Compliance with the EU ETS

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Law - Miscellaneous, Maastricht University (Faculty of Law), course: Environmental Law, language: English, abstract: [...] Subject of the examination of the paper is the system of enforcement the EU ETS provides inthe field of monitoring, reporting and verifying by analyzing the compliance tools and bytaking the German implementation as an example to review problems and case law of the firsttrading periods. Since a sound system of enforcement provided by the EU-ETS to ensure compliance isextremely important, the second chapter of this thesis will review the mechanism foreseen inthe directive, the so-called compliance cycle, which is based on monitoring, reporting andverifying; taking into account also the enforcement system s unique characteristics incontrast to other environmental law instruments. After documenting the obligation of theoperators of the installations covered by the directive have, like monitoring and constantlyreporting on their emission in order to achieve the permission to emit, possibly appearingproblems will be shown. Since the member states themselves are in charge of enforcement and therefore control theobligations of operators and verifier provided in the Directive 2003/87 in connection with theMonitoring and Reporting Guidelines of the Commission, in the third chapter of this thesis acase study will show how this challenge is implemented practically on the German example. More specifically, after analyzing the framework given by the EU in the Directive 2003/87, itwill be analyzed throughout the third chapter how the German legislator coped with thechallenge of implementing an effective system and what possible weaknesses are detected. Moreover, it will be reviewed what problems the operators have been facing in the firsttrading periods and also how the German authorities dealt with upcoming challenges. Due tothe different operators and the different steps within the compliance cycle, different defects atdifferent levels may appear: incomplete or incorrect data can be forwarded by the installationoperators, verification by the private verifier could be biased in favor for one party andinstallations can emit more than they are allowed to. Additionally case law will show whatrole the courts in the compliance system play and how their decisions influenced thedevelopment of the enforcement system in Germany. At last section four of this article provides some concluding remarks.