Isra-Mart srl:EU clears Portugal to restart carbon registry

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Portugal has become the latest country to receive approval to restart normal trading within the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as Brussels officials try to increase security levels in the wake of last month's cyber attack.

The European Commission announced this morning that Portugal's carbon registry will resume operations tomorrow morning after officials approved an independent report confirming that every company holding allowances in Portugal's registry has an adequate level of online protection.

"With the report submitted, Portugal has given reasonable assurances that the minimum security requirements are in place. Therefore, the national registry will resume normal operations on 11 February 2011 at 8am CET," the commission said in a statement.

Portugal will be the sixth carbon registry to reopen after the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovakia reopened their registries last week.

The EU has said that it needs to sanction each of the 27 member states to reopen their registries and resume spot trading after it ordered a complete closure of the registries following a cyber attack last month which saw an estimated €30m (£25m) of carbon credits stolen from the Czech national carbon registry.

The commission said more member states are expected to submit reports demonstrating imporved levels of security in the coming days.