Brussels, 26/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - European Parliament and Council of the EU negotiators will soon be able to begin talks to try to find some agreement on the proposal on the structural reform of the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) through the creation of a European carbon market stability reserve.
The Latvian Presidency of the Council was granted a mandate on Thursday 26 March to open inter-institutional negotiations with a view to reaching first reading agreement on this text that will be decisive for the urgent remedying of the problem of surplus quotas which have undermined the effectiveness of the ETS, a key market instrument for reducing greenhouse gases at least cost and achieving the EU's 2020 climate goals. The first trialogue meeting will take place on Monday 30 March.
The main issues to be resolved relate to:
- the date of implementation of the reserve, proposed for 2021. Parliament wants to bring this date forward to 2018 but, in the Council a blocking minority of eight countries, led by Poland, is against any such move (see EUROPE 11265);
- the possibility of feeding directly into the reserve the 900 million quotas, the auctioning off of which was cancelled last year as part of the short-term ETS reform;
- what is to be done about unallocated quotas which were set aside for new entrants to the market or coming from the closure of industrial facilities. The Council wants the European Commission to deal with this matter in the proposal for the review of the ETS directive (Directive 2003/87/EEC), expected this summer, for operation of the carbon market after 2020. (Aminata Niang)