Czechs slam EU plan to reopen emissions market: report

(PRAGUE) - The Czech energy market watchdog on Thursday slammed the EU's plan to partly reopen its carbon credit market closed after hackers had stolen polluting rights from the system, the CTK news agency said.

The Czech Republic, which was badly hit when millions of euros-worth of carbon credits were stolen from registries in five countries in January, sees the move as premature with investigations still under way.

"It's amazing that the European Commission doesn't mind stolen goods getting back in circulation," Jiri Stastny, chief executive of the OTE company running the Czech registry, told CTK.

The commission on Thursday cleared Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovakia to reopen their national registries after giving "reasonable assurances that the minimum security requirements are in place."

The Czechs are particularly concerned about Britain and Germany, where most of the 1.306 million permits stolen from their registry were found last week. Authorities in Tallinn Estonia said Thursday more had ended up in Estonia.

"I have no news saying British or German justice authorities have secured the permits on the local accounts," said Stastny.

"If the registries really open, the stolen permits will start moving again, which means the investigations we have led so far will be wasted," he added.

The market, suspended on January 19, remains closed in the European Union's 22 other member states.

Trading was frozen after computer hackers stole two million certificates from registries in Austria, Estonia, Greece, the Czech Republic and Poland, before selling millions of euros worth of them.

Under the trading system, limits are placed on the amount of carbon dioxide companies may emit and those who pollute less are free to sell credits to companies that need more.

The European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) is the largest multi-national, greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in the world, with about 12,000 companies on the exchange.