The inclusion of foreign airlines in the EU's carbon-emission trading scheme is to be delayed to head off a transatlantic dispute. US and Asia reacted angrily to plans to force all airlines that land and take off in the EU to pay to pollute.

Washington had served notice it could take legal action against the EU if it included non-EU airlines in 2011, when the scheme is extended from industry to air travel. Yesterday, however, officials in the European Commission thrashed out a compromise confining the scheme to travel within the EU, and therefore to EU airlines, before extending it to all air traffic in 2013.

EU officials hope an aviation carbon-trading scheme could be running by then, defusing any major dispute.