The European Ombudsman announced on Thursday 13 February the opening of an inquiry into how the European Commission ensures that the sustainability and climate impact of energy infrastructure projects are evaluated before they are included in the European Union's fourth list of projects of common interest (PCI).
This inquiry follows a complaint lodged by the NGO Food&Water Europe. The complainant considers that the 32 gas projects included in the list have not been adequately evaluated beforehand and that the Commission has thus infringed EU law.
In a letter requesting additional information from the Commission, Emily O'Reilly points out that, in its reply to the NGO, the Commission assures that it has started to work on improving the evaluation of the sustainability of potential gas projects for future PCI lists.
However, according to Ms O'Reilly, such a response can be seen as an admission of shortcomings in relation to past evaluations.
She therefore asks the Commission to answer a series of questions by 31 March.
Among these, the Ombudsman asks, in particular, when and how the Commission services realised that the evaluation of the sustainability of the projects needed to be reviewed.
Ms O'Reilly further notes that, according to the EU Regulation (347/2013), gas projects can be included in the list of PCIs if they meet at least one of the four criteria set out in the Regulation.
As sustainability is only one of these criteria, the Ombudsman asks the Commission whether a gas project has ever been granted PCI status on the basis of an evaluation that it specifically meets the sustainability criterion and none of the other three criteria/any of the other three criteria.
Approved a few days ago by the European Parliament despite the many criticisms aimed at it (see EUROPE 12424/6, 12417/7), the 4th list contains 149 energy infrastructure projects which, thanks to their PCI status, are eligible for EU funding under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
See the letter: http://bit.ly/31YubNQ (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)