While the COVID-19 crisis has mobilised most of the work of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment and Public Health at weekly meetings of the group coordinators, the European Green Deal, which has been somewhat put on the back burner by the health crisis, has not been forgotten, nor has other related legislative work, for example the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions from maritime transport.
The next meeting of the parliamentary committee will take place by videoconference on 21 April.
The European Green Deal will be the subject of a hearing with Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans (see EUROPE 12459/35). The European response to COVID-19 will be the subject of a hearing by Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides and possibly other Commissioners, a source told EUROPE on Monday 6 April.
The next group coordinators’ meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 7 April.
The proposal for a climate law (rapporteur: Jytte Guteland, S&D, Sweden) is the flagship dossier to which the Environment Committee decided to give priority, sticking to the original timetable. “Many people in Parliament understand that we can use the Green Deal to tackle the economic crisis that will result from the current health crisis”, Michael Bloss (Greens/EFA, Germany), shadow rapporteur, told EUROPE.
The provisional timetable, which is however subject to change, provides for an exchange of views on a draft report on 27 May, the deadline for tabling amendments on 3 June, and a vote in early July
‘Circular Economy 2.0’ Action Plan: on the new Circular Economy Action Plan presented in March by the Commission for a resource-efficient European economy (see EUROPE 12444/1), the rapporteur is reported to be Jan Huitema (Renew Europe, the Netherlands), but the formal decision has not yet been taken.
MRV regulations on marine transportation emissions. Jutta Paulus (Greens/EFA, Germany) is the rapporteur for this proposal to amend the EU regulation imposing a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) mechanism for emissions from shipping to bring it partially into line with the global system for collecting data on ship fuel consumption adopted by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in 2016.
The Council of the EU has already adopted its position (see EUROPE 12357/1). The vote in parliamentary committee was scheduled for 27 and 28 May. “A priori, there is no reason to postpone it”, a source told EUROPE. The plenary vote is scheduled for June.
Many of the proposals of the European Green Deal are still awaiting presentation, such as the communication on the farm to fork strategy and the communication on the biodiversity strategy for 2030, the presentation of which has been postponed until 29 April by the Commission, according to its provisional timetable. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang and Damien Genicot)