In view of the provisions set out in the draft Delegated Act to supplement the EU Taxonomy Regulation (2020/852), the European Commission would run the risk of an objection from the European Parliament if it decided not to amend the draft, said Bas Eickhout MEP (Greens/EFA, Netherlands), one of the Parliament’s two rapporteurs on Taxonomy, in an exchange with the press on Wednesday 14 April.
“I think the Commission should do the math and not open up a second front [against the Delegated Act]”, said Mr Eickhout, while expressing the intention of the Greens/EFA to vote against the delegated act, if the provisional version unveiled by the press at the end of March (see EUROPE 12684/3) is not modified.
The Greens/EFA criticise, in particular, the criteria for including forestry activities in the taxonomy. Mr Eickhout criticised the Commission for giving in to lobbying from Sweden and Finland, two countries with a particularly large forestry industry.
The environmentalists also consider the criteria for bioenergy and gas in the draft to be too weak.
According to the Dutch MEP, by presenting a Delegated Act similar to the March version, the Commission risks facing double opposition in the Parliament: from far-right MEPs who usually vote against ‘European Green Deal’ initiatives and from left-wing groups such as the Greens/EFA and The Left, as well as part of the S&D.
However, it is not certain that these two fronts would be sufficient to reject the Delegated Act (as a reminder, the Parliament does not have the power to amend delegated acts), as such a decision requires an absolute majority in the Parliament, i.e. 353 votes.
The attitude of Paris raises questions
Mr Eickhout also regretted France’s attitude in this matter.
“In order to defend the inclusion of nuclear power in the taxonomy, France is willing to join a fossil coalition, pro-gas, with the central European countries”, he said.
Luxembourg’s Minister for Energy, Claude Turmes, recently expressed a similar position after Emmanuel Macron and his Czech, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovenian and Polish counterparts sent a joint letter to the Commission calling for equal treatment of all zero- and low-emission technologies (including nuclear) in EU policies, including taxonomy (see EUROPE 12685/23).
One criticism after another
While the official presentation of the Delegated Act is, for the time being, still scheduled for 21 April, criticism and reactions to the Commission have been pouring in from all sides since the publication of the preliminary draft (see EUROPE 12697/13).
In addition to reactions from stakeholders (see EUROPE 12690/13, 12696/7), Simona Bonafè MEP (Italy) and Paul Tang MEP (Netherlands), the S&D Group’s shadow rapporteurs on taxonomy, sent a letter to the institution to express their concerns. In particular, they are concerned that investments in certain gas-fired power plants may be classified as “taxonomy compliant”.
In a totally counter-current letter signed by 80 MEPs from five of the Parliament’s political groups (ECR, EPP, Renew Europe, ID and S&D), Jerzy Buzek (ECR, Poland) and Bogdan Rzońca (ECR, Poland) called on the Commission to “acknowledge the role of gaseous fuels”, notably natural gas, as an “enabling and bridging technology”.
The letter calls for the proposed CO2 emission performance standard to be raised to a “level technically feasible” for state-of-the-art gas generation (the draft proposal has a cap of 100g CO2/kWh). They also want the ‘do no significant harm’ benchmark to be set at a “realistic and science-based level” of at least 380g CO2/kWh, rather than 270g CO2/kWh.
According to these 80 signatories, the deadline for the gas plant replacing a high-emission plant (e.g. a coal-fired power plant) to be operational should be set at 2030, rather than 2025.
Surprised by this outpouring of reactions when the official version of the Delegated Act has not yet been presented, the Commission, for its part, told us that it “remains committed to delivering a Taxonomy that is a robust, science-based transparency tool, for companies and investors to help them make the sustainable investment decisions, which will ensure we meet the Green Deal targets”.
They added: “Our work on the screening criteria is based on scientific evidence, and these criteria must be usable by market participants and acceptable by the co-legislators”.
See the MEPs’ letters: https://bit.ly/3dfLnW8 and https://bit.ly/3e02pa5 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)