Fears are growing in Brussels that climate policy could become a political football in any referendum on EU membership, following British Prime Minister David Cameron’s declaration of intent yesterday (23 January) to hold an in/out poll. The UK Independent Party (UKIP), which has links to the eurosceptic right of Cameron’s Conservatives, launched a petition on 21 January calling for the EU’s climate and energy targets to be suspended. The petition’s professed objectives – to prevent carbon leakage, stop ‘wasting money’ on unilateral climate measures, reduce energy prices and increase energy security by allowing more fossil fuel use – are widely shared on the Conservative right and among Europe’s energy-intensive industries. UKIP’s initiative may not reach the million signatures needed to activate EU policy-making processes, but it has set alarms ringing that climate change could enter the UK’s Europe debate by the backdoor.

“I don’t believe that environmental legislation is high among David Cameron’s concerns about the EU, but certainly it could be a victim of collateral damage if the UK were to pull out [of the EU],” said Graham Watson, a Liberal Democrat MEP.