Politique climatique et politique commerciale : le projet français de taxe CO2 aux frontières de l'Europe

The paper examines the French proposal to establish a EU-wide border tax adjustment for CO2 emissions. The tax seeks to offset competitive distortions toward European industries which incur the cost of the Kyoto Protocol and to prompt European competitors to join the Kyoto Protocol. So far, the debate has chiefly focused on the compatibility of such a border tax adjustment with the rules of the multilateral trading system of the World Trade Organization. Without auguring how a dispute would eventually be settled within the WTO framework, the paper argues that the implementation of a border tax adjustment is not as much an issue of technical feasibility or compatibility with the multilateral trading system, as a matter of collective determination to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The French proposal is a yardstick for climate policy after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. The paper looks in more details into the core directions of pending negotiations.