Brussels, 05/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 5 July, the Advocate General informed the European Court of Justice that a member state of the EU should be allowed to demand a company to return, without compensation, greenhouse gas emission allowances that are not used when they have been unduly allocated owing to an error made by the company concerned.
In this case (C-321/15), Advocate General Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona, examined the case involving the company Arcelor Mittal that contested the fact that the Luxembourg authorities are able to demand the recovery of unused allowances from it without compensation. These authorities granted the company allowances in 2012 but they were not notified that the Schifflange steelworks had been closed at the end of 2011, although Arcelor Mittal was obliged to notify it immediately of this fact.
The Advocate General proposed to the European judges to respond to the Luxembourg Constitutional Court and explain that Luxembourg law was perfectly compatible with the directive on the greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme (96/61/EC). Therefore, the competent authority should be allowed to demand the recovery of the allowances allocated erroneously, if it is too late to cancel their allocation. According to the latter, this does not involve any kind of expropriation as argued by Arcelor Mittal. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)