A week before the publication of the European Commission’s ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ (see EUROPE 13582/1), the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament set out its expectations in a position paper published on Wednesday 19 February. This paper calls for the ambitions of the Green Deal to be pursued, and for “deregulation” to be avoided. It also highlights the funding needed to support the industry and the need for greater coordination between EU Member States.
In order to pursue the objective of carbon neutrality by 2050, the document mentions renewable energy production, cross-border network infrastructures and energy efficiency as “absolute priorities”. More specifically, the Greens/EFA are calling for the introduction of a ‘European Renewables Grids Act’, as well as the creation of a European authority for the planning of renewable infrastructures.
Speaking to the press, Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Dutch) said that the continuation of the ‘European Green Deal’ was the only possible option for ensuring the robustness of European industry. “It is really the Green Deal that has given this long term strategy. If we change direction, it will not help the industry, we will only create uncertainty and bring less money to Europe to invest in that transition”.
As far as investment is concerned, the Greens/EFA Group supports Mario Draghi’s proposal to use joint borrowing. “We ask the Commission to set up a new joint borrowing scheme to finance the Clean Industrial Deal. This money should not be invested through national programmes like the Recovery and Resilience Fund, but top up existing and new European support instruments like IPCEIs, the CEF, the next Framework Programme (FP10) and the Innovation Fund, including EU Carbon Contracts for Differences (CCfD)”, say the authors of the document.
In their view, the joint debt should be used to finance the future Competitiveness Fund.
The Greens/EFA also suggest a specific framework for state aid that contributes to a net zero emissions industry, an idea already put forward by the Commission in its new ‘Clean industry State Aid Framework’ (CISAF) (see EUROPE 13582/1).
Other proposals relating to the innovation fund, InvestEU and IPCEIs are also included in the policy paper.
To see all the proposals, go to https://aeur.eu/f/fks (Original version in French by Léa Marchal and Pauline Denys)