On Friday 16 February, the permanent representatives of the Member States to the EU will vote on the provisional agreement reached by the co-legislators on Tuesday 6 February on the Net-Zero Industry Act (see EUROPE 13344/4). According to our information, there should be no problem in securing a qualified majority in its favour. EUROPE has had access to the consolidated text of the agreement, which must however be cleaned up before the vote.
The draft regulation lists around fifteen types of ‘net zero emission’ technology, but also plans to include others: the list also mentions “transformative industrial technologies for decarbonisation that are not covered by the previous categories”.
The negotiators have taken up Parliament’s position and abolished the second list of so-called “strategic” technologies in favour of a single list. However, ‘strategic’ projects may be identified and benefit from additional advantages. Article 10 defines the criteria: projects must contribute to the resilience of the EU and be sustainable. The European Commission will have to adopt an implementing regulation providing guidelines on the selection criteria for strategic projects, in order to ensure uniform application.
Details are provided on the conditions for access to public procurement. Sustainability criteria will have to be applied, and these will be defined by the Commission in an implementing regulation.
In addition, the Commission will have to assess the level of dependence of certain technologies on a third country. For technologies or components for which dependencies have been identified, authorities will have to apply additional criteria in their public procurement procedures. For example, promoters will not have to source more than 50% of the value of the net zero emission technology from a single third country (identified by the Commission). The same applies to producers of components for ‘net zero emission’ technology.
The logic of contributing to the Union’s resilience also applies to public auctions: the regulation provides for a pre-qualification criterion for projects, which takes into account the percentage of the technology that comes from a third country. The proportion must not exceed 50% of the technology or of the components useful for a technology. In addition, projects must either demonstrate greater environmental sustainability or be a ‘state-of-the-art solution’.
If the Member States approve the current text on Friday 16 February, the members of the European Parliament’s Industry Committee will in turn be able to validate the agreement on 22 February. The rest of the European Parliament will then be able to vote on the text in April, so that it can be formally adopted before the elections.
See consolidated text: https://aeur.eu/f/avi (Original version in Frency by Léa Marchal)