Recommendations from the Alliance for a fair ETS ahead of the October trilogue meeting

To the European Parliament, the Environment Council and the Commission

We, the 17 signatories of this paper, energy-intensive sectors representing about 2 million jobs in the EU and comprising many SME’s, are fully committed in taking our share of responsibilities and reducing our emissions.

We welcome the revision of the ETS Directive to both reach the agreed emission reductions at the lowest cost and to stimulate innovation as well as protect the competitiveness of our industries.

Both European Parliament and Council have respectively adopted provisions that should help provide a more flexible framework, providing a carbon price signal yet to be balanced by improved carbon leakage provisions that encourage efficient growth and investment in Europe.

We acknowledge the positive steps made over the past trilogue negotiations and we encourage policy-makers in finding a political agreement as soon as possible, ideally at the October trilogue meeting.

This being said, a solution still needs to be found to secure sufficient emission rights for industry exposed to the risk of carbon leakage. The October 2014 European Council Conclusions already acknowledged that the most efficient installations in sectors at risk of losing international competitiveness should not face undue direct and indirect carbon cost that would be exposing those companies to the risk of carbon leakage.