European Court To Hear Challenge to Environmental Ruling

The EU General Court is set to begin oral hearings into a lawsuit challenging the European Commission’s exclusion of business aviation from the so-called EU Taxonomy that determines which industries are approved as environmentally sustainable economic activities. On February 10, the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) will give evidence in a case filed by Dassault Aviation in 2024 to argue that the ruling unfairly blocks investment in the sector.

Along with French aircraft manufacturer Daher, EBAA is backing Dassault’s lawsuit as what the Luxembourg-based court defines as “an intervener.” The plaintiffs are arguing that the European Commission disregarded factors such as the fuel efficiency of new business aircraft and progress in adopting sustainable aviation fuel when they excluded the sector from the EU Taxonomy, while including airlines.

“The purpose [of the EU Taxonomy] is to guide sustainable finance, and since business aviation is excluded, it makes everything more expensive in a very discriminatory way,” Róman Kok, EBAA’s director of public affairs and communications, told AIN. “The way they wrote it treats business aviation as binary—either fully green or not green—and this ignores our transitional [decarbonizing] technologies and fleet renewal, and doesn’t reflect how business aircraft are used in Europe.”

Banks and financial service providers among EBAA’s membership have indicated that the sector’s exclusion from the EU Taxonomy already has negative consequences. “Business aviation is already almost a non-starter for investment because it is not seen as an emerging sector for sustainability,” Kok said.

Dangerous Precedent

The industry group has stressed that it is not challenging the Commission’s climate change objectives, which it supports. Its wider concern is that the exclusion of business aviation sets a dangerous precedent that could lead to discrimination in other aspects of policy and regulation.

The EU Taxonomy Delegated Act was adopted in 2023 and went into force in January 2024, covering all aspects of economic activity in the EU member states. Dassault’s lawsuit is seeking an annulment of the specific section of the legislation that excludes business aviation from the list of “activities that cause no significant harm to the EU’s environmental objectives.”

The plaintiffs have already submitted detailed written arguments to the court, which is part of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Part of these submissions alleged that the Commission used weak and biased data to justify excluding business aviation from the EU Taxonomy, in part basing their case on claims made by environmental campaign groups.

According to Kok, it is a significant breakthrough that EBAA has been able to have direct involvement in the case; the ECJ generally only accepts cases initiated by EU member states and institutions and companies with a direct interest in the matters being considered. The court’s preliminary report runs to 60 pages, and the case will be heard by five judges, rather than the usual three.