Conservatives welcome adoption of the committee’s opinion on emission trading scheme reform

Hans-Olaf Henkel, Member of the European Parliament (ECR), Vice-Chairman of the ITRE-Committee and shadow rapporteur on the review of the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), welcomed the adoption of the Committee’s opinion on ETS reform, in which he played a major role.

Hans-Olaf Henkel, Member of the European Parliament (ECR), Vice-Chairman of the ITRE-Committee and shadow rapporteur on the review of the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), welcomed the adoption of the Committee’s opinion on ETS reform, in which he played a major role. “In the last few months, we from the ECR Group have done everything to prevent a horror scenario designed by those who are hostile towards economic growth”, Henkel said.

A central issue was the free allocation of certificates. “We have prevented an arbitrary separation of the industries by the tiered approach, which would have given some sectors more certificates and many others significantly fewer. In addition, we have increased the share of free allocation to enable growth and investment in innovation,” Henkel said. “During the last round of negotiations, we have again brought up the concerns of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), despite strong resistance coming from the Liberals, Greens and the Social Democrats. SMEs account for only about five per cent of the emissions caused by installations, which are part of the emission-trading scheme. That is why we wanted to give as many small enterprises as possible the option to opt-out. Based on facts and quantitative studies, we have shown how much additional administrative costs the proposals of the Liberals, Greens and Social Democrats would have put on them, and have finally managed to raise the threshold for the opt-out option of small plants from 25,000 to 50,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents in order to cover more sectors,” Henkel said.