Article 18 of the Kyoto Protocol calls on the COP serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP) to approve, at its first session, "procedures and mechanisms" to determine and address cases of non-compliance with the Protocol. At COP 4 (Buenos Aires, November 1998), as part of the "Buenos Aires Plan of Action", Parties established a joint working group (JWG) on compliance to develop a compliance system under the Protocol, with a view to adopting a decision on this issue at COP 6 (The Hague, November 2000).

The JWG operated under the SBSTA and the SBI and met in parallel with the subsidiary bodies (it convened for the first time together with SBSTA/SBI 10 in June 1999). It was co-chaired by Mr. Harald Dovland (Norway) and Ambassador Tuiloma Neroni Slade (Samoa), who replaced Mr. Espen Ronneberg (Marshall Islands) after COP 5 (Bonn, October/November 1999). Work on compliance was also advanced through several inter-sessional meetings in 2000.

At SBSTA/SBI 13 part I (September 2000), preliminary agreement was reached that a Compliance Committee should be established, functioning through the plenary of the committee, a bureau and two branches, namely the facilitative branch and the enforcement branch.

At COP 6 in The Hague, however, Parties were unable to reach agreement on a package of decisions under the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. In the case of compliance, key outstanding issues included what the consequences of non-compliance should be and the membership of the Compliance Committee. As with other issues, the negotiating texts on compliance were forwarded to a resumed session of COP 6 for further consideration.

At COP 6 part II, Parties adopted the Bonn Agreements on the Implementation of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, registering political agreement on key issues, including on compliance. The Bonn Agreements state that the consequences for a Party of non-compliance with its emission commitments in the Kyoto Protocol shall be: deduction from that Party’s assigned amount from the second commitment period of emissions equal to 1.3 times the amount of excess emissions; development of a compliance action plan; and suspension of eligibility to make transfers under emissions trading. The enforcement and facilitative branches of the Compliance Committee will be composed of one member from each of the five UN regional groups, one from the small island developing States, two from Annex I Parties and two from non-Annex I Parties.

Parties also continued work at COP 6 part II on a detailed decision on procedures and mechanisms relating to compliance, based on the Bonn Agreements. Although considerable progress was made, some outstanding points remain and the draft decision was forwarded to COP 7 (Marrakesh, October/November 2001) for further elaboration, completion and adoption.