EC

This week the European Commission published a new draft proposal on car efficiency for 2020. They agreed to stick with their original target but have missed a chance to go further towards getting us off our oil addiction.

Some great news has come in from Greenpeace lobbyists at the European Parliament, where the EU environment committee have given the thumbs up to reducing CO2 emissions produced by cars.

The group of MEPs resisted efforts by German car manufacturers to weaken down the proposals and have recommended that by 2012 all new cars should emit no more than 130g of CO2 per km (the current EU average is 158g). Even those this doesn't match the 120g level we and other groups were proposing, this is a big turnaround as when the committee went into session, it seemed certain a compromise package riddled with loopholes would get the nod.

If you submitted your own Forest Love video in response to ours, you might catch a glimpse of yourself in the new video we've put together below which we're going to deliver to European Commission president José Manuel Barroso in Brussels. The commission are due to vote on legislation to ban illegal timber in Europe and hopefully that will take place in mid-October, but the date has changed several times over the past few weeks so who knows?

Yesterday, EU farm ministers voted on whether to approve the use of new GM crops including a variety of potato developed by chemical giant BASF. According to Reuters, they failed to reach a consensus which is good in the sense that the proposed crops weren't approved, but bad because the decision will now be passed back to the European Commission. The EC is heavily pro-GM so it's likely that all five crops under consideration will be approved with a nod and a wink.

Indian farmers campaigning against GM rice near Lucknow earlier this week © Greenpeace

A couple of GM stories have popped up recently over on our international site, one of which requires your help.

Car manufacturers are trying to sabotage a new European climate law that would force them to improve the efficiency of their new vehicles. But there's time to act to make sure that Europe's cars are cleaner and greener in future.

It's official. The European Union Commission has admitted that we were right about illegal timber in the commission's own headquarters.