Recalling the European Commission’s commitment to the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, the European Commission’s Director General for Energy Services (DG ENER), Ditte Juul Jørgensen, acknowledged that their phasing out represents a challenge for the European Union on Tuesday 27 October during a debate on National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) with the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE).
According to an annex to the 2020 Report on the State of the Energy Union published by the Commission on 14 October, fossil fuel subsidies in the EU amounted to 50 billion euros in 2018, an increase of 6% since 2015 (see EUROPE 12582/18).
Faced with this finding, the Commission promised to “intensify efforts to reduce subsidies and redirect them (...) towards measures to promote the energy transition”.
Asked by Michael Bloss (Greens/EFA, Germany) how the Commission intends to proceed when Croatia, Estonia and Malta have no plans to phase out these subsidies, Mrs Jørgensen first recalled that the EU has “a collective engagement to phase out fossil subsidies”.
“Clearly, that is an area that we will be taking out with member States and to try to make sure that all Member States do live up to that collective commitment”, she added, while stressing that these subsidies “constitute a significant impediment and barrier to investments into clean technologies and therefore slow down the transition”.
She went on to acknowledge that the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies constitutes a “challenge”, as such a decision at EU level requires unanimity of the Member States.
Implementation of the NECPs
Like Maria Carvalho (EPP, Portugal), several MEPs questioned the Director-General on the importance of ensuring the implementation of the measures provided for in the Member States’ NECPs, particularly in the field of energy efficiency, an area in where the EU is particularly lagging behind on these objectives (see EUROPE 12562/2, 12582/18).
Mrs Jørgensen then assured that the Commission was currently working to strengthen its capacity to work with the countries of the Union, in order to conduct a close dialogue and cooperation with them “on a day to day basis”.
She did not mention, however, the possibility of using infringement proceedings in the event, for example, that a Member State fails to meet its energy efficiency targets. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)