Emissions Trading Before the European Court of Justice: Market Making in Luxembourg

Abstract

The litigation faced by the EU ETS is of significance not only for that mechanism - the world's largest carbon market - but also for emerging carbon markets around the world and thus the enterprise of tackling global climate change by way of market mechanisms. This working paper analyses the entire EU ETS docket of the Community Courts (the ECJ and CFI) to date and seeks to categorise those cases. Themes familiar to EC lawyers prevail - especially in relation to questions of standing and admissibility - that in the light of the recently agreed Phase III EU ETS look less like narrow technical rulings than the Courts' constraining commercial and political actors from sundering legal responses to climate change.

Keywords: Climate change, climate change litigation, EU ETS, carbon markets, Community Courts, UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, energy