The European Commission says it will not disclose further details of unauthorized transfers of carbon allowances, including the serial numbers of affected allowances, after credits were stolen from the Czech and Austrian national emissions registries in recent weeks.
"The European Commission has no authorization under relevant legislation to disclose such details nor has it been provided with complete information by all affected national registries," it said in a statement Tuesday.
The comments come after the EC was forced to shut down the national registries of all 30 members of the EU Emissions Trading System on January 19 as a precaution to avoid any further theft of allowances. (The ETS operates in 30 countries -- the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.)
The EC said the recovery of stolen EU Allowances is a matter for national law and national law enforcement authorities.
"Generally, allowances continue to represent legally valid and tradeable compliance instruments, but national civil and criminal laws have different approaches," the EC said.
The EC had originally intended to reopen some of the national registries this Wednesday, following security checks and system upgrades, but as of Wednesday afternoon in Europe, it was still waiting for EU member state governments to confirm that minimum security standards had been put in place before lifting the suspension.
The EC said the minimum security requirements for the national registries are "confidential."
But it said the requirements are "similar to those applied for other sensitive IT systems, like electronic banking systems."
"They are designed to ensure that every company holding allowances in a national registry has an adequate level of protection that the allowances are secure in this registry account," the EC said.
The EC said a resumption of spot carbon trading in Europe "is in the hands of the individual member states now, which have to mobilize the resources to upgrade security where needed."
"In order to underline the importance of the issue, [Climate Action] Commissioner [Connie] Hedegaard has written to all ministers to urge a swift follow-up and implementation of the guidance," the EC said.
The commission also said it would give a 24 hour lead-time ahead of the reactivation of national registries.
The suspension of the registries means spot carbon transactions -- making up around 10% of the total market -- cannot take place.
Carbon futures prices were holding steady Wednesday after rallying to a one-month high on Tuesday. EUA futures for December 2011 delivery on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange were quoted at Eur14.94/mt ($20.44/mt) of CO2 equivalent at 15:38 GMT Wednesday, up 4 euro cent from the previous close.
