All opinions

July-August 2010 - It was a close shave but, in the last days of the Spanish EU Presidency, the compromise proposal on the IED, which had been hammered out with considerable difficulty in the Council, was approved by the European Parliament by 639 votes.

May 2010 - Commissioner Hedegaard’s attempt to prompt the EU to move unilaterally Greenhouse Gases reduction target from a minus 20%, compared to 1990, to a minus 30% attracted furore from all manufacturing industries.

April 2010 - Climate Change and related EU measures and policies omnipresent in European Commission strategic Priorities for 2010.

March 2010 - The European standardisation process is not perfect, but it works even in the difficult sector of construction products in respect of which it is characteristics dictated by the structure to be built which are to be mandated and standardised. 376 standards and more than 200 ETAs were finalised starting with the harmonised cement standard EN 197.

February 2010 - After it was abandoned in 2007 in the IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention & Control) review context, the idea to introduce a market based instrument for NOx & SO2 emissions abatement is, like the LochNess monster, showing its head again.

January 2010 - The ambitious target of the French government to implement a CO2 (carbon) tax from 1 January 2010 has been thwarted by the Constitutional Council ruling that the proposed tax would infringe the principle of equality before public charges and, as such, be unconstitutional.

November 2009 - For nearly two years the European cement industry has battled to be recognised as vulnerable to carbon leakage in the context of the EU ETS. This is now officially the case after the decision made in the European Parliament Environmental Committee on 4 November (this decision is final as far as the European Parliament is concerned) and the adoption by the Council on 30 November 2009.

October 2009 - In Europe, a clinker benchmark is the appropriate and only workable solution when it comes to the cement industry (in relation to the benchmark for free allocation of CO2 allowances in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme [ETS]). In early November, this was confirmed by the publication of the ECOFYS report

September 2009 - On 10 September 2009 ECOFYS, the consultant appointed by the European Commission to study benchmarks for the purpose of allocating free allowances, recommended the adoption, in the cement industry, of the EU-wide clinker benchmark supported by CEMBUREAU. Looking at the possibility to benchmark clinker or cement, ECOFYS opted for the first solution mainly on the ground of workability.

June 2009 - Long after the deadline for pre-registration has passed and, therefore, too late to ensure legal certainty, a first draft of the guidelines for the application of Annex V of REACH has eventually been produced by ECHA (European Chemicals Agency). It will now have to be approved by CARACAL (Competent Authorities for REACH and CLP) and will then be officially published by ECHA.