EU member state officials will next week hold their first talks on the post-2020 ETS reform proposal, kicking off lawmakers’ debate in a process expected to take at least a year.

On Monday, the European Council’s Working Party on the Environment will hold a session where European Commission officials will present the proposal and national officials will give some initial responses.

The talks, chaired by the Luxembourg EU presidency, are very preliminary and not expected to yield any conclusive opinions but represent the first official discussions by lawmakers on the bill introduced in July.

The proposal must be agreed by a majority of member states and the bloc’s parliament, and is expected to take at least a year to be agreed.

The Eurosceptic ECR political grouping is due to choose a member to steer the bill through the EU Parliament next week.

The time it takes to pass the bill into law could depend on whether lawmakers are comfortable advancing the work ahead of related bills covering non-ETS and land-use sectors, which are only due to be published in the first half of 2016.

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com