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It is not often that delegated acts get caught up in the mills of big politics. In the case of the supplementary legal act to the Taxonomy Regulation, that is exactly what has happened. The EU Commission has now extended the deadline until January 21st for member states and experts to comment on its draft. This should actually have ended on Wednesday, but the need for discussion is great.
Even within the traffic light coalition: SPD, FDP, and Greens have not yet reached an agreement on Germany’s position on the classification of nuclear power and natural gas. The rejection announced by Minister of the Environment Steffi Lemke (Greens) over the weekend relates solely to the inclusion of nuclear power in the taxonomy, her spokesperson clarified yesterday. The federal government is “still in the process of coordinating” its position on the legal act as a whole.
The Commission has contributed to this muddle. It had announced that it would base the classification solely on scientific criteria. However, the draft sent out on New Year’s Eve contains a number of weaknesses, as Charlotte Wirth points out in her analysis. For example, the supposedly strict safety requirements for nuclear power plants are formulated laxly. The nuclear lobby also criticizes the authority for unnecessarily committing itself to one approach to the unresolved question of final storage. A new report commissioned by Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German Environmental Aid) even considers the Commission’s draft to be illegal – read more about this in the news.
The taxonomy topic has only been present in the general public for a few weeks. In Europe.Table, it has been from the very beginning: Already in mid-August, in the 6th issue of our briefings, Charlotte Wirth had pointed out the gaps in the report of the Commission’s own research unit JRC. We have closely followed the discussion over the past months, and our readers were not surprised by any turn of events.
Today you are already reading the 100th issue of Europe.Table. Many more will follow. I explicitly invite you to be part of the further development: Tell me what you like about Europe.Table and what we can do better: till.hoppe@table.media.
Another topic that is still underestimated by many: Standards and norms. At the beginning of February, the Commission intends to present its new standardization strategy. Long reserved for experts, the field is now being used as an “industrial and geopolitical instrument,” warns Jochen Reinschmidt of the ZVEI in his guest article. Europe must therefore position itself more strategically.
Till Hoppe
Feature
Nuclear power in the taxonomy draft: a text with weaknesses
One person, in particular, will have been pleased with the draft taxonomy that the European Commission sent to member states shortly before midnight on December 31st: French EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton. “We need nuclear power to become climate neutral. Therefore, it was always clear that it must not be excluded from the taxonomy,” Breton recently told the “Journal du Dimanche“.
It was Breton and his home country, France, who fought to ensure that investments in nuclear power could be written off as “green” in the future. “Political pressure was exerted from the very beginning, through all channels,” says Carole Dieschbourg, Luxembourg’s environment minister, describing the path to the delegated act. Indeed, Emmanuel Macron has the greatest interest in ensuring that investments in nuclear power are considered sustainable, as France has decided to rely on this energy source in particular on its way to climate neutrality.
Others are less pleased with the draft legislation. For the nuclear industry, the proposal does not go far enough. In fact, nuclear power is listed only as a transitional technology in the draft taxonomy. “This is not justified,” finds Jessica Johnson of FORATOM, the mouthpiece of the European nuclear industry. “Nuclear power meets the premises of Do No Significant Harm and is CO2 neutral. It should be treated the same as sustainable energy sources.”
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