Brussels, 23/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - At 8.00am on Thursday 24 March, two national registers of online transactions on the European carbon market - those of the Czech Republic and Italy - will resume the normal course of their operations. The news was announced on the evening of Tuesday 22 March by the European Commission after a probing examination of the independent security reports submitted to it by these two member states for their respective registers.
Once it comes into effect, this favourable decision of the Commission will bring to 21 the number of registers reopened since the national registers were suspended on 19 January at 7.00pm. The cyber attacks suffered by some of them were the reason behind this temporary measure.
The Commission takes the view that Italy and the Czech Republic have provided it with “reasonable assurance” that minimum security requirements have been set in place following this incident, which damaged both the integrity and reputation of the European carbon market set in place by the ETS directive.
Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway (a third country which is part of the ETS) have already received the Commission's green light to resume all of their online operations under the emissions trading system of the EU. (A.N./transl.fl)