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ENVI European Parliament
Follow its sittingsJoão Leão
So the fund is specifically designed to address the innovation gap. We estimate that on average, the grants cover around 20 of the overall capital expenditure. That is 60% of the relevant costs, but around 20% of the overall investment. Disbursement of funds is milestone-based. A key initial milestone is the financial close.
At this stage, projects can already receive up to 40% of the grant. The remaining funding is then paid out progressively based on the project implementation and operation. Importantly, part of the funding is linked to a verified reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Next slide, please. Given the fund size and potential impacts, assessing its performance is essential.
The lessons learned here are also highly relevant for the proposed European competitiveness funds under the next MFF. Our audit covered the period from 2020 to June 2024, almost half of the program's financing period. You collect evidence from the commission, project applicants, and grant beneficiaries. You also visit seven projects on the spot across five member states: Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy. Let me now turn to what works well.
First, the innovation fund is clearly focused on scaling up innovative clean tech technologies at the pre-commercial space. It does not support early research or fundamental research, but rather helps bring first of a kind projects closer to market deployment. Furthermore, the projects are selected through EU-wide competitive calls, ensuring that the funding goes to the most promising proposals across member states. This is supported by robust evaluation procedures with clear criteria and independent experts' assessments. There is also a strong focus on the level of innovation and the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Finally, funding is conditional on results. This means that disbursement of the funds depends on the project progress and ultimately on delivering the expected outcomes. Next slide, please. Next slide. Next slide, again please.
However, we need to fight three main challenges. First, the deployment of funds has been very slow. After nearly five years, less than 1% of the budget funds has been paid out. Just €330,000,000 out of a total of €40,000,000,000. One reason is that the innovation fund is financed through the emission trading system, which creates volatility and uncertainty about the feasibility of resources.
And combined with the long term nature of the projects and implementation delays has left large amounts of funding in use for extended periods. We therefore recommend the commission to strengthen its budgetary planning to accelerate the deployment of funds and deliver more quickly the results. Second, there are challenges related to the selected projects' maturity and delivery. As I said before, the selection process is generally sound, criteria are applied correctly, and rely on expert assessment. And the projects we visit on the spot are truly supporting the development of innovative technologies.
However, by 2024, only five out of around 200 slink selected projects had already report actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This represents less than 5% of the expected results. Many projects face delays and close to one five projects faced even before entering into operation. This has led to emission reductions far below the Commission's estimates. Next slide, please.
Part of the issue is that some projects are approved before they are fully mature or ready. Another factor is methodological. The way emission reductions are estimated may lead to overly optimistic estimations at the selection stage. Hence, we commend that the commission strengthen the project material assessments and address the cause of delays and cancellations. Third, we found there is no clear strategic allocation of funds.
The innovation fund has responded to emerging policy priorities such as hydrogen and batteries. However, this note has always been guided by a structural analysis of where your funding can have the greatest impact on decarbonization and competitiveness. We, therefore, recommend that the commission establish a clear strategic framework to guide how funding is allocated across technology sectors. To conclude, next slide, please. To conclude, the innovation fund is a valuable instrument with high potential to support both EU competitiveness and decarbonization.
However, slow deployment, project delays, and the lack of a clear allocation strategy mean the innovation fund is not yet delivering at the scale Europe needs. We urge the commission to act on our recommendations, both to improve the innovation fund and to ensure that lessons learned here are also applied to future instruments like the European Competitiveness Fund. Thank you for your attention. I'm now at your disposal for any questions.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we have some reaction from the commission. We start with Stephanie Eisinger from DG Klima.
Stephanie Eisinger
Thank you, chair. Good morning. Honorable members, dear colleagues from the court, on behalf of the commission, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide our perspective on the ECA report regarding the Innovation Fund. Let me start by thanking the court for the excellent cooperation that we had during the audit. We welcome the special report as a constructive and valuable contribution to improving the innovation fund, one of the EU's flagship instruments for bringing breakthrough clean technologies to market, as was just highlighted by Mister Liao.
