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Following a first-reading agreement with the European Parliament, on 22nd April 2013, the Council adopted the regulation on a mechanism for monitoring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and for reporting other information at national and EU level relevant to climate change, which will replace the current monitoring mechanism established under decision 280/2004/EC.

The aim of the new regulation is to enhance the monitoring and reporting framework within the EU, in light of the lessons learned from implementation of the current monitoring mechanism, taking into account the developments at both EU and international level. In particular, the regulation incorporates new reporting and monitoring requirements arising from the 2009 Climate and Energy Package and recent decisions adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The regulation will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal of the EU. It should be noted that Article 10 on CO2 emissions from maritime transport has been deleted from the Commission original proposal. However, it should also be noted that in Recital 16 of the new legislation it is stated that: "Since the Commission has announced that it intends to propose new monitoring and reporting requirements for emissions from maritime transport, including amendments to this Regulation as appropriate, this Regulation should not prejudge any such proposal, and therefore provisions on the monitoring and reporting of emissions from maritime transport should not be included in this Regulation at this time."

It is hoped that following the narrow defeat in the European Parliament of utopian arrangements to shore up the debilitating European Emission Trading Scheme, the soon to be proposed legislation on the monitoring and reporting of CO2 emissions from maritime transport will aim to support the relevant IMO efforts and not to include maritime transport in the ETS, as is often threatened.