Today’s vote in the EP against the Taxonomy Delegated act on natural gas and nuclear energy fell.
On 14 June, 2022 a Joint Committee of the environment and economic committee backed the challenge.
As a delegated act, a challenge needed to get 353 votes in favour to veto the Commission’s delegated act. It is hard to reach.
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As a rule of thumb, I presume that the full Parliament will not follow the EP Environment Committee line exactly. On secondary legislation challenges, I put the margin of difference at around 10-20% of the vote in plenary. So, if you want to win in plenary, you need a healthy margin of over 20% of the vote.
When the Joint Committee voted, they backed the challenge by 53% for, and 43% against.
In the vote today, the percentages switched with 43% for, and 53% against.
The vote today was rare in that many EU leaders intervened to gather support against the support. The Slovak PM recently intervened. It would be interesting to get hold of voting lists sent by national governments to their delegations. The Commission, as is usual, will have been working the phones.
Nuclear power is a difficult issue. It is in the EU treaties. Gas has been difficult due to, amongst other things, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
So, this is a file that is unusual in many ways. It is not a standard delegated act challenge but still reflects the high threshold the EP need to surpass to secure 353 votes.