"The successful creation of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) was not inevitable. Countries such as Canada and Japan which might be thought to have a less complex and more cohesive cultural and institutional context failed to do so. Europe succeeded for a number of reasons: with a Single Market for the economy, the logic of a single market for environment is inexorable; the European Commission—which had failed in its earlier efforts to introduce a carbon energy tax—made the case for trading with great skill and persistence, on the basis of qualified majority voting, which meant no country had a veto; the UK and Denmark initiated their own national schemes, and there was a serious risk of balkanising the market with up to 27 different schemes, with the losses of scale and scope this would entail; meeting the Union's Kyoto commitments required a substantive pan European response, and EU ETS was the most credible and effective way of doing so. The European Parliament and Environmental Non Governmental Organisations played a constructive role, pushing for more auctioning of allowances and less of them, allocated centrally. Free allocation managed by Member States (MS) was a necessary condition to achieve the support needed, so they failed to achieve these objectives in the initial phase, but they characterize the Commission's proposals post 2012. "

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