The Commission's climate-action department identifies ‘carousel fraud' in the emissions-trading system (ETS) in 2010 and 2011 as having damaged the reputation of the system. Additionally, carbon allowances were stolen by cyber-attacks on some national permit registries in November 2010-January 2011.
The Commission found significant security weaknesses and decided to speed up the transition to a single EU registry. But as plans for that switch were being made, another theft of 350,000 allowances occurred in October 2011. That delayed the transition to the EU registry, which was completed only last week (20 June).
The Commission plans new security features for the EU registry, including the introduction of different account categories and trusted account lists. To increase security it also introduced legislation in 2011 to bring spot trading in the ETS under the main EU regulatory regime for financial markets.
