The Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) adopted its opinion on the revision of the Energy Taxation Directive (ETD) with 55 votes in favour, 9 against and 11 abstentions.

Henrike Hahn, Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA) and shadow rapporteur on the ITRE Committee, comments:

"The revision of the Energy Taxation Directive is a great opportunity to bring the taxation of energy products in line with the climate and environmental goals of the European Union and the Green Deal.

We were able to achieve that a mandatory reduction or exemption of taxation is required exclusively for the following purposes:

• the development of sustainable products in the field of renewable energies
• the consumption of renewable energy,
• fuel cells powered by renewable fuels of non-biological origin,
• renewable energy produced, consumed, stored and shared by self-suppliers, energy communities, etc.

To a limited extent, our request for strong green conditionality for granting reduced tax rates to businesses was also included in the opinion.

Besides these positive points, there are also negative ones:

It was important for the EPP - Group to prevent the important indexation proposed by the Commission. This means that the new tax rates, expressed in EUR/gigajoule, will become meaningless in a few years because they will not be automatically adjusted to inflation.

In this way, the EPP group torpedoes the energy taxation in the sense of the Green Deal and undermines it from inside - such a political decision in times of war in Europe and in the face of the climate crisis is completely absurd.

We need to get away from fossil and nuclear energy and towards renewables even more so in times of war in Europe and in the face of climate crisis. The Energy Taxation Directive is an important instrument to get the energy transition on track, which is necessary for climate and geopolitical reasons.

Despite many Green contents in the current draft of the Energy Taxation Directive, we Greens /EFA voted with abstention in the final vote in the Industry Committee today due to the amendments initiated by the EPP."

 

Background:

The ETD is part of the F55 package and aims to bring the taxation of energy products in line with the EU's energy and climate goals by promoting "cleaner" technologies and eliminating exemptions or reduced tax rates.

It aims to introduce a new structure of tax rates based on the energy content and, to some extent, the environmental performance of fuels and electricity, and broadens the tax base by including more products in its scope.

An important pillar of this reform was the so-called indexation, i.e. the authorization of the Commission to adjust the minimum tax rates to inflation.