On Thursday 22 February, members of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) turned down the motion to reject the list of priority energy infrastructure projects (PCIs) (delegated act to Regulation 2022/869) by 11 votes in favour, 50 against and 2 abstentions.
This motion was tabled by Marie Toussaint on behalf of the Greens/EFA group, Cornelia Ernst (The Left, German), Marisa Matias (The Left, Portuguese), Nora Mebarek (S&D, French), Marina Mesure (The Left, French), and aimed to object to this list, which currently includes two controversial gas infrastructure projects.
These MEPs deplore the fact that the Melita TransGas pipeline project between Malta and Italy is linked to the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia while she was investigating a major concealment of internal documents by the operator ElectroGas Malta Ltd and that this pipeline, estimated at €400 million, “would lock Malta in a dirty fossil fuel future for decades to come”.
The second gas pipeline project, EastMed, is criticised for its potential to rekindle tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, in particular by fuelling the conflict between Greece and Cyprus on the one hand and Turkey on the other. It would also create risks in the context of regional conflicts in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Libya.
Finally, the MEPs state that total annual greenhouse gas emissions from fossil gas supplied by the EastMed pipeline, including methane leaks, would amount to 27.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
The motion to reject also called for only hydrogen from renewable energy sources to be authorised, and for emissions to be reduced at source rather than favouring certain CO2 transport and storage (CCS) projects.
To view the motion to reject: https://aeur.eu/f/ay5 (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)