This policy insight builds on the workshop EU ETS Reform: Taking Stock and Examining Carbon Price
Floor Options, held at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels on July 3, 2018. The
workshop was cosponsored by CEPS and the AHEAD and Mistra Carbon Exit projects. While the
paper draws on insights from workshop discussions, its views are solely those of the authors.
It outlines different perspectives on the past performance of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS)
in terms of its allowance price (Section 1), analyses how the recent reform responded to related
challenges (Section 2), and considers the case for introducing a carbon price floor in the EU ETS
(Section 3). The main part of the paper (Section 4) identifies five myths in the debate about an EU
ETS price floor and critically challenges them. Section 5 concludes by discussing potential entry
points for introducing a carbon price floor in the context of the upcoming EU climate policy process
