In a joint meeting on Tuesday 14 June, the European Parliament’s Environment (ENVI) and Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) Committees approved by a narrow majority an objection to the European Commission’s draft delegated act to include nuclear energy and fossil gas in the EU taxonomy.
Adopted in 2020, the EU Taxonomy Regulation (2020/852) aims to classify, through technical criteria, certain economic activities as environmentally sustainable in order to guide private investors towards these activities.
On 2 February 2022, the European Commission presented a draft delegated act to include certain fossil gas and nuclear energy activities in the taxonomy under the category ‘transitional activities’ (see EUROPE 12882/1), prompting a wave of criticism (see EUROPE 12912/20, 12953/25, 12911/22).
Within the Parliament, some MEPs decided to table a draft resolution to reject the draft delegated act (see EUROPE 12957/20).
A cross-group majority
While the result of the vote in ENVI and ECON is known (76 votes in favour, 62 against and 4 abstentions), the details of the votes per MEP are not. The S&D group chose to withdraw its request for a roll-call vote just before the start of the vote.
Nevertheless, some of the positions expressed after the vote and the reactions to it give an idea of who made up the majority in favour of the objection.
The S&D, Greens/EFA and The Left groups welcomed the opposition of both committees to the draft delegated act.
“Gas and nuclear might still be necessary to meet energy needs and still useful in the transition to a climate neutral EU. However, gas and nuclear power are certainly neither green nor sustainable”, reacted Simona Bonafè (Italy), S&D Vice-President and shadow rapporteur on the taxonomy regulation.
For Damien Carême (Greens/EFA, France), the MEPs’ vote sends a clear signal to the Commission that “the EU will only be credible if, and only if, only truly sustainable energies that contribute to a credible climate and environmental policy are labelled as such”.
While the majority that voted in favour of the objection to the delegated act is largely composed of members of the Greens/EFA, S&D and The Left groups, it also includes members of the EPP and Renew Europe, a source told EUROPE, based on its calculations.
According to our information, the EPP group did not give voting instructions to its members, which is a sign of the divisions within the group on this issue.
Some of its members, such as Sirpa Pietikainen (Finland), Othmar Karas (Austria), Christophe Hansen (Luxembourg) and Peter Liese (Germany), welcomed the outcome of the vote.
The Renew Europe group also seems divided. While six of its members are among the 15 MEPs who initiated the objection (see EUROPE 12967/24), the French delegation of the group is said to have a majority in favour of the delegated act.
Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, France), Chair of the ENVI committee, published a long post on LinkedIn in which he explains why he did not support the objection.
For its part, the ECR group told us that its members had voted against the objection, thus in favour of including gas and nuclear in the EU taxonomy.
Alexandr Vondra (Czech Republic), coordinator of the ECR group in the ENVI committee, said that these two energy sources should not “be disadvantaged in terms of financial support”, as nuclear is “the only way to quickly make the transition to climate neutrality in Europe” and the EU “will also still need gas-fired power plants during the transition period”.
Uncertain outcome in plenary
The objection to the draft delegated act will now be put to the vote of all MEPs at the Parliament’s plenary session from 4 to 7 July.
The outcome of this vote remains highly uncertain, as the adoption of the objection requires an absolute majority, i.e. 353 votes in favour (half of the MEPs + 1 vote), whereas the vote in the parliamentary committee was based on the simple majority rule.
If the Parliament approves the objection, the Commission will be obliged to withdraw or amend its draft delegated act.
See the objection: https://aeur.eu/f/1rf (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)