(1)

Article 19(1) of Directive 2003/87/EC, before its amendment by Directive 2009/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (2), required Member States to provide for the establishment and maintenance of a registry to ensure the accurate accounting of the issue, holding, transfer and cancellation of greenhouse gas emission allowances. For that purpose, Article 19(3) of Directive 2003/87/EC and Article 3 of Commission Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004 (3) created a system for the trading of greenhouse gas emission allowances which became operational in January 2005. That system ensured the accurate accounting of all greenhouse gas emission allowances issued under the emissions trading system of the Union (‘EU ETS’) and kept track of the ownership of EU ETS allowances held in electronic accounts. It consisted of the registries of all Member States and a Central Administrator, designated by the Commission, that was to maintain an independent transaction log recording the issue, transfer and cancellation of allowances. That independent transaction log, the Community Independent Transaction Log (CITL), was created pursuant to Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No 2216/2004. That CITL checked, recorded, and authorised automatically all transactions that took place between accounts in the national registries. Where irregularities were identified through the automated checks, the CITL would terminate the transactions tainted by such irregularities and the central administrator had to inform the Member State or the Member States concerned thereof. In addition, that Member State or those Member States were held not to register the transactions or any other transaction relating to the allowances concerned until the irregularities had been solved.

(2)

Article 19(1) of Directive 2003/87/EC was amended by Directive 2009/29/EC, which replaced the national registries with a Union Registry. Article 3 of Directive 2009/29/EC, however, contained a transitional provision, due to which the provisions of Directive 2003/87/EC were to continue to apply until 31 December 2012. The CITL was, in the meantime, replaced by the European Union Transaction Log (‘EUTL’), which was established by Article 4 of Commission Regulation (EU) No 920/2010 (4). That Commission Regulation was replaced by Commission Regulation (EU) No 389/2013 (5), which in its Article 4 established the Union Registry. That Commission Regulation was, in its turn and save for its Article 3, point (30), replaced by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122 (6). Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122 now thus contains the rules for the functioning of the Union Registry for phase 4 of the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS), which started on 1 January 2021, and all EU ETS allowances issued from 1 January 2012 onwards are to be held in the Union Registry. As a result of the centralisation of the registries, the EUTL has become part of the Union Registry, which should be reflected in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122. The Union Registry thus performs, since 1 January 2012, all the functions of the EUTL.

(3)

As part of the modernisation of the IT infrastructure of the Union Registry, its role and possible evolution are periodically reassessed by the Commission as the central administrator in order to remove IT redundancies (i.e. reference to some IT components instead of functions or checks) and prepare the infrastructure for future evolutions of the IT framework, however without affecting its functionality or security. While such modernisation will affect the way the automated checks are performed, all the checks prescribed by Article 20(2) of Directive 2003/87/EC ensuring that there are no irregularities when issuing, transferring or cancelling allowances, should be maintained.

(4)

Currently, users of the Union Registry can initiate transfers without any limitations depending on the thresholds (value) of the transfer. To improve the security of high value transactions, the use of trusted account lists for transactions above a particular threshold should be mandatory.

(5)

In its Communication of 13 October 2021 on rising energy prices (7), the Commission asked the European Securities Market Authority to examine more closely patterns of trading behaviours and the potential need for targeted actions on the European carbon market. One of the important sources for that analysis by the European Securities Market Authority were the Union Registry data on the ownership and transfers of allowances in the Union Registry. The analysis showed that for market monitoring purposes, it would be beneficial to add to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122 a requirement to identify transactions of emission allowances between account holders that are part of the same group. At this moment, information on the group structure is required only for operator holding accounts. The requirement to provide this information should be introduced for trading accounts as well.

(6)

Article 80(3) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122 lists entities that can obtain data from the Union Registry. Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 (8) established the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), which is responsible for investigating, prosecuting and bringing to judgment crimes against the financial interests of the Union since 1 June 2021. Those crimes include several types of fraud, VAT fraud with damages above 10 million euro, money laundering, corruption, etc. It is therefore appropriate to add the EPPO to the entities listed in Article 80(3) of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122.

(7)

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/1122 should therefore be amended accordingly.

(8)

The European Data Protection Supervisor was consulted in accordance with Article 42 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council (9) and delivered an opinion on 20 April 2023,

(1)

Article 5 is amended as follows:

(2)

Article 6 is amended as follows:

(3)

in Article 7(4), third sentence, the words ‘and the EUTL’ are deleted;

(4)

Article 23 is amended as follows:

(5)

in Article 30(1), point (c), the words ‘or the EUTL’ are deleted;

(6)

in Article 52 and Article 53(2) the acronym ‘EUTL’ is replaced by ‘Union Registry’;

(7)

in Article 55, the following paragraph 5 is added:

(8)

in Title III, Common technical provisions, the title of Chapter 1 is replaced by the following:

‘CHAPTER 1

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNION REGISTRY ’;

(9)

Article 60 is amended as follows:

(10)

in Article 62, the words ‘by the EUTL’ are deleted;

(11)

in Article 65, the words ‘or the EUTL’ and ‘or of the EUTL’ are deleted;

(12)

in Article 66(2), the words ‘or the EUTL’ are deleted;

(13)

Article 68 is amended as follows:

(14)

in Article 70, the acronym ‘EUTL’ is replaced by ‘Union Registry’;

(15)

Article 71 is replaced by the following:

(16)

in Article 72(2), the acronym ‘EUTL’ is replaced by ‘Union Registry’.

(17)

Article 73 is replaced by the following:

(18)

Article 74 is replaced by the following:

(19)

in Article 76, the words ‘before a communication link is established and activated between the new version or release of that software and the EUTL’ are deleted;

(20)

Article 77 is amended as follows:

(21)

in Article 79(1), the words ‘in the EUTL or’ are deleted;

(22)

Article 80 is amended as follows:

(23)

in Article 82, the words ‘and of the EUTL’ are deleted;

(24)

Annexes III, IV, VI, VII, VIII and XIII are amended in accordance with Annex I;

(25)

the text set out in Annex II is added as Annex XIV.