Fossil fuel subsidies have increased in eleven European Union member states since 2015, namely Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia, the European Commission said, on Tuesday 26 October, in an annex to its ‘2021 report on the State of the Energy Union’ (see EUROPE 12820/3).
While some countries, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Greece or Ireland, have managed to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, they have increased by 4% between 2015 and 2019 in the EU as a whole.
“The results of this study confirm that the EU and its Member States have to do more to reduce fossil fuel subsidies”, the Commission therefore commented.
Subsidies for fossil fuels, on the other hand, have decreased slightly from 2019 to 2020, from €56 billion to €52 billion. However, this result is explained by lower consumption in the context of the Covid-19 restrictions.
The figures for 2020 should also be treated with caution, the institution warned, as the data used was incomplete.
According to the paper, total energy subsidies in the EU amounted to €176 billion in 2019, of which €16 billion went to energy efficiency, an increase of 43% since 2015, and €78 billion to renewable energy (+8% since 2015).
See the annex: https://bit.ly/2XPzYHI (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)