Brussels, 05/12/2013 (Agence Europe) - EU member states are 100% behind the Commission's goal of supporting the roll-out of an alternative fuel charging infrastructure network for electricity, gas and hydrogen. The European delegations have, however, watered down the draft directive on this subject by opting for a 2030 deadline for setting up the network instead of 2020. They also wanted the national targets set out by the Commission to be exclusively voluntary in their own national plans (binding and presented a year after entry into force of the directive).
The Transport Council adopted a general approach on the subject on Thursday 5 December, on the basis of a draft Commission directive, in order to open negotiations with the European Parliament. European Commissioner for Transport Siim Kallas welcomed the general approach, despite expressing reservations about their degree of ambition. He told the delegations that “there is no reason not to take action now, we need to guarantee our future. We have to make a clear commitment in relation to private sector actors and they need to invest”. The commissioner hoped that the delegations would get back to the Commission's initial proposal on the calendar. The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Finland appear to want to move ahead rapidly but the majority of member states have stuck to 2030 as the deadline, particularly member states that recently joined the EU.
The majority of member states highlighted the need to respect their situations at national level, with Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, in particular, pointing this out. This is why they will themselves determine their own national plans for setting up charging point infrastructure. However the Commission proposed that for the Trans-European Transport Network there would be national quotas for electric charging points and hydrogen stations every 300 km for electric cars, charging points for liquefied natural gas (LNG) every 400 km for heavy goods vehicles and every 150 km in the ports for boats.
The European delegations also supported the Commission's desire to harmonise technical standards, particularly with regard to electric charging sockets. Germany welcomed this point, with its model the one chosen, stating that this would be good for industry and that standardisation would be deliver competitiveness throughout the EU. A compromise was found for the other kinds of sockets, particularly the French one, to be used in combination. France did not give its opinion on the choice of the definitive technology chosen but Minister Cuvillier expressed his very great regret and said that they needed to send out a much more convincing message with regard to electric modes of transport, especially when major third countries were adopting very proactive programmes. The Lithuanian minister for transport and communications, Rimantas Sinkevicius, concluded that the deadlines linked to this directive could once again be the subject of discussions with the European Parliament. The latter has maintained the 2020 deadline and the binding aspect of the Commission proposal. (MD/transl.fl)