Financial Times, 12/3/2012 Nine of Europe’s leading aviation groups have joined forces to warn that the EU’s plans to charge for carbon pollution are jeopardizing 2,000 jobs and billions of dollars of orders from China, Airbus and six big European airlines said the plan to bring global carriers into the EU emissions trading scheme for carbon dioxide, which the industry has steadfastly opposed, is creating an “intolerable” threat to the European aviation industry by opening up the possibility of trade battles with China, the US and Russia, The campaign was orchestrated by T. Enders, Airbus chief executive, and backed by senior executives at British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air France, Air Berlin, Iberia, Safran and MTU, New York State makes U-turn on ballast water Lloyd’s List, 27/2/2012 New York State has retreated from its insistence on implementing a regional ballast water law that would have required purity standards much higher than those mandated by the IMO. ‘The development is of significance to owners whose ships trade in US waters, and an important step towards harmonizing the US national standard with that proposed by the IMO’s Ballast Water Management Convention, which could come into force by next year. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it had decided to follow the Environmental Protection Agency's uniform national ballast water standard, which is consistent with the IMO regime, in state Waters until December 2013. With the New York conundrum seemingly resolved for now, attention now turns to the Office of Management and Budget, which is reviewing a US Coast Guard final rule that sets the US national standard at the same level as the IMO Convention. The EPA has endorsed the USCG draft. Experts hope the USCG final rule will emerge unscathed from OMB, despite indications that environmental lobbies are trying to insert a clause that would ratchet up the US standard beyond the IMO level in 2016 Shipvard bodies agree to merge Lloyd's List, 28/2/2012 ‘The merger of Europe’s shipbuilding and equipment makers’ associations has come as no surprise: the Community of European Shipyards’ Associations and the European Marine Equipment Council are both associations of associations that already represent eight national bodies in common. The two associations believe that while the organization had different objectives previously, they share many common objectives and potential strategies in future as Europe’s maritime environmental has changed over the last decade. The new organization, which has yet to agree a name, will be chaired by current Emec chairman L.. Gorvell Dahil, vice-president at Kongsberg in Norway. B. Meyer, head of Germany’s Meyer Werft yard, will become deputy chairman, Increasing pressure on Europe to see the industry as strategically important does not mean reintroducing state aid. Rather, it is a call for Europe to exert more pressure on countries such as China, DS KOE