British PM Brown proposes EU carbon bank
Gordon Brown - Photo EC
(BRUSSELS) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed on Thursday that an independent EU carbon bank should be set up to hand out pollution quotas at the heart of Europe's emissions trading market.
"We favour the creation of an independent European carbon market bank to set caps on carbon permits and establish how the carbon market should operate in the future" he told journalists in Brussels.
Under the European Union's emissions trading scheme, big industrial polluters can buy permits to help them meet emissions limits or sell them when they are below their quota.
If Brown's proposition were accepted, it would take away the power to hand out the permits to pollute from member states and especially the European Commission.
Currently, the permits, essentially quotas for emitting greenhouse gases, are initially handed out free to industrial groups by the Commission, based on proposals from member states.
Once the companies have received the permits they can trade them.
But environmentalists have frequently criticised the system because member states have in the past proposed more emissions permits than companies needed.
From 2013, the responsibility of allocating the permits is supposed to lie solely with the commission.
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