Analysis Of The Legitimacy Of The European Union Aviation Carbon Tariffs

The increasing global warming has gained much more attention from international community. Especially in recent years, owing to therapid development of aviation industry, carbon emissions of aircrafts have contributed a lot to the aggravated air pollution; Therefore, the reduction of aviatic carbon emissions has been put on the agenda. Over the years, the international civil aviation organization has taken strenuous efforts and numerous measures to control aviation emission;however, the efficiency remains low. Therefore, the European Union unilaterally incorporated aviation emissions into its emissions trading system and imposed aviation carbon tariffs. The European aviation carbon tariffs is sort of border adjustment measures based on its aviation emissions trading mechanism. The EU aviation carbon tariffs is meet the requirement of the Border adjustment rules and the principle of National treatment and relevant regulations of the GATS, or the Chicago convention of equal opportunity and related regulations, or the Kyoto protocol principle of "common but differentiated responsibility". The EU aviation carbon tariffs is defective in some specifications, in that it lacks a propriate allocation of quotas and considerations on the right of aviation development and shared responsibility of developing countries whose aviation industries is under a infant stage. The unilateral acts are also strongly opposed by many countries. As a result, the EU should actively carry out negotiations with other countries to work out the implementation approaches of aviation carbon tariff. At the same time, in view of the adverse effect caused by global climate change and the particularity of aviation carbon emissions, it is advised to take a global perspective and the international civil aviation organization as a platform to formulate global aviation carbon reduction plan so as to further establish an international aviation emission reduction system. In addition, the green aviation is the trend of future development of the aviation industry. As a powerful aviatic country, China should be committed to aviation emissions. The country can adopt the following measures to achieve its emission targets:to establish a domestic aviation carbon emissions trading system, promote China-EU bilateral negotiations and accelerate the process of launching aviation carbon tariff, to develop and utilize biofuels, to set up the aviation enterprise social responsibility system and other measures to deal with the EU aviation carbon tariffs.