BRUSSELS, April 18 (Reuters) – EU ministers must avoid
fruitless debate over which of two rival pipeline projects is
the way to cut reliance on Russian gas and both pipelines could
be built one day, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said
in a letter seen by Reuters.

The EU executive is anxious to present a united front, while
dominant supplier Russia attempts a divide-and-rule strategy by
negotiating gas supplies with individual EU member states with
conflicting interests.

STRASBOURG/BRUSSELS, April 16 (Reuters) – European Union
politicians rejected a plan to prop up the world’s biggest
carbon market on Tuesday, sending it plunging to a new record
low and raising questions about its survival.

After months of bitter debate, a plenary session of European
Parliament in Strasbourg rejected by 19 votes a Commission
proposal to temporarily remove some of the oversupply that has
overwhelmed the market for permits to emit carbon dioxide.

BRUSSELS/LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) – EU politicians on
Tuesday hold a decisive vote on a plan to reduce a glut of
allowances that has devastated the EU Emissions Trading Scheme
(ETS), the world’s biggest carbon market.

Following months of bitter debate, the vote in a plenary
session of the European Parliament at around midday (1000 GMT)
is expected to be extremely close.

BRUSSELS, April 15 (Reuters) – European trucks of the future
should have longer, rounded, more aerodynamic cabs to save fuel
and cut down on accidents, and adopt some innovations already on
the road in the United States.

The European Commission estimates that its new rules
regarding trucks, being outlined on Monday, could save around
5,000 euros ($6,600) per year in fuel costs.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Tajikistan is deeply concerned about instability after foreign troops withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan, Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon said on Thursday.

Afghanistan is to hold presidential elections in April 2014 as most foreign combat troops will be preparing to withdraw from the country by the end of that year, leaving Afghan security forces in charge.

LONDON/BRUSSELS, April 10 (Reuters) – Europeans no longer
see the kind of pollution that within living memory killed
thousands of Londoners in the Great Smog of 1952, but the air
they breathe still bears invisible threats scarcely less deadly,
and little more controlled.

While attention is given to curbing the carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions blamed for global warming, substances more directly
harmful to human health, notably nitrogen oxides, are pumped out
of diesel engines and from European power stations burning coal
that is getting cheaper as Americans exploit new gas reserves.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union negotiators on Tuesday reached a deal on a law that will make oil, gas, mining and logging firms declare payments to governments, as part of efforts to end poverty in resource-rich nations by ensuring the wealth is shared out.

It echoes tough legislation passed in the United States last year, which has led to a court challenge brought by industry body the American Petroleum Institute.

BRUSSELS/LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) – Months of bitter
argument culminate next Tuesday in a make-or-break vote on an
attempt to prop up the European Union carbon prices, which
plunged to record lows earlier this year.

A proposal put forward by the European Commission last year
to remove temporarily some of the glut of carbon allowances that
has depressed the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was meant to be
a quick and easy fix.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – High oil prices will make driving a car less and less affordable unless the European Union vehicle industry has more stringent emissions limits than those the European Commission is battling to enforce, the body representing European consumers said.

Debate on these limits is intense in the European Parliament, which holds the next of a series of committee votes on Tuesday on proposals for 2020 vehicle CO2 standards. These would curb greenhouse gas emissions and also cut fuel use.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Fewer United Nations climate summits and more incentives through carbon pricing could speed up international efforts to slow the pace of global warming, a draft European Commission paper seen by Reuters says.

U.N. climate talks have yet to recover from a disastrous Copenhagen summit in 2009 when talks ended in failure and subsequent annual meetings have been heavily criticized for dragging on for weeks yet achieving little.