Flare added by filters

Sorry if this isn't the the proper forum for these observations. Feel free to move thread, mods.

I was taking a walk in the beautiful winter weather today, and I wanted to do a little test as I have noticed some ugly flaring with my new EF 24-70mm 2.8 II lens. I wanted to check out if it had anything to do with the filters I use, and what I found certainly seems to indicate that. I sat down and took this picture of the fjord with the sun almost straight ahead and just outside the frame of the shot. Standard lens hood on, and the first shot taken with no filter:



First picture, no filter.

A close up of the area where the light enters the frame:



Close-up, no filter.

Nothing much, just a small whitish ball in the right side. I then mounted the 82 mm Hoya HD Protector filter that I usually have on the lens all the time:



Close-up, protecting filter.

Now the flare is pretty obvious. Not very nice IMO. Finally I took off the the protector filter and put on the 82 mm Hoya Pro-1 Circular Polarizing filter:



Close-up, circular polarizing filter.

And it got even worse. Well, I'm relived to see that problem is not with the lens, but with the filters. I think I will still keep the protecting filter on most of the time, but will take it off if I'm shooting pictures like these. Too bad with the pola-filter though, because that can be useful when shooting in conditions like these.

I want to know if anyone have experiences with this issue, and if perhaps better filters would solve the problem. These should be pretty good filters though, and except from some extra vignetting with the pola-filter I haven't had any other issues with them.