The political groups in the European Parliament seemed to agree that the proposed revision of the ‘market stability reserve’ (MSR), a mechanism to deal with the current surplus of emission allowances in the EU carbon market, should remain a “technical” dossier, when MEP Cyrus Engerer (S&D, Malta) presented his draft report on Thursday 13 January.
This issue is directly linked to the revision of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) currently under discussion (see EUROPE 12867/3).
The main issue is the setting of the ‘intake rate’, which determines how much of the outstanding allowances in the ETS will be put into the reserve.
The European Commission has proposed maintaining the current parameters of the MSR (24% admission rate and a minimum quantity to be set aside of 200 million allowances) (see EUROPE 12768/2).
Like Mr Engerer, Cristian Buşoi (Romania) and Emma Wiesner (Sweden), shadow rapporteurs for the EPP and Renew Europe groups respectively, called for this approach to be maintained and for the issue to be avoided. This view is also shared by Peter Liese (Germany), Parliament’s rapporteur for the ETS revision.
“The MSR file is a technical file. [...] Opening the file at this stage is not appropriate and would only delay the process”, Mrs Wiesner said.
Joining his colleagues, Michael Bloss (Germany), shadow rapporteur for the Greens/EFA group, said that the major political debate should be on the revision of the ETS.
He nevertheless argued for an increase in the intake rate to 36% and said he was “very concerned” that there has been “a tendency to politicise this issue” in the EU Council, “with many Member States asking for a reduction in the MSR intake rate to 12% (its previous level) or even less”.
The ECR group’s shadow rapporteur, Alexandr Vondra (Czechia), indeed did argue for a return to a 12% rate due to rising energy prices. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)