The Threatpost newswire notes that the closure - which took place on Wednesday 19th January - came after a number of countries, notably Estonia, Austria, The Czech Republic, Poland and France began closing their carbon trading registries after learning that carbon allowances had been siphoned from the account of the Czech based register.
Infosecurity understands that a notice posted on the web site of the Czech based registry said that it was 'not accessible for technical reasons' on Thursday and the EC issued an order to cease spot trading until January 26 in order to investigate what has happened.
The EC's press office is refusing comment on the matter, but the AFP newswire says that two million one tonne carbon certificates, each with a face value of 14 euro, have been electronically stolen.
"Credits stolen just from the Czech Republic were worth seven million euros", said the newswire, adding that the system's weakness is the cause of enormous frustration in Brussels, which would like to have central control, “and is an embarrassment as well as the EU tries to nudge international partners into deeper cuts to emissions over the coming decades.”
"The reason is it depends on 27 national guardians, who cannot agree on minimum cross-border online security standards", says the AFP newswire.
Maria Kokkonen, a spokeswoman for Danish EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard, told the newswire that her team hopes that this series of incidents speeds up the process of tightening security ahead of a planned switch to an EU-wide registry in 2013.
"The sooner states take security measures, the sooner we can reopen the system," she said.