Brussels, 03/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - Only recently launched, the Community emissions trading system, which became operational on 1 January 2005, sparks off action at the European Commission, which hopes to extend the scope of the directive in order to effectively combat climate change. During a debate on the first six-month review of the Community emissions trading system, in the context of Green Week 2005 in Brussels, Stavros Dimas, Environment Commissioner, announced on Thursday the upcoming beginning of the work for review of Directive 2003/87/EC of 13 October 2003, which establishes the European emissions market pending implementation of a flexible mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. To this end, the Commission will soon be launching a wide-ranging public consultation asking for ideas and input from stakeholders with hands-on experience in emissions trading.
In addition to extending the system to gases other than just CO2 and to other sectors (including aviation, see EUROPE 8959) targeted by the review exercise, Stavros Dimas stressed the need to improve the way the system works in the longer-term perspective. “We need to have a serious look at the way we allocate - not only in view of the next set of allocation plans due in mid-2006 for the second period of the EU emission trading, but also in the longer term perspective of the post-2012 regime. We should put more trust in a well-designed market instrument and in more instances give the market the benefit of the doubt. The guiding philosophy for the second allocation plans should be simplicity rather than complexity and hands-off rather than special rules”, the Commission proclaimed. In response to certain operators, who called for greater predictability and security in the rules for allocating emissions quotas, Stavros Dimas said that the idea of granting longer term allocations was to be explored but that an alternative solution would be to “build rules that allow us to derive the allocation for a future period from earlier allocations”. Warning that changing the rules could be a pitfall hampering the way the market works, the Commissioner asserted: “I believe we should not have changes for changes sake, but consider the costs and benefits of the nature and timing of any rule change”.