MEPs split over vehicle fuel quality

A move to include sustainability criteria in rules on vehicle fuel quality has divided MEPs and provoked arguments over European Commission decision-making procedures.

The criteria would be added through an amendment proposed by Dorette Corbey, the Dutch Socialist MEP responsible for guiding the fuel quality directive (FQD) through the European Parliament. The amendment says that environmental standards must be added to the FQD proposal, which is expected to lead to an increase in the use of plant-based biofuels.

Claude Turmes, shadow FQD rapporteur for the Greens, agrees that MEPs have a responsibility to ensure that biofuels do not lead to the destruction of natural habitats, an increase in food prices, or an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide.

"We are not the best body to go into the fine print," Turmes said, "but we should fix the basic criteria - for example a carbon calculator mechanism - and next year the details can be worked out through comitology [a Commission decision-making process]."

But the largest Parliament group, the centre-right EPP-ED, says that sustainability criteria in the FQD would undermine Commission work to draw up standards as part of a biofuels directive, due in December.

"This is meant to be about fuel quality but it has ended up being a debate on biofuels," said EPP-ED rapporteur Pilar Ayuso. "This is not the right place - it is pre-empting a proposal the Commission is going to make."

Nassauer Schnellhardt, another EPP-ED member, told Parliament’s environment committee: "Please don’t include things which are counterproductive."

But Turmes said that the Commission would be prevented from drawing up adequate sustainability criteria because of disagreement between the Commission’s departments for environment (ENV) and transport and energy (TREN). "Handing the responsibility for sustainability criteria to TREN under the biofuels directive was inconsistent," he said, adding that this led "to problems between the two departments".

DG TREN and DG ENV officials say that sustainability criteria can most effectively be drawn up under the biofuels directive and that there is no clash of interest between departments. "The Commission is working on these criteria," said one official.

A move to include sustainability criteria in rules on vehicle fuel quality has divided MEPs and provoked arguments over European Commission decision-making procedures.