Commission Regulation (EU) No 920/2010 (repealed)Show full title

Commission Regulation (EU) No 920/2010

of 7 October 2010

for a standardised and secured system of registries pursuant to Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Decision No 280/2004/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council

(Text with EEA relevance) (repealed)

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 2003 establishing a system for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community and amending Council Directive 96/61/EC(1), and in particular Article 19 thereof,

Having regard to Decision No 280/2004/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004 concerning a mechanism for monitoring Community greenhouse gas emissions and for implementing the Kyoto Protocol(2), and in particular the first subparagraph, second sentence, Article 6(1) thereof,

Having consulted the European Data Protection Supervisor,

Whereas:

(1) Article 6 of Decision No 280/2004/EC requires the Union and its Member States to apply the functional and technical specifications for data exchange standards for registry systems under the Kyoto Protocol, adopted by Decision 12/CMP.1 of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (hereinafter Decision 12/CMP.1), for the establishment and operation of registries and the CITL.

(2) Article 19(1) of Directive 2003/87/EC establishing greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community (hereinafter ETS) requires that all allowances are held in the Union registry on accounts managed by the Member States. In order to ensure that Kyoto units and allowances can be held on the same Union registry accounts, the Union registry must also conform to the functional and technical specifications for data exchange standards for registry systems under the Kyoto Protocol, adopted by Decision 12/CMP.1,

(3) Article 20 of Directive 2003/87/EC requires that an independent transaction log (hereinafter European Union Transaction Log or EUTL) recording the issue, transfer and cancellation of allowances is established. Article 6(2) of Decision No 280/2004/EC requires that information on the issue, holding, transfer, acquisition, cancellation and withdrawal of assigned amount units, removal units, emission reduction units and certified emission reductions and the carryover of assigned amount units, emission reduction units and certified emission reductions is made available to the transaction log.

(4) Article 19(3) of Directive 2003/87/EC requires that a regulation for a standardised and secured system of registries in the form of standardised electronic databases containing common data elements to track the issue, holding, transfer and cancellation of allowances, to provide for public access and confidentiality as appropriate and to ensure that there are no transfers which are incompatible with the obligations resulting from the Kyoto Protocol is drawn up.

(5) Each registry established in accordance with Article 6 of Decision No 280/2004/EC should contain at least one Party holding account, one retirement account, and the cancellation and replacement accounts required pursuant to Decision 13/CMP.1 of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (hereinafter Decision 13/CMP.1), and the Union registry holding all allowances pursuant to Article 19 of Directive 2003/87/EC should contain management accounts and user accounts required to implement the requirements of that Directive. Each account should be created in accordance with standardised procedures to ensure the integrity of the registries system and public access to information held in this system.

(6) Each registry established in accordance with Article 6 of Decision No 280/2004/EC should issue assigned amount units (hereinafter AAUs) pursuant to Decision 13/CMP.1, whereas allowances should be issued in the Union registry. Registries established in accordance with Article 6 of Decision No 280/2004/EC should ensure that they keep a deposit of AAUs that is equal to the amount of allowances issued by them in the Union registry in order to ensure that any transactions with allowances may be followed up with corresponding transfers of AAUs via a clearing mechanism at the end of each period.

(7) As Member States have no influence on the amount of allowances that account holders will choose to bank in their registries, any potential future international limitations on the banking of AAUs that serve as deposit for issued allowances would cause serious difficulties for those registries where a disproportionate number of such allowances are held. In order to ensure that the risks Member States face in this regard are shared equally among all Member States, the clearing mechanism should be set up in a way that upon its completion, an amount of AAUs is held in the Union registry's clearing account that is equal to allowances to be banked from the 2008-12 period.

(8) Transactions with allowances within the Union registry should be carried out through a communication link involving the EUTL, whereas transactions with Kyoto units should be carried out through a communication link involving both the EUTL and the UNFCCC international transaction log (hereinafter ITL). Provisions should be adopted to ensure that Member States that are not able to issue AAUs under the Kyoto Protocol because they have no binding emission reduction commitment are able to continue their equal participation in the Union emissions trading system. Such participation would not be possible in the 2008-12 period as, unlike all other Member States, these Member States would not be able to issue allowances that are linked to AAUs recognised under the Kyoto Protocol. Such equal participation should be allowed through specific mechanisms within the Union registry.

(9) The EUTL should perform automated checks on all processes in the registries system concerning allowances, verified emissions, accounts and Kyoto units, and the ITL should perform automated checks on processes concerning Kyoto units to ensure that there are no irregularities. Processes that fail these checks should be terminated in order to ensure that transactions in the Union registries system comply with the requirements of Directive 2003/87/EC and the requirements elaborated pursuant to the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.

(10) Adequate and harmonised requirements on authentication and access rights should be applied to protect the security of information held in the integrated registries system and records concerning all processes, operators and persons in the registries system should be kept.

(11) The Central Administrator should ensure that interruptions to the operation of the registries system are kept to a minimum by taking all reasonable steps to ensure the availability of the Union registry and the EUTL and by providing for robust systems and procedures for the safeguarding of all information.

(12) The registry system should be able to accommodate the introduction of aviation into the scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Union from 1 January 2012 onwards. The majority of tasks emerging from the revision of the ETS, laid down in Directive 2009/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 amending Directive 2003/87/EC so as to improve and extend the greenhouse gas emission allowance trading scheme of the Community(3), need to be fulfilled only from 1 January 2013 onwards. Those requirements are separate from the functionalities that need to be in place in 2012 due to the introduction of aviation activities into the ETS.

