The European Commission confirmed on Thursday 15 July, during a discussion with members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), that nuclear energy will be included in the delegated act intended to complete the first delegated act on the European Union’s taxonomy, presented at the end of April.
Expected by the end of the year (see EUROPE 12703/2), this complementary delegated act “will cover nuclear energy activity”, once the evaluation of the opinions of the group of national experts established by the Euratom Treaty and of the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) has been completed, said Cristina Lobillo Borrero, member of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy (DG ENER).
She did not, however, give any details on how the nuclear issue will be dealt with in this act.
The two opinions of the expert group and the SCHEER, published on 2 July, aimed to assess the report of the Commission’s in-house scientific service (the Joint Research Centre or JRC) that there is, to the JRC’s knowledge, “no scientific evidence that nuclear power is more damaging to human health or the environment than other power generation technologies already included in the taxonomy”.
While both assessments are generally positive, the SCHEER has however identified weaknesses in the JRC document, particularly on the issue of waste (see EUROPE 12754/7).
A point raised by Jutta Paulus MEP (Greens/EFA, Germany). “The SCHEER is not the only body that is criticising the JRC approach. For example the German ‘BASE’, which is the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (...) also said that the JRC report is very incomplete in this matter and that they disagree with the findings of the JRC report as they’ve been made”, she said.
Nicolás González Casares (S&D, Spain) expressed concern that the JRC had focused too much on the normal operation of nuclear power plants, omitting the issue of exceptional circumstances such as accidents.
“The study seems to us to be quite complete”, said French MEP Joëlle Mélin (ID), while considering that “any report can have its critics”.
François-Xavier Bellamy (EPP) and Dominique Riquet (Renew Europe), both also from France, questioned the respect of the principle of technological neutrality, pointing out that no other energy (hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, etc.) had been subject to such scrutiny. A point also made by Robert Roos (ECR, The Netherlands).
Welcoming the JRC’s work, Christian Ehler (EPP, Germany) said that this kind of scientific advice is “what we need for political decision-making”.
In addition to dividing MEPs, the issue of including nuclear power in the EU taxonomy is also a source of intense debate between Member States (see EUROPE 12761/3). (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)