BRATISLAVA, February 2, (WEBNOVINY) — Parliament will discuss the amendment to the law on trading with emission quotas in expedited legislative procedure. New industrial sectors – chemical industry, aluminum producers and air transport will join emission quotas trading based on the amendment. The draft further defines the use of emission quotas so that greenhouse gases allowances or pollution quotas may not be subject to a lien or as non-financial deposit into share capital of a capital company. The reason behind it is that until September 30, 2011, EU member states are required to make public and submit a list of entities on their territories to which the European directive applies on the system of emission quotas trading, as well as all free of charge allocations to respective organizations in line with EU rules.
Trading with Slovak emission quotas was largely discussed during the previous government of Robert Fico (SMER-SD). The US-registered „company“ Interblue Group LLC, to which Slovakia sold 15 million units of emission quotas for almost EUR 76 million under disadvantageous terms in 2008, was dissolved without prior knowledge of Slovakia’s Ministry of Environment at the end of December of last year. At that time, the company owed Slovakia a supplementary payment of EUR 15 million. The money was linked to projects of the Green Investment Scheme, which, however, Interblue Group challenged and refused to pay to the Slovak Republic. Interblue Group Europe from Switzerland took up after the Interblue Group but it was not acknowledged as a successor by the Ministry of Environment. Present Minister of Environment Jozsef Nagy (MOST-HID) filed criminal changes against representatives of the U.S. company Interblue Group without specification of names at the Special Prosecutor’s Office at the end of last year on suspicion of fraud.
SITA