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BRUSSELS: Environment campaigners are calling for curbs on mercury emissions from human cremations as part of pollution controls that EU authorities will debate this month.

Increased cremation as shortage of land makes burial expensive has coincided with a rise in emissions of the toxic metal from fillings in teeth. An average cremation releases 2 to 4 grammes of mercury, data compiled by US researchers shows.

Mercury is associated with mental development problems. After entering the air and then falling in rain it becomes concentrated in fish that, if eaten during pregnancy, can cause harm to unborn children.

Some 200,000 babies are born in the European Union annually with mercury levels harmful to their development, public health researchers have found.

The European Environment Bureau (EEB), which is coordinating non-governmental organisations in Brussels in an increasingly polarised debate on air quality, says crematoria should be included in new standards on incinerating waste.

One option would be removing teeth from corpses before cremation, although the campaigners acknowledge that may raise ethical issues.

"What matters is to deal with protecting the living environment from extremely hazardous pollutants," Christian Schaible, a senior EEB policy official, said.

Of the 28 EU states, so far only Germany has a mercury emissions limit, although the EU has regulated large coal power plants - the biggest source of mercury pollution. Sweden and Denmark have banned mercury in dental fillings.

Draft EU air quality legislation from 2013 included national ceilings for pollutants and emissions from medium-sized combustion plants (MCPs), theoretically including crematoria.

The new European Commission, the EU executive, last year proposed abandoning national targets and debate on MCPs, at the request of member states, excludes crematoria.

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European Union should curb mercury emissions from cremations, campaigners say

European Union nations will discuss today a proposal by the blocs presidency to strengthen a planned overhaul of its emissions-trading system by preventing the return to the market of permits delayed at auctions in 2014-2016.

Latvia, which took over the 28-nation EUs rotating presidency earlier this month, proposed transfering 900 million carbon allowances directly to a market-stability reserve, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. That would bar governments from auctioning the permits -- equivalent to almost a half of an average annual emissions cap in the EU -- to companies in 2019-2020, helping the EUs effort to alleviate a record oversupply.

Climate officials from EU member states are scheduled to debate the draft carbon fix at a meeting in Brussels today and will continue talks in the coming weeks. The measure would impose automatic supply controls in the EU emissions-trading system, where a glut of permits pushed prices down about 80 percent over the past six years.

EU allowances for delivery in December closed unchanged at 6.80 euros a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London yesterday.

The presidencys proposal would enable establishing the market-stability reserve earlier than the 2021 proposed by the European Commission last year, while making it operational at a later stage, according to the people, who asked not to be identified, citing policy. Latvia did not suggest any concrete date for the creation of the reserve and put the proposed 2021 date for making it operational in square brackets in a document sent to other member states, indicating it was open for a discussion, the people said.

The draft by the commission needs qualified-majority support from national governments and majority support by the European Parliament to be approved or amended. EU member states have been split on the carbon-market fix, with Germany and the U.K. pushing for an early introduction in 2017 and Poland opposing an accelerated overhaul or the transfer of delayed permits to the reserve.

Ivo Belet, the lawmaker overseeing the measure in the EU Parliament, also recommended placing the 900 million permits directly in the reserve and signalled he was open to an early introduction of automatic supply controls. The legislatures industry committee is scheduled to vote on a non-binding opinion on the reserve on Jan. 22 and the environment committee, which leads the parliamentary work on the proposal, is due to decide on its position on Feb. 24.

Under the commissions proposal, the supply of permits will be reduced if there is an accumulated surplus of at least 833 million metric tons. If the surplus fell below 400 million tons, the EU would begin returning allowances to the market from the reserve. Latvia proposed shortening to one year from two years the time lag between calculating the number of permits in circulation and transferring allowances into or releasing them from the reserve.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ewa Krukowska in Brussels at ekrukowska@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net Jones Hayden, Andrew Clapham

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EU Nations to Discuss Latvia Bid to Strengthen Carbon Fix

EU ministers push for more surveillance powers in wake of shootings at offices of Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in Paris

In the wake of the shootings in Paris last week, justice ministers across the European Union have called on major Internet providers to create a system to quickly report and remove online material that "aims to incite hatred and terror."

