Experts: France will not submit its national energy and climate plan to Brussels on time

3 months ago 9

Given the current political situation in France, it is almost impossible for the government to submit its national energy and climate plan (NECP) to the European Commission by the 30 June deadline, according to several French energy and climate experts.

Since the dissolution of the National Assembly, energy and climate issues have been relegated to the background. As a result, France’s submission of its NECP, which summarises France’s climate and energy objectives for the coming years, is delayed.

“I have received messages from ministerial advisers who say that (…) it will be very difficult to submit the NECP before 30 June,” Nicolas Goldberg, head of progressive think-tank TerraNova’s energy hub, told Euractiv.

The date by which all 27 final NECPs need to be submitted to the European Commission. The plans are a core component of the EU’s climate governance framework.

Countries submitted draft reports to the Commission in Summer 2023. The 30 June deadline is for final NECPs, meant to reflect the Commission’s feedback on the initial drafts.

“The political situation and the uncertainty it creates could delay communication,” Brice Lalonde, President of the think tank Équilibre des énergies and former French Environment Minister, commented to Euractiv.

A source familiar with ministerial operations confirmed to Euractiv, that only day-to-day management issues will now be prioritised, saying “The government is going into business as usual.”

Months of conflict between Paris and Brussels

France has been in dispute with the European Commission over its NECP for several months. In November 2023, it submitted its draft NECP, several months after the deadline.

This text did not meet the requirements of the European rules, as it did not include targets for the development of renewable energy. This was pointed out by the European Commission, to which the French executive countered that it preferred to include a ‘low carbon’ target.

While talks with Brussels continue, the political situation in Paris has deteriorated.

With no absolute majority in the National Assembly, the Macron government is not ready to put its more detailed energy and climate domestic programme in front of national deputies, before sending the final summary – which is the basis for the NECP – to the Commission.

The NECP “was supposed to be the translation of the multiannual energy programme (PPE) and national low-carbon strategy (SNBC),” Jules Nyssen, president of French renewable association Syndicat des énergies renouvelables (SER), explained to Euractiv, referring to two domestic plans focused on energy and climate respectively.

These documents “were due to be put out to consultation in the next few days, which now seems unlikely,” he continued.

Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, a researcher in European energy policy at the Jacques Delors Institute, went further, telling Euractiv that “even without a dissolution (of the National Assembly), the NECP would probably not have been delivered on time.”

In theory, France can submit a NECP to the Commission, without passings its domestic programmes into law. However “this could have ‘irritated’ the National Assembly” as “the NECP is nonetheless a final version of the French energy and climate strategy,” the researcher continued.

In search of a lost consensus

TerraNova’s Goldberg bitterly regrets this situation. “Everything has been ready for over a year. All that was missing was the political moment.” Instead, the government proposed in March another stakeholder consultation.

Now the NECP is unlikely to arrive on time. France could in theory be sanctioned for this delay. But the situation is such that “the European Commission should not force France to send a plan based on nothing consensual,” Nguyen believes.

For the moment, the Commission does not want to comment the political situation in France, nor how this impacts ongoing government business, a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv.

Other countries have missed previous NECP deadlines. For example several countries, including Germany, missed a 2019 deadline to submit earlier versions of the documents.

[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Rajnish Singh]