Isramart : Opposition calls for investigation into Hungary's carbon credits

Isramart news:


Hungary's main opposition Fidesz on Monday called on the government to investigate a recent scandal in connection with the country's tradable carbon credits.

The investigation should determine whether Hungarian Energy Power, the company which bought credits from the Environment Ministry, was the best bidder, said Mihaly Varga, Fidesz's deputy leader.

Varga, who is also head of a parliamentary budget and finance committee, said he was outraged that Socialist Party MPs had stayed away from a parliamentary committee meeting convened to investigate the government's role in carbon credit trading. He insisted that government representatives present at the meeting had failed to answer questions put at the meeting.

Last Thursday, the European Commission said it would launch an investigation itself into the circumstances of the Hungarian Environment Ministry's recent carbon credit dealings. The scandal broke when some 7,000 of Hungary's Certified Emission Reduction (CER) units turned up in trading at European carbon markets last week.

The Environment Ministry said earlier that it had signed a contract to sell 2 million tonnes of the country's CO2 emissions quota in a transaction expected to bring in 4 billion forints (EUR 15m). The ministry said it sold the units to a company which then resold them to a London-based firm, and the end-user was a Japanese buyer. The ministry said it did not know how some of the units could have ended up on the Parisien Bluenext market.