The Paris agreements on climate change and the energy transition
14.7.2016
Question for written answer P-005796-16
to the Commission
Rule 130
Marco Affronte (EFDD) , Isabella Adinolfi (EFDD) , Tiziana Beghin (EFDD) , Fabio Massimo Castaldo (EFDD) , Dario Tamburrano (EFDD) , Eleonora Evi (EFDD)
The European Union is proud of the Paris agreements on climate change that it signed in December 2015 following COP21. It is therefore now officially committed to an energy transition that should lead to an abandonment of fossil fuels to the benefit of renewable energies.
Unfortunately, however, on the eve of the 14th round of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Friends of the Earth published some EU proposals (http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/eu-us_trade_deal/2016/foee-ttip-energy-raw-material-analysis.pdf) to its negotiating partner that go completely in the opposite direction and appear to be undermining this transition. Amongst other things, the EU is calling for a removal of the restrictions on gas trading (the EU wants to import shale gas from the USA) and wants to give companies the freedom to determine how, and at what cost, to make their own products energy efficient.
There also appears to be an impending dual energy ‘cartel’, to put pressure on countries (especially third world countries) to weaken their environmental laws in order to facilitate the extraction of raw materials and fossil hydrocarbons.
Can the Commission therefore say:
- —What goals, consistent with those declared in COP21, are being achieved with these proposals?
- —Does it not consider the abovementioned proposals to be totally at odds with climate change strategies and with the agreements concluded during COP21?