EC pushes for overhaul after carbon trading scandals

23.02.2011
The European Commission has called for a series of reviews to beef up the security of the European carbon market following a .

Next month the Commission will host a stakeholder meeting on registry security measures and stolen allowances to push the process forward.

Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, said: "The Commission has identified a range of actions that Member State can already take in the short term to further improve security.

"For the medium and long term we reinforce efforts to identify solutions in cooperation both with Member States and through a regular dialogue with stakeholders."

At the meeting of the Climate Change Committee today, the Commission is urging member states to institute regular reviews and updates of registry security plans and to beef up security around the opening of accounts and to conduct a risk based review of existing registry account holders.

The Commission is urging member states to "build on best practice". However with the Carbon trading system effectively offline for three weeks from the end of January as the scale of the fraud was exposed, there are question marks over how much best practice exists.