Meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday 5 July, MEPs appeared sharply divided over the European Commission’s draft delegated act to include certain fossil gas and nuclear energy activities in the EU taxonomy as ‘transitional’ activities, ahead of a vote on a proposed objection to the delegated act.
Presented on 2 February 2022 (see EUROPE 12882/1), the draft delegated act received a wave of criticism, notably within the Parliament (see EUROPE 12912/20, 12953/25, 12911/22).
The main criticism is that it undermines the essence of the EU Taxonomy Regulation (2020/852), which is to identify, through technical criteria, economic activities that can be considered environmentally sustainable in order to guide private investors.
This criticism was again voiced by many MEPs in a plenary debate after Wednesday’s vote.
A vote likely to be close
This vote will be particularly close, stressed several MEPs such as Christophe Hansen (EPP, Luxembourg) and Paul Tang (S&D, Netherlands).
According to the former, the number of MEPs in favour of rejecting the delegated act is growing within the EPP, which gives him hope that he will be able to gather an absolute majority (353 votes) behind the objection proposal.
At a press conference calling for a vote in favour of the objection, Mr Hansen confirmed that the EPP group will decide on Tuesday evening whether to instruct its members to vote in favour, a sign of the continuing divisions between national delegations.
He then recommended that a roll-call vote not be taken. In his view, this would increase the chances of the draft delegated act being rejected, as some MEPs would then be able to vote based more on their convictions, without being influenced by national political contexts.
Speaking in the press room a few hours later, the president of the Renew Europe group, Stéphane Séjourné (France), was, on the contrary, confident that the delegated act would be approved.
He said that between 70 and 80% of groups may either abstain or vote against the rejection proposal.
Emma Wiesner (Renew Europe, Sweden) said she was “very disappointed” by her group’s position and called for a vote in favour of the objection proposal. She indicated that there would be no voting indication for Renew Europe.
For the S&D group, Mr Tang acknowledged that the Finnish and Romanian delegations would vote against the objection, thus going against the group’s position, while other delegations were still deciding or were divided.
While the Greens/EFA and The Left will mainly support the objection proposal, the ECR and ID groups are expected to vote against it by a majority.
Russian invasion of Ukraine part of the debate
The divisions between and within some of the Parliament’s political groups were again expressed in the plenary debate.
For Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Netherlands), the Parliament’s co-rapporteur on the taxonomy regulation, including nuclear power in the taxonomy is “a pure political game played by France”. He added: “the criteria (framing the inclusion in the taxonomy of certain nuclear-related activities in the taxonomy) are written by France, for the benefit of France only”.
Like many other speakers, he also criticised the gas element of the draft delegated act, referring to Moscow’s war in Ukraine and the need to move the EU away from its dependence on Russian gas. In his view, the draft delegated act provides a green label for gas by establishing conditions with which Russian gas will be able to comply, while imports of liquefied natural gas used as a substitute for Russian gas do not fall within the scope of the text.
“The taxonomy that is being presented now does not take into account the new geopolitical reality and it is built on the previous position of easy availability of cheap Russian gas. That is why we are calling for the document to be reconsidered”, added Inna Sovsun, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament invited to speak at a press conference.
Defending the draft delegated act before MEPs, EU Financial Services Commissioner Mairead McGuinness said that the text “does not deepen our dependence on Russian gas”, as it “sends a signal that we support investment in gas infrastructure - power plants - during our transition”. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)