REPowerEU must serve to tackle the energy crisis and to shelter European households and SMEs
Author: Alberto Cuena Vilches
Date:
The Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament welcomes today’s Plenary backing of a proposal for the inclusion of the REPowerEU chapters in the national Recovery and Resilience Plans, intended to offer Member States additional funds to accelerate the end of the EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, while tackling the current climate and energy crisis.
Thanks to the leadership of Renew Europe, the adopted text foresees cross-border projects with a great impact on energy generation, storage and interconnections along the EU as a priority (at least 35% of REPowerEU projects), while including targeted measures to shelter European vulnerable households and companies, especially SMEs.
Likewise, our political Group negotiated hard to improve the monitoring of the funds and secured adequate application of the Do No Significant Harm Principle (DNSH) to the reforms and investments contribution to the REPowerEU goals.
Finally, Renew Europe warns that it will be particularly vigilant to ensure that changes in national Recovery and Resilience plans are directly linked to the objectives of the REPowerEU, and that such changes are not a pretext to circumvent certain structural reforms at the national level.
MEP Dragoş Pîslaru (REPER, Romania), Renew Europe co-rapporteur on this file, declared:
“Today, guided by solidarity, ambition and flexibility, we provide the Member States with the tools to overcome this winter. We equip our continent with projects that will help us to cut our dependency on Russian fossil fuels. We invest in our continent to make it more sustainable for our next generations. REPowerEU will allow governments to improve their recovery plans with extra investments for more energy efficiency, for tackling energy poverty and for greener energy resources”.
MEP Eva Poptcheva (Ciudadanos, Spain), Renew Europe Budget shadow rapporteur on this file, added:
“REPowerEU is another historic milestone for the European Union. With this text we adapt the recovery funds to the current energy crisis. REPowerEU is not about improving energy supply in Poland or storage in Spain. REPowerEU is about ensuring that no household or business ever lacks energy on European soil”.