The draft directive is on the agenda of today’s Energy Council, with member states’ positions already very clear.
A majority of EU countries refuse a binding energy savings target, but will accept binding "measures" as long as their implementation is “flexible”.
Martin Lidegaard, the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Building who will be chairing the ministerial talks in Brussels, said: “No one wants to move from this. There are no suggestions in the Council that we’ll make the target binding. And we won’t change it either – it was the Council that set it, after all”.
But sources in the European Parliament claim that the battle over targets is far from being lost as the assembly has equal say on the draft directive.
Claude Turmes, a Green MEP from Luxembourg who is seeing the draft directive through Parliament, told EurActiv he is going to push for both binding targets and binding measures, and will look at ways of introducing specific instruments to finance energy efficiency.
Parliament to fast-track bill
For this, Turmes needs support from all political groups. His intention is to start negotiations on the bill with the member states in the Council immediately after the draft is voted in the Parliament's energy and transport committee (ITRE) on 28 February.
This would be a fast-track procedure aimed at reaching an agreement during the current Danish presidency of the EU, which ends on 1 July. The next EU presidency, Cyprus, has indeed no intention of making the directive a priority and this might postpone negotiations until the Irish presidency in 2013, EU sources told EurActiv.
A fast-track procedure would mean that the European Parliament does not need to hold a plenary vote before negotiations between Parliament, the Danish presidency and member states can start.
Member states have conflicting positions on the current text of the bill, a Danish presidency source said, adding that “we must introduce more flexibility” to meet their needs.
Introducing such flexibility would require strong supervision from both the EU and the national side to implement the directive. Member states would for instance have to document whether there are more cost-efficient ways of increasing energy efficiency at national level if they wish to opt out of the measures written in the directive.
“This is why we want to start negotiations as soon as the ITRE vote is done,” the Danish source said.
EPP appears divided
The stakes are high at the national level as economic challenges make environmental measures more difficult to pass. Some MEPs tend to adopt the position of their country on the issue, an EU source told EurActiv, and “some are just against it,” he said.
The assembly's largest political faction, the European People’s Party (EPP), is the most divided on the measures and targets laid down in the proposed directive. Their MEPs are most likely to follow the Council's common position on the bill.
According to the same source, there is a "worrying enough number" of MEPs from the EPP group who are expressing support for binding targets, but only in exchange for deleting an obligation on energy companies to make 1.5% national savings on an annual basis.
This would create virtually no negotiation basis with the Council, some legislators fear. Activists close to the legislative process on the bill describe the attitude of some MEPs as “procedural tricks and tactics they have used to try and delay the vote in ITRE and the start of the negotiations with the Council”.
Still, the Socialists, Liberals and Greens in Parliament support an ambitious approach on the bill, with a majority likely to emerge on this position.
Flexibility, subsidiarity and proportionality are the main reasons invoked by those MEPs who are still divided on the issue, according to sources in the Danish presidency.
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