Linking the European and the Swiss Emissions Trading Systems
The Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) of the EU and Switzerland have been linked. This creates a broader carbon market and enables participants to use the emission units of both systems. Since 21 September 2020, it has been possible to transfer units from accounts of the EU Union Registry to accounts in the Swiss Registry and vice versa.
The units concerned are
| EU general allowances | EUA |
| EU aviation allowances | aEUA |
| Swiss general allowances | CHU |
| Swiss aviation allowances | aCHU/CHUA |
In order to transfer allowances to the Swiss Registry, the transaction type “Transfer of allowances to Switzerland” has to be selected. After this step transactions to the Swiss Registry are performed by account representatives following the standard transaction procedure.
The technical execution of transactions to and from the Swiss Registry is not carried out on an everyday basis as the link currently operates via a provisional solution. After the standard delay, transactions between the EU Union Registry and the Swiss Registry are processed on certain predefined dates. More information and the predefined dates are published on the website of the Swiss Emissions Trading Registry. Link to the Swiss Emissions Trading Registry
The following rules apply for the linked ETS systems:
- Swiss allowances and EU allowances are valid for compliance purposes in both systems.
- Only one account is required for an aircraft operator operating flights between European Economic Area (EEA) Member States and Switzerland. The aircraft operator is assigned either to an EEA Member State (Union Registry) or to Switzerland (Swiss Registry) and has compliance obligations to the country it has been assigned to. The assignment of each aircraft operator to its administering country is published in the updated versions of Regulation (EU) 748/2009. This Regulation is usually updated every year between February and April.
- The Swiss ETS covers flights within Switzerland and flights departing from Switzerland and landing on an aerodrome (airport) situated in the EEA. The EU ETS covers flights within the EEA and flights departing from an EEA Member State and landing in Switzerland. To meet the monitoring and reporting requirements, aircraft operators have to report emissions falling within the scope of the Swiss ETS and those covered by the EU ETS separately.
- Free allocations of allowances for flights covered by the Swiss ETS will be transferred from the Swiss Registry to the account of the aircraft operator. Free allocations for flights covered by the EU ETS will be transferred from the EU Union Registry to the account of the aircraft operator.
More information is provided by the European Commission under following links:
Information about the agreement on linking the emissions trading systems of the EU and Switzerland