De Cendra De Larragán, Javier --- "Too Much Harmonization? An Analysis of the Commission’s Proposal to Amend the EU ETS from the Perspective of Legal Principles" [2008] ELECD 415; in Faure, Michael; Peeters, Marjan (eds), "Climate Change and European Emissions Trading" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Climate Change and European Emissions Trading

Editor(s): Faure, Michael; Peeters, Marjan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847208989

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Too Much Harmonization? An Analysis of the Commission’s Proposal to Amend the EU ETS from the Perspective of Legal Principles

Author(s): De Cendra De Larragán, Javier

Number of pages: 35

Extract:

3. Too much harmonization? An analysis
of the Commission's proposal to
amend the EU ETS from the
perspective of legal principles
Javier De Cendra De Larragán1

1. INTRODUCTION
The EU has adopted a strong political stance towards climate change. In recent
years it has taken a number of important steps in an attempt to develop a
comprehensive climate change policy,2 at which core lay the EU burden-
sharing agreement established by Council Decision 2002/358/EC3 and the
emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) established by Directive 2003/87/EC4
(hereafter Directive 2003/87/EC or the directive). The latter directive covers
the key elements of the EU ETS, including the basic rules for the allocation of
allowances. However it adopts a highly decentralized approach, affording
Member States a significant leeway to make important regulatory choices.
This decentralized approach has seemingly brought numerous problems,
reducing the capacity of the EU ETS to achieve the main objectives of the
directive, namely environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and
economic efficiency, and the sound functioning of the internal market by
avoiding distortions of competition.5 Article 30 of the directive mandates the


1 Ph.D Researcher, METRO, University of Maastricht.
2 However, EU climate change policy cannot be considered to be comprehen-
sive yet. See Ludwig Kramer, `Some reflections on the EU mix of instruments on
climate change', in Peeters and Deketelaere (2006).
3 Council Decision 2002/358/EC concerning the approval, on behalf of the
European Community, of the Kyoto Protocol ...