The report provides useful feedback for further strengthening the Innovation Fund. The report's findings will inform our ongoing efforts to refine and improve our approach in close cooperation with member states and stakeholders. We have demonstrated that many times in the past five years, that the innovation fund itself is innovating on a constant basis. Nevertheless, the commission would also like to highlight several aspects that need to be considered in relation to the findings of the report. First, the Innovation Fund is still at an early stage of implementation.
Just to highlight, the Innovation Fund started its operation in 2020 with the first call for proposals launched in summer 2020 that concluded in 2021. This means the first project selected signed their grant agreements in March 2022, which is two years ago. However, developing transformative, first-of-its-kind technologies takes time due to the scale and complexity involved. That's why in the setup of the innovation fund, projects have four years to reach final investment decisions, and only a few projects have reached this deadline today. In other words, projects are not expected to start delivering emission reductions right after the grant award.
For the type of technology supported, it is normal that it takes time until emission reductions materialize because final investment decisions still need to be taken, permits need to be granted, and other framework conditions need to be ensured. As highlighted in the commission's replies, only around 7% of projects in the funds portfolio had entered into operation by mid-2025, and only a handful had reported verified emissions avoidance. This means that ECA's assessment is based on a very limited sample of the projects and should not be considered representative of the full Innovation Fund portfolio. As the report itself notes, the 208 Innovation Fund projects funded so far are expected to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to close to 900,000,000 tonnes of CO2 by 2041. Early operational projects are already showing encouraging performance, with those assessed achieving on average over 70% of their planned emission reductions in initial monitoring periods.
Second, strong demand for support confirms that the fund is delivering on its core purpose.
Translator asked to slow down.
Stephanie Eisinger
Okay. The commission has already significantly accelerated the implementation of the Innovation Fund to respond to the overwhelming market demand. Following the 2023 ETS revision, the commission has anticipated future innovation fund revenues in the budgetary planning and increased the annual call budgets, committing €4,000,000,000 to €5,000,000,000 per year in the last 3 years. This translated into supporting more projects. Calls have been consistently oversubscribed, and there are hundreds of projects evaluated above the threshold with each call.
In the last call alone, we had over 100 projects that met all criteria but could not be funded from the Innovation Fund in that round, and that adds up to 61 projects that we were actually funding from the last call. Furthermore, the Innovation Fund has significantly enhanced the funding landscape for industry at EU level with additional features such as competitive bidding mechanisms, the Hydrogen Bank auction, that is, auctions as a service, or its alignment with the step seal facilitating synergies to maximize support. Third, implementation challenges are rather related to external shocks, and not design flaws. The Fund deliberately supports innovative, not yet bankable projects. This implies higher risks.
When supporting first-of-a-kind technologies, it is not unusual that not every project succeeds. Delays or cancellations so far were largely driven by external factors such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, inflation, supply chain disruptions, lack of infrastructure, and uncertain market demand for new green broad products, which no one could foresee. The commission, together with CINEEA, has put in place a robust application and selection process, which ensures technological neutrality and the selection of projects with the highest impact in terms of greenhouse gas emission avoidance. Of all projects that signed a grant agreement, over 76% are actually ongoing. Finally, the Commission accepts all three recommendations and is already acting on them.
Work is underway to strengthen the analytical framework to support the resource allocation by building on the monitoring of the existing portfolio and stakeholder inputs. We will continue improving project evaluation and implementation, including better assessing project maturity, and exploring additional flexibility where justified. These steps will ensure that the Innovation Fund remains an agile fund that delivers fast, even more effective, and continues to support Europe's industrial decarbonization and competitiveness. In conclusion, the Innovation Fund is performing as intended, de-risking innovative technologies, mobilizing significant investment, and building a strong pipeline of projects that will deliver substantial emission reductions in the coming years. The Commission remains committed to making the Fund even more effective, simple, and attractive, and the upcoming revision of the ETS directive will provide an opportunity in this regard.
Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
There's another speech from the commission. Are you okay? Okay. So we move to the account reporter, Raul de la Spintano.
