Commissioner Connie Hedegaard comments on Parliament’s vote against the Commission’s backloading proposal

Brussels, 16-4-2013 — /europawire.eu/ — The European Parliament today voted against the Commission’s backloading proposal. In response to the Parliament’s vote, European Commission for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said:

”The Commission of course regrets that the European Parliament has not approved the back-loading proposal. However, it is worth noting than when it was suggested in the second vote that the Parliament finalised its rejection right away, this was not supported. The proposal will now go back to the Parliament’s Environment Committee for further consideration. Europe needs a robust carbon market to meet our climate targets and spur innovation. The Commission remains convinced that back-loading would help restore confidence in the EU ETS in the short term until we decide on more structural measures. We will now reflect on the next steps to ensure that Europe has strong EU ETS. In doing so the Council’s position on the proposal will be an important factor and I take note of the Irish Presidency’s reaction today to urgently pursue and conclude discussions among Member States. The market, the investors and our international partners are all awaiting.”

Background info

Today, the European Parliament voted against in its plenary session on a draft change to the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS):

The European Commission had proposed to postpone (back-load) the auctioning of 900 million EU ETS allowances from the years 2013-2015 until 2019-2020. This measure was designed to rebalance supply and demand and to reduce price volatility without any significant impacts on competitiveness.

For further information

European Commission DG CLIMA, Structural reform of the European Carbon Market

http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/reform/index_en.htm

European Commission, Q&A Emissions Trading: Commission outlines two-step process to reform the European carbon market (14/11/2012) :MEMO/12/861

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