The world’s largest steel company ArcelorMittal has sought to annul key parts of EU ETS (emission trading scheme) at a Court of First Instance hearing in Luxembourg. However, CFI judges obtained the parties’ agreement to suspend the case following the hearing, pending the outcome of a European Court of Justice case which will rule on one of ArcelorMittal’s main arguments – whether the steel industry is being treated unequally by being subjected to the emissions trading scheme when competitors are not. ArcelorMittal’s predecessor, Arcelor, SA filed a case in 2004 seeking to annul portions of the 2003 Emissions Trading Directive “to the extent that these provisions apply to the installations of pig iron or steel including continuous casting, with a capacity in excess of 2.5 tonnes per hour”. ArcelorMittal is also claiming for damages it blames on the directive, including “significant” compliance and verification costs and a decline in the reputation of its product. ArcelorMittal lawyer Wolfgang Deselaers told the judges that recent EC moves to amend the EU ETS by including the aluminium and chemical sectors point to the unfairness of the current directive as passed in 2003. “The creation of this inconsistency by the legislator in the first place, and the nonapplication of its own selection criteria constitute a manifest error, and thus a violation of the equality principle,” Deselaers argued. Deselaers discussed evidence, available to community legislators at the time the directive was passed, that undermined any rationale for excluding aluminium and chemical sectors. European Parliament lawyer Ioanna Anagnostopoulou argued that there was no “direct causal link between the directive and the alleged damages” ArcelorMittal was claiming. EC lawyer Ulrich Wölker conceded that the “directive is far from being perfect”. The directive had been set up in a “learn by doing approach”. “The directive is not perfect, but an imperfect directive is not illegal,” he said.
