The adoption by the Council of the European Union of the Regulation laying down the basis for a taxonomy for sustainable finance (see EUROPE 12468/30) is the culmination of a process that was long and winding, as negotiations between Member States and then with the European Parliament were difficult.
Nevertheless, the results of the vote, which were made public, on Friday 17 April, saw old disagreements resurface, such as the use of delegated acts, which was heavily criticised by the EU Council, or the inclusion of nuclear and gas, which was the subject of a fierce battle (see EUROPE 12381/13), but there were also new sticking points.
The only country to oppose the adoption of the regulation was Sweden, due to concerns about the treatment of sustainable forest management and forest policy in taxonomy.
The country, supported on this issue by the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany, explained that it wanted a “clear and unambiguous reference” to Forest Europe ’s definition of 'sustainable forest management', which is internationally recognised, but was not maintained in the final compromise text.
If, for the first vote in the EU Council on the outcome of the inter-institutional negotiations in December 2019, Austria, Hungary and Poland had voted against the text (see EUROPE 12393/20), this time they abstained, as did Bulgaria.
In a lengthy statement, Poland explained that “the current text leaves too much room for interpretation on key issues”, which are left to be decided in Level 2 acts, which will also be adopted “with too little involvement of the Member States”.
Specifically, Poland criticised the text for not directly including natural gas and nuclear energy in the taxonomy. “ Without these investments, Poland's energy transformation will slow down significantly, to be potentially harmful to the EU's climate policy”, warns Warsaw.
In a joint statement, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia also maintain that nuclear energy is “a sustainable and safe energy source in the long term”. On the other hand, Austria and Luxembourg regretted that the text leaves the door open to unsustainable activities, such as nuclear energy.
It should be recalled that, in its final recommendations (see EUROPE 12442/14), the technical expert group on sustainable finance had not made a decision, considering that further technical work on the issue was still needed.
See the results of the vote: https://bit.ly/34GD7ss (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)