Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) on Monday 27 September rejected by a large majority three proposed objections to the delegated act proposed by the European Commission to complete the climate part of the EU taxonomy.
Presented on 21 April, this delegated act establishes technical criteria to define which activities substantially contribute to climate change adaptation or mitigation—two of the six environmental objectives foreseen by the regulation (2020/852) on taxonomy adopted in June 2020 (see EUROPE 12509/12)—while doing no significant harm to any of the other six objectives.
However, some of these criteria have been the subject of much criticism (see EUROPE 12704/15), particularly from MEPs and Member States (see EUROPE 12737/13, 12720/5).
The proposed objection that received the most votes in favour (34 votes in favour and 92 against)—put forward by Nicola Beer (Renew Europe, Germany), Jessica Polfjärd (EPP, Sweden), Andreas Glück (Renew Europe, Germany), and Emma Wiesner (Renew Europe, Sweden)—thus considers that the delegated act is in contradiction with the objectives of the taxonomy regulation.
It also called on the Commission to ensure that the taxonomy remains “a voluntary, robust, science-based transparency and disclosure tool directed at private actors and aimed at enabling the transformation towards climate neutrality by creating investment security, protecting private investors and consumers from greenwashing and helping companies to become more climate-friendly”.
As it is a delegated act, the European Parliament does not have the power to revise it. However, it has a period of 4 months (from 7 June to 7 October) to object.
This is still possible, as Parliament’s Rules of Procedure provide for the possibility of a political group or one twentieth of the MEPs requesting to put this topic on the agenda of the next plenary session of Parliament.
See the objection proposals: https://bit.ly/2Y80pZf (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)