France, Italy and several other European Union countries weighed their chances of haggling up their EU carbon emissions quotas on Thursday, one day after Poland and Estonia successfully challenged theirs in court.

Poland is still considering whether to demand more emissions permits for its coal-reliant industry after a European Union court ruling, but officials said by doing so Warsaw could face a further cut in permits.

Poland may ban utilities from selling European Union carbon emissions permits many of them will get for free from 2013 as a way of curbing windfall profits, a government source said on Wednesday.

At present, installations under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, the 27-nation bloc's main weapon against climate change, are given most of their carbon permits for free.

At least 10 people died in flooding in the eastern Czech Republic, and rising river levels prompted flood warnings across central Europe following heavy rains this week.

The 10 Czechs died near the country's border with Poland and Slovakia, with most of the damage near the town of Novy Jicin, 260 km (160 miles) east of Prague.

Poland is home once again to Europe's dirtiest power plant, but German utilities still owned 11 of the 30 most polluting facilities in the European Union in 2008, preliminary EU data showed.

The European Commission