The EU's emissions trading system (EU ETS) has created the world's first major carbon market and an EU-wide carbon price – a key tool for reducing the EU’s industrial emissions in a cost-effective way. Despite the reduction of emissions since the start of the EU ETS, the system still has serious imbalances. The current economic crisis, combined with an over-allocation of credits in the first two rounds of the ETS and a significant in-flow of external emission reduction credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), have led to a significant surplus of allowances, resulting in a carbon price of around €4/tnCO2 (compared to the €30/tnCO2 envisaged when the climate and energy package was adopted).
The EU ETS is one of the pillars of our climate policy. 'Back loading' to delay the auctions of some allowances is only a short-term measure which should not be seen as a solution to the current imbalances but rather as an option that ensures the stability of the EU ETS until the necessary long-term structural measures are adopted.