Europäische Klimapolitik mit handelbaren Emissionslizenzen

With the adoption of the 'Directive 2003/87/EU of the European Parliament and the Council ...' greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the community will begin in 2005. Emission trading is a flexible instrument to abate emissions within the framework of the Kyoto- Protocol that provides besides the first binding agreement concerning emission abatement above all an institutional lead-in to a preventive protection against anthropogenic climate change. At present command-and-control regulations and national emission or energy taxes are predominant within environmental policy. The former are economically inefficient, concerning the latter a harmonization of pre-existent environmental taxes between Annex B-countries is not to be expected. So at least for a transitional period different instruments will overlap, whereby especially the German air pollution law (Bundes-Immissionsschutzgesetz) and emission trading are incompatible. The EU-Directive releases approved industrial installations, that take part in emission allowance trading, from fulfilling their duty to keep marginal emission values. It is the purpose of this paper to present and elucidate the future sectoral system of emission allowance trading according to the EU-Directive. The question of its compatibility and interaction with the existing environmental law is in the fore. Emission trading systems have to adapt to command-and-control regulations and existing market based instruments, even if the instrumental mix will go along with a loss in efficiency compared to a pure trading system.