Letter: Letters : Europirates

From Gavin Hayman, Environmental Investigation Agency

London

Your editorial and This Week article on CFC smuggling (26 October, p 3 and 4)
were excellent, but the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) wishes to
emphasise that more evidence of CFC laundering exists within Europe than the
European Union cares to recognise. The problem may be genuinely smaller than in
the US due to the lack of phase-out taxes and vehicular air conditioning, but EU
complacency is far greater. For example, in contrast to everywhere else in the
developed world, CFC consumption by the refrigeration sector has actually
increased in Europe.

Examples of illicit trade in CFCs have been uncovered only when government
authorities have been bothered to look. Authorities in the Netherlands found six
companies guilty of illegal import of CFCs and one of illegal export in 1994.
Greenpeace Greece and a Spanish group called CODA have also identified companies
engaged in illicit laundering of CFCs. In a similar case, an unlicensed shipment
of 225 tonnes of CFC-11 from Volgograd, Russia, was intercepted in Germany on
its way to a Paris-based firm. Austrian imports of CFCs more than doubled from
1993 to 1994 as speculators shipped material into the country when such activity
was legal in Austria but prohibited in the EU. This was subsequently sold in
other EU member states as legal intercommunity trade when Austria joined the EU
in 1995.

At the EU subcommittee on illegal imports (which closed itself down after its
second meeting), the British delegate emphasised that there were around 4000
tonnes in unlicensed imports into Britain in 1995. It is hardly surprising to
read that many of the illegal shipments uncovered by Operation “Cool Breeze” in
the US were shipped from Russia via Britain. French data also showed unlicensed
imports of 1454 tonnes of CFCs but other authorities failed to provide
information.

The EIA agree completely with Duncan Brack’s (and John Gummer’s) conclusion
that the EU must act decisively on illegal trade and obvious loopholes such as
importing, packaging and re-exporting to non-EU countries.