Raúl de la Hoz Quintano
Thank you. And thank you to the Court of Auditors and the Commission for their presentations. Clearly, this is a very important subject, and the court of auditors has obviously done a very thorough job of work on its report. I'll start with a premise, which is that the innovation fund is a key instrument as far as we're concerned when it comes to decarbonization. And that is also in sync with another one of the goals, particularly important for this term of office, which is us strengthening the competitiveness of European industry.
So this is a tool that needs to be efficient in achieving these dual goals: decarbonization and the competitive development of our industry. Having said that, the next step is to analyze the content of the ECA special report. And based on the presentation given this morning, we have to recognize that the diagnosis of the ECA is somewhat worrying. We are talking about a fund that has a budget of almost €40,000,000,000. And the data in the report is shocking. We have a low impact. Only a very small share of projects are currently operational in the year 2026.
This project runs from 2020 to 2030. Verified emissions reductions are still extremely limited. Only 3% to 7% of projects are operational, and there is a high failure rate. 20% of projects are failures. They fold.
And often before they move on to Nufar. Then there's a problem with the evaluation procedure, with overestimation of emissions reductions, and that leads then to delays and cancellations. According to the Court of Auditors, they say that the emissions estimation is over-optimistic, and reality rarely reflects the estimates. And then the situation too, as mentioned by the ECA, is that financial closure in over a 4 year period is too lengthy, and that again leads to delays and cancellations. And the actual disbursement rate is only 2%, 3%, and there's a significant accumulation of unspent funds.
And in addition, there's a problem of uncertainty when it comes to financing, and that was in fact mentioned due to the volatility of the income from the sale of ETS allowances. So this is not just a technical problem or based on circumstances, or a topical one, a short term one. It's basically a problem of efficiency, and the fact that this has a knock-on effect on the credibility of the spending of public money. And as representatives of citizens, that has to be of concern to us. The logic, consistency and original design of the fund have to be adapted when and ensure that in fact public money is spent on projects that continue and that will benefit European industry.
But the facts that we have seem to show that isn't happening yet, and the results are too limited, excessively limited, unacceptably limited. And in conclusion, bearing in mind we have a four-year period until 2030. It's quite clear we have a very good instrument in theory, but it's an instrument that isn't working for the goals for which it was designed to achieve. And that's summarized well by the ECA. There is no sufficiently clear strategic framework for allocating resources.
And another question that's of concern to us is possible overlap with other programs, next generation and REpower EU. We need more agility, and I am concluding. And we can't say COVID-19 or the Ukraine war, extraneous circumstances have meant this isn't good enough. We need better selection of procedures, better procedures in general, and better results than we're achieving. We need an instrument that genuinely accompanies projects.
I therefore have three questions that I would put following the presentation from the Commission this morning. Firstly, taking into account that around 1 in 5 of every project is canceled, what concrete measures rather than generic expressions will be adopted to reduce the failure rate of the projects? Second question, how are you going to improve the evaluation procedure for projects to ensure that the selection is of projects that are genuinely viable, that can arrive at the market avoiding the delays or cancellations that have been highlighted by the ECA? Plus, what changes are you prepared to introduce to ensure that this instrument is much more agile and better adapted to the reality of industrial innovation in the EU? Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
We have the speech from the group. So we start with the EPP. Peter Lise is connected remotely.
Peter Liese
Yeah. Good morning. Sorry for not being with you, and thank you for the possibility to be online. I'm sending greetings from Berlin. So the Innovation Fund is indeed a very important instrument, and this discussion shouldn't dilute the fact that we definitely need this instrument.
Thank you to the court, but also thank you to the commission, Stephanie Hisinger and her team. I think we need to tackle the problems. And to say that things are slow is not really satisfactory, because the commission encouraged everybody to act fast. The climate crisis is an urgent issue, and the targets are very ambitious. So we need to be faster in the implementation of all these projects.
I think three points I would like to highlight here. First of all, there are obstacles for the companies that hinder the fast implementation of these projects. First of all, obstacles created by the Commission and by the Member States. Commission should be more flexible on hydrogen, not only for the Innovation Fund, but generally. Second, Member States should increase the connectivity, the grid.