Such a system is "essential" to stem online terrorist propaganda, the ministers of interior and justice said in a joint statement on Sunday, responding to the shootings at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

"We are concerned at the increasingly frequent use of the Internet to fuel hatred and violence and signal our determination to ensure that the Internet is not abused to this end," they said, adding that the Internet should remain a forum for free expression.

The ministers want to develop positive, targeted and easily accessible messages to counter the propaganda aimed at a young audience that is particularly vulnerable to indoctrination. They urged all EU countries to make maximum use of the Syria Strategic Communication Advisory Team (SSCAT) which is to be established by Belgium with EU funding and aims to combat radicalization and recruitment to terrorism.

Online extremism has been an issue for some time in the EU where officials have met with Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft representatives to discuss techniques to respond to terrorist online activities.

Pressure on the tech companies from intelligence services is also mounting. The U.K.'s signals intelligence service GCHQ for instance has called on social media companies to cooperate more with the authorities to block terrorists using their networks. The companies are "in denial" about how their technology is helping terrorists, the service claimed.

In the same statement, the ministers said they were "convinced of the crucial and urgent need" to create a framework for sharing airline passenger records for flights to, from and within the EU.

The creation of a database of such data to fight serious crime and terrorism was proposed by the European Commission in 2011. The proposal would have given law enforcers access to about 60 different data sets including travel dates, itineraries, ticket information and contact details gathered by airlines, but was shelved in 2013 when the European Parliament said it would violate fundamental rights.

Such a database could also be illegal in the light of a European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling in May last year that invalidated EU laws requiring communications providers to retain metadata in much the same way as flight data would be retained because they interfered with fundamental privacy rights. What's more, the European Parliament referred a deal to exchange passenger data with Canada to the CJEU, asking it to determine whether such a deal is in line with fundamental rights.

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Anti-terror cooperation with ISPs is 'essential' in wake of Paris shootings, EU ministers say

France #39;s Jews facing #39;uncertain times #39;
France is home to the European Union #39;s largest population of Jews. As Newsnight #39;s Katie Razzall reports, even before Friday #39;s attack on a Paris kosher supermarket, there was a sense of fear...

By: Amalia Charls

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France's Jews facing 'uncertain times' - Video

BELGRADE: Serbia's prime minister accused European Union's officials late on Saturday of orchestrating a campaign against the government after a regional news organisation published a critical article about the reconstruction of a key coal mine.

The dispute came after Sarajevo-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported earlier in the week that the state-owned power monopoly Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) hired an inexperienced local consortium to work on the reconstruction of the Tamnava coal mine, increasing costs.

Fifty one people died in floods in Serbia last May that inflicted damages of more than 1.5 billion euros, including flooding of the Tamnava mine which is supplying coal to TENT power plant complex that accounts for half of country's energy generation.

At a news conference earlier on Saturday, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic accused the EU and Michael Davenport, the head of EU mission to Serbia, of financing media organisations, including BIRN, to slander the government.

In a statement, Maja Kocijancic, a European Commission spokeswoman said she was surprised by Vucic's claims. "Media criticism is essential to ensure the proper accountability of elected governments," she said.

Kocijancic also said that the EU expected that the Serbian authorities would secure an environment that would support freedom of expression and media.

Last June, Vucic also clashed with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE), security and rights watchdog, accusing it of lying after it criticised his government of trying to smother online criticism of its handling of the floods.

Later on Saturday, Vucic also accused Kocijancic of trying to silence him.

"I am shocked by the fact that Maja Kocijancic in the name of the EU has tried to shut me up," he said in a letter to the Commission. "I am refusing to be your puppet," Vucic said.

Vucic is a former ultranationalist who served as the information minister during the autocratic rule of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic in late 1990s. He later changed policies and embraced Serbia's path to European Union membership.

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Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic accuses European Union of backing anti-government media