Negotiators from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission have agreed to hold a political trialogue meeting on the long-term reform of the EU emissions trading system (ETS) on Thursday 12 October, capitalising on the progress already made and expected on the technical issues. The decision to convene this meeting was taken after the fourth negotiation meeting in Strasbourg on Wednesday 13 September which concentrated on exclusively technical matters.
The climate at Wednesday’s meeting was constructive. “Progress was made on most of the issues”, said the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU but technical level talks will continue within the working group to try to come to as much agreement as possible before 12 October.
According to a source, the progress made relates mainly to the level of production (Parliament might be willing to agree to the new percentage proposed), industrial gases and voluntary cancellation of allowances in the market stability reserve. Parliament and Council are also prepared to continue discussions on the qualitative evaluation of carbon leaks, the clause on shipping emissions which Parliament wants to introduce, the review clause and the size of the innovation funds. Parliament will also make proposals on certain issues.
The 12 October the trialogue will focus on compensation for the indirect costs of the carbon price, the market stability reserve, length of validity prior to cancelling the allowances in the reserve, that is to say, the time from which the duration of the validity of allowances is to be limited (the Council wants 2024 and Parliament 2021), the auctioning of allowances, the innovation and modernisation funds, the linear reduction factor (the Council wants to stick to 2.2 while Parliament wants a reference of 2.4).
Member state ambassadors to the EU, meeting in Coreper, will be updated before 12 October on the progress achieved in order to be as well prepared as possible. This could happen on 4 or 6 October. “Nothing has been decided as yet”, our source said. As to whether the trialogue of 12 October will be the last, no one is willing to hazard a guess. “This trialogue could be a long one. We hope that agreement on all the technical points will have been reached by then”, the same source told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)