Martin Callanan

Martin Callanan (08 August 1961, Newcastle) is an English Euro-sceptic MEP. He is a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and the Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly; a substitute member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, and the Delegation to the EU-Kazakhstan, EU-Kyrgyzstan and EU-Uzbekistan Parliamentary Cooperation Committees, and for relations with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia.

Callanan also leads the fight for the car industry on environmental issues. Green MEP Rebecca Harms called Callanan “the most active Conservative” attempting to delay regulation on cars in 2007.

Background

Nowhere is Callanan’s influence more apparent than in amendments he tabled for the recent influential report by Chris Davies for the Environment Committee on a ‘Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles.’ Callanan tried to water down both the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) allowed from vehicles as well as the deadline for compliance by the car manufacturers.

In 1995 the European Commission originally proposed a CO2 emissions reduction target of 120g CO2/km (grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer) by 2005, which the car industry failed to meet. Chris Davies’ important draft report in June 2007 then argued for a target of 120g CO2/km by 2015 (for all new cars in the EU). Callanan’s amendment to the report however argued for a much weaker target of 130 g/km CO2/km by 2015. Davies and Callanan finally tabled a joint amendment proposing a still weak target of 125g CO2/km by 2015, which was the one adopted by the European Parliament. This was far less ambitious than the target proposed by the Environment Committee.

Register of Interests

• Known to have favoured the car industry in his parliamentary actions, financially benefited from a discounted car from Ford in 2006.

Conflicts of Interest

Callanan defends his position arguing that his Amendment “actually imposed a more stringent CO2 limit on manufacturers (125g instead of 130), but gave them a slightly longer time period in which to comply (2015 instead of 2012). However, this is contradicted by figures calculated by Green MEPs. Claude Turmes MEP said: “I think this is the right moment to inform the outside world about what this Callanan-Davies deal is…It is delaying action from 2012 to 2015.” Jos Dings from environmental NGO, Transport and Environment, says: “If Callanan is arguing that he has strengthened the CO2 law he is wrong, he has weakened it. The reduction path that the car industry has to follow is less under his proposal than under the Commission proposal.”

Since then Callanan has continued to put forward positions favorable to the car industry. A potential conflict of interest – one of many grey areas under current parliamentary rules – is that he financially benefited from a discounted car from Ford in 2006. Justifying the payment, the MEP says: “I declared the receipt two years ago in the register of Members interests, whose purpose is to put all such matters in the public domain, to avoid any accusation of a conflict of interest.”

Resources

• Callanan, Martin, Declaration of Members’ Interest, 2006, accessed 15 November 2008.
• European Parliament website, MEP Directory: Martin Callanan, accessed 15 November 2008.
• European Parliament website, Texts adopted by Parliament, Community Strategy to reduce CO 2 emissions from passenger cars and lightcommercial vehicles, 24 October 2007, accessed 15 November 2008.
• T&E, Reducing CO2 emissions from new cars: A Study of Major Car Manufacturers' Progress in 2006, November 2007, accessed 15 November 2008.
• Turmes, Claude, European Parliament website, Debate on Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles, 22 October 2007, accessed 15 November 2008.