According to information obtained by EUROPE, MEP Markus Pieper (EPP, German) sent an email to the European Commission on Friday 3 February to inform it of his intention to cancel the next session of interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’) on the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), for which he is the European Parliament’s rapporteur. The reason for this is the Commission’s delay in publishing the delegated act to establish the criteria for renewable hydrogen.
Scheduled for 7 February, the trilogue is supposed to focus on the chapters of the revision of RED II on bioenergy, the use of renewable energy in transport and joint projects for renewable energy production.
The shadow rapporteur of the Renew Europe group, Christophe Grudler (French), denounced this as a “political coup”. In his view, there is “no serious reason to postpone Tuesday’s trilogue”, except to “try to twist the Commission’s arm to force it to adopt a definition of renewable hydrogen that would open the doors to monumental greenwashing”.
While he too calls on the Commission to publish the delegated act on renewable hydrogen as soon as possible, he believes that cancelling the next trilogue will only further delay the legislative work.
At the time of going to press, neither the Commission nor the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council had reacted to Mr Pieper’s email. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)