(13) Because aircraft operators are entitled to surrender a different set of allowances than operators of installations, aircraft operators should be provided a different type of account, the aircraft operator holding account. Allowances issued under the EU ETS Directive's Chapter II covering aviation are different from allowances issued heretofore, since they cover emissions that are for the most part not in the scope of the Kyoto Protocol. As such, they should be marked as different from other allowances.

(14) Directive 2008/101/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 amending Directive 2003/87/EC so as to include aviation activities in the scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community(4) required that Kyoto units or allowances backed by Kyoto units surrendered by aircraft operators shall only be retired up to the quantity equal to domestic aviation emissions. However, as Member States cannot influence the choice of aircraft operators as to whether they surrender Chapter II allowances or units that may be retired, a centralised surrendering and redistribution system should be set up that guarantees that units surrendered by aircraft operators that may be retired are collected and used first of all to cover the domestic aviation emissions of all the Member States in an equal way. Member States should decide at a later stage how to use any units thus collected that may be retired.

(15) For the purposes of implementing the ETS review and to accommodate the introduction of aviation in 2012, it is sufficient to merge on a technical level the current ETS registry functions of Member States and leave the technical implementation of Kyoto Protocol registry functions with separate Kyoto Protocol (hereinafter KP) registries operated by Member States.

(16) To implement the changes introduced by Directive 2009/29/EC and to accommodate the introduction of aviation activities into the ETS in 2012, it is sufficient to merge on a technical level the current ETS registry functions of Member States and leave the technical implementation of registry functions with separate registries operated by Member States for so long as this is necessary. However, such a solution would not be cost-effective, as it would require the maintenance in each Member State of extensive parallel information technology capacities that would be little used. Thus, it is the aim of the Commission and the Member States to work together towards the establishment of a ‘Consolidated System of European Registries’ that would unite the KP registry-related information technology functions of all Member States.

(17) The modalities determined in this Regulation for the accounting of allowances and Kyoto units and the possibility of setting up of the Consolidated System of European Registries is without prejudice to any future decision by the European Union concerning whether to commit to a joint Union emission reduction target or to separate Member State emission reduction targets under any future international climate change treaty.

(18) According to Article 19(4) of Directive 2003/87/EC, there needs to be provision for processes for the change and incident management for the Union registry and appropriate modalities for the Union registry to ensure that initiatives of the Member States pertaining to efficiency improvement, administrative cost management and quality control measures are possible. The holding of all allowances in the Union registry should be without prejudice to the maintenance of national registries for emissions not covered by the ETS and the Union registry should provide the same quality of services as national registries.

(19) As since 2009, the occurrence of VAT-fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities has increased significantly throughout the registries system, there is a need to provide more detailed and robust rules on checking identity information provided by account holders and people requesting to open accounts. In addition, Member State authorities need to be enabled to refuse the opening of an account to those that can be reasonably suspected of wanting to use the registries system for fraudulent purposes. Finally, detailed rules shall be provided to enable the swift and effective provision of data to law enforcement agencies, which should then be able to use data thus obtained for investigation purposes.

(20) Commission Regulation (EC) No 994/2008 of 8 October 2008 for a standardised and secured system of registries pursuant to Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Decision No 280/2004/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council(5) repealed and replaced Commission Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004 of 21 December 2004 for a standardised and secured system of registries pursuant to Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Decision No 280/2004/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council(6) 2012 onwards. As this Regulation substantially changes the provisions applicable from 1 January 2012 on several regulated areas, the interest of clarity requires that Regulation (EC) No 994/2008 is repealed and replaced in its entirety, while retaining the repeal and replace of Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004 provided for in Regulation (EC) No 994/2008.

(21) Since Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004 will remain in force until the end of 2011, certain partial amendments of that Regulation are necessary with immediate effect. Those amendments relate to the fight against fraud and other criminal activities and the surrendering process. Obsolete provisions should also be deleted for the sake of clarity. Since the amendments related to anti-fraud activities and to the surrendering process should be applied as soon as possible, this Regulation should enter into force immediately following its publication.

(22) Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004 should therefore be amended accordingly with immediate effect. That Regulation should be repealed as of 1 January 2012.

(23) In accordance with Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC(7) and Decision 13/CMP.1, specific reports should be made public on a regular basis to ensure that the public has access to information held within the integrated system of registries, subject to certain confidentiality requirements.

(24) Union legislation concerning the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, in particular Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data(8), Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications)(9) and Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data(10), should be respected where these are applicable to information held and processed pursuant to this Regulation.

(25) The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Climate Change Committee,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

(1)

OJ L 275, 25.10.2003, p. 32.

(2)

OJ L 49, 19.2.2004, p. 1.

(3)

OJ L 140, 5.6.2009, p. 63.

(4)

OJ L 8, 13.1.2009, p. 3.

(5)

OJ L 271, 11.10.2008, p. 3.

(6)

OJ L 386, 29.12.2004, p. 1.

(7)

OJ L 41, 14.2.2003, p. 26.

(8)

OJ L 281, 23.11.1995, p. 31.

(9)

OJ L 201, 31.7.2002, p. 37.

(10)

OJ L 8, 12.1.2001, p. 1.