Commission’s environment, energy picks please MEPs

Brussels,14 January: The transition to a sustainable economy must be at the heart of all EU policies, said EU environment commissioner-designate Janez Potočnik during a three-hour grilling yesterday by the European Parliament’s environment committee.

The Slovenian politician denied that the economic crisis had toppled the environment from the top of the EU policy charts. “Investing in the environment is putting jobs first,” he said, provoking applause from Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

Potočnik said that “resource efficiency” had to be a key tenet of a sustainable economy, noting that such an approach was already becoming “second nature and more attractive to business”. He said he believed businesses were open to change if they had “legal certainty and a level playing field”. Industry needs policies that are “predictable and long-term”, he added.  

He suggested that public-private partnerships (PPPs), for example, could be used to help industry fund research and development programmes to facilitate adaptation to a sustainable economy, adding that market measures should also be used when suitable. “We are living in a market economy,” he said. “In some cases, the market is most efficient and in some cases legislation is most efficient.”

UK Independence Party MEP Paul Nuttall questioned the existence of man-made climate change and the need to introduce policies to move towards a low-carbon economy. Potočnik said he had learned in his previous job as commissioner for science and research that “scientists never agree about anything, but on climate change we have a prevailing view”. He said it would be “catastrophic” if this prevailing view was ignored and the predictions, as expected, were correct.

Günter Oettinger, nominee for EU energy commissioner, agreed during his hearing on the need for the EU to move towards a low-carbon economy. “I want the industrial competitiveness of the EU to be won back,”s he said, insisting that “green energy and smart grids” were essential to this.

He made it clear that nuclear power and fossil fuels also had their role to play in the EU’s future energy mix, but still managed to convince the Green Party of his environmental credentials.

Luxembourg Green MEP Claude Turmes said he particularly welcomed Oettinger’s “intention to include energy efficiency and renewables as financial planning priorities” and his commitment to “propose binding energy efficiency targets if it is clear that the existing non-binding targets are insufficient”.

Oettinger said the EU’s target of improving energy efficiency by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990s levels, was “very ambitious” and agreed that the EU needed “to take further measures in the next few years” to make sure it is reached. He confirmed that he would examine the policy in the spring and look at introducing “a new action plan at the beginning of next year”. He said he would also “in the next half year” examine how “EU subsidy programmes can put more emphasis on renewables and energy efficiency”.

Both commissioners demonstrated a solid knowledge of their portfolios and appeared to satisfy most MEPs, making them likely to be confirmed as members of the new Commission at the end of the month. On Friday morning, it is the turn of Danish minister Connie Hedegaard – nominated to take the newly created role of climate commissioner – to face MEPs .