On Tuesday 29 November, at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the revision of the energy efficiency directive (EED), Niels Fuglsang (S&D, Danish), expressed serious doubts about the ability of EU co-legislators to reach an agreement on the dossier before the end of the year.
“We still have a long way to go. It would of course be nice to finish with the Czech Presidency (which ends on 31 December 2022), but it is not for sure that it is possible”, said the rapporteur, while taking stock of the interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’).
He indicated that discussions were focused on two issues in particular: the setting of energy efficiency targets (Article 4) and energy saving obligations (Article 8).
While the European Parliament wants to raise the EU’s 2030 energy reduction target to 14.5% (compared to the 2020 baseline projections), the EU Council is advocating a rate of 9%. This position is unacceptable to the rapporteur, given that the European Commission has proposed a target of 13%.
The EU Council also rejects the proposal of MEPs to make binding the national contributions of Member States to this target.
On the second point, the European Parliament advocates raising the obligation to reduce Member States’ final energy consumption to 2% per year between the years of 2024 and 2030, compared to 1.5% for the EU Council and the European Commission.
“We have a lot of hard work in front of us. We will be looking at whether it is possible to have a third trilogue before Christmas”, concluded Fuglsang. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)