Cheap renewable energy from Spain and Portugal. It can't come to Central Europe because of the bottlenecks in France. So we need the European market. And the country I know best, for four years, they discussed CCS and CCU but it was illegal. So how can you do?
I'm accompanying some companies with projects in the Innovation Fund which need CCS technology, but the boss of the project told me it's still illegal in Germany. So the commission should also put pressure on the member states. We should not draw the consequence that the idea is bad, but there are obstacles for the companies, and that should be abolished. The second point is, and I ask the Commission to come back to this, the do no significant harm principle as it is implemented in the Innovation Fund is almost impossible to implement. We should be more flexible here, and I ask the Commission if they are ready to do so.
And last but not least, when we really want to do the transition, we need a much bigger Innovation Fund. We need to fix the problems. But it's a scandal, and that is the biggest problem with the ETS in my view, that most of the money that energy intensive industry pays is not coming back for those companies that want to decarbonize. So they are disappearing in the general budget, and that should be tackled in the review of the ETS.
Carla Tavares
Thank you, Sherdir, colleagues. I will speak in Portuguese.
Of all, thank you to Joao Liang and the CA for the presentation, for the report, and for all the work that the ECA has done. And I'm sure all that will be very useful to parliament in the challenges we are facing running up to the next MFF. As colleagues have said already, it's very interesting to see the report from the ECA, which is worrying, particularly considering that the ECF is supposed to complement the innovation fund in the next MFF. As such, it's vital that we understand the lessons that we can learn from the Innovation Fund to avoid committing the same mistakes when it comes to the Competitiveness Fund. And that has also been mentioned.
And more than only less than 5% emissions reduction was achieved by 2025. So it's very important that we understand the lessons of the innovation fund, so we can apply them to the competitiveness fund. Then another point has to do with the report saying that the commission has looked at emerging political priorities like hydrogen, and without a structured analysis. And the results have been somewhat weak, as has been said. And I was wondering what kind of supervision mechanisms need to be instituted to ensure the most efficient use of the resources of the fund.
And oversight from parliament would be important, as well as independent experts being involved when allocating the budget. Thank you.
Jana Nagyová
Thank you, chair. Thank you, ECA and Commission and the rapporteur for a great job. I'll speak Czech this time.
In my opinion, the Innovation Fund is a great tool and a great idea, and the problems are logical because this is a completely new thing, but it is necessary to react a bit quicker. I think that because I'm familiar with the fund, and this doesn't happen very often, but today I subscribe to every word of Peter Lise. I think that I even understand the issues with the lack of implementation of emission reduction and with companies withdrawing from projects, because this is really something innovative and the results are to be expected soon. But what I would like to know from the Court of Auditors is how you view the combinations of this fund with other kinds of funds. Have you focused on this?
For example, national modernization subsidies. Furthermore, do all the issues mentioned by the ECA apply to all types of projects, I mean large projects as well as small projects, or are the problems specific to a certain kind of project? Furthermore, I have some questions for the commission. First, what are you going to modify in the new MFF, because that is something upcoming? What are you going to do to bring the projects closer to applicants across the entire European Union so that the companies can work with their national experts in their national language, which, in theory, is permitted, but in practice, everything is going on in English, which is a great disadvantage for many countries?
And then I would like to elaborate on the words of Karla Tavares. What we don't like, we, the Patriots, is that the European Parliament has co-approved the financial envelope for the Innovation Fund, but it doesn't play any further role in the process. I think this should be improved. The European Parliament should have more say in setting the challenges as well as in later control. Thank you.
Dick Erixon
Thank you, Shier, and thank you for this very important special report. The innovation fund has almost 40 billion at its disposal for 2020 to 2030, financed by EU Emu emissions trading system allowance. This means that the EU is collecting money from European citizens in the name of fighting climate change. Taxpayers and businesses have a right to know whether this money is delivering results. I consider the following findings of the court to be fundamental.
Minimal results. By December 2020, projects within the innovation fund had achieved only 5% of its targets, as mister Liu just said. This raises a fundamental value of money question. Second, one of five projects has failed as several members have mentioned. The it's only 5% of one of five has failed.
And the methodology for calculating emotions reductions is, and I quote, a theