
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp980.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0980

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().