NGOs sue European Commission over biofuels certification scheme

In England, ClientEarth, along with Friends of the Earth Europe, FERN and Corporate Europe Observatory announced that they have filed a lawsuit seeking to annul the Europeam Commission’s decision to refuse public access to information about voluntary certification schemes used to ensure compliance with EU criteria on biofuel sustainability.

In 2010, a request for information about organisations that had applied to operate the schemes, and how they are chosen, was rejected by the Commission. This was challenged in December, but despite a deadline of 4 February 2011, the Commission has still not responded.  The suit was filed in the General Court of the EU.  As to why the lawsuit, James Thornton, ClientEarth CEO states, “The amount of money at stake over Europe’s biofuels policy is colossal, and so is the potential for environmental devastation. These policies are too important to shield from scrutiny, decision making processes need to be more participatory. We need to know which organisations have applied to run voluntary certification schemes, and how they’ve been chosen, so that we can be certain that they will provide robust and reliable information.”

ClientEarth’s press release notes that an EU comitology committee on the sustainability of biofuels will meet on Friday 27 May to discuss a first series of 7 voluntary certification schemes.  ClientEarth’s website further states that information on the basis of which these schemes have been assessed is not publically available.