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Buying and selling of European Union carbon allowances on ICE Futures Europe declined for the first time last year after the bloc began withholding supply to reduce a surplus thats built up since 2008.

Trading slipped 5.2 percent, according to data from the exchange compiled by Bloomberg. Benchmark prices rose 48 percent in 2014 and averaged 6.01 euros ($7.24) a metric ton.

Lawmakers took more than three years to install the first measure aimed at reducing the surplus, beginning last March to retain the equivalent of six months permit supply temporarily. They are now discussing a permanent remedy. Activity also slowed as banks exited trading of commodities including carbon, according to Andrei Marcu, head of the carbon-market forum at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

The delayed decision on the markets future is not helping, Marcu said by phone Dec. 31. Companies from cement makers to utilities to car manufacturers still need a strong signal that the political will goes beyond declarations.

Volume across all EU carbon futures contracts fell to 6.88 billion tons on ICE last year from 7.26 billion tons in 2013. The 2014 figure is still the second-highest ever for a market that started in 2005 as the main policy to help Europe meet commitments made under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The price of emission rights will rise another 62 percent by June 30, according to the median of 16 trader and analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg last month. UBS Group AG said Oct. 2 carbon permits might climb as high as 15 euros in 2015.

James Dunseath, ICE spokesman in London, declined to comment when contacted by e-mail.

Benchmark allowances fell as much as 3.5 percent today to 7.08 euros a ton on ICE as German power for delivery in 2016 dropped to a record 32.35 euros a megawatt-hour, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. Lower electricity prices can discourage utilities from selling power forward, curbing demand for carbon contracts typically used as a hedge.

To reduce the accumulated excess of more than a years carbon supply, the EU proposed introducing a market stability reserve in 2021 that would adjust the amount of allowances auctioned. Contracts would be removed from the market and put in the reserve if supply exceeded a fixed limit and returned in the event of a shortage.

The bloc already began withholding 900 million tons of permits last year under the interim measure, called backloading because supply is to return to the market at the decades end.

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EU Carbon Market Has First Volume Decline After Brake on Supply

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The European Union is facing threats from far-right and Eurosceptic parties across the continent, Robin Oakley says

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Editor's note: Robin Oakley was political editor and columnist for The Times newspaper in London from 1986 to 1992, the BBC's political editor from 1992 to 2000, and CNN's European Political Editor between 2000 and 2008. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.

(CNN) -- Few European Union politicians will have raised a New Year glass in expectation of a brighter future. Many fear that 2015 could be the year in which both the euro and the European Union itself begin to unravel.

Once again the troubles will begin early in Greece, a country carelessly admitted to the euro before its finances were properly in shape, and which has twice had to be bailed out and bullied into efforts to get its economy onto a sound footing.

Once again the Greek economy is at the heart of a euro crisis. The failure of the Greek government led by Antonis Samaras to win a majority vote for its favored presidential candidate means that Greece faces a snap general election on January 25, news that saw the Greek stock market fall 5% in one day.

Polls suggest that the likely winner in the Greek general election will be Alexis Tsipras and his left-wing populist party, Syriza. The problem with that for the EU is that with more than a quarter of the Greek population unemployed, despite some signs of recovery in the economy, Syriza is winning wide support for its pledge to dump most of the pledges attached to its bailouts by the rest of Europe.

Tsipras wants to end the austerity program imposed largely at Germany's insistence, reverse cuts in the minimum wage and repudiate much of Greece's debts. Although Tsipras has toned down his previous rhetoric and says he wants Greece to remain in the euro, it is hard to see how it could if he wins and holds to his election promises.

Greece's departure would be the first major blow for the euro, and the wider EU. But Greece is not alone in having euroskeptic parties riding high in the opinion polls. Both Spain and Portugal have elections scheduled in 2015.

In Spain, Podemos, a party strongly opposed to austerity programs designed to keep the country within euro rules is currently heading the polls.

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Opinion: The year Europe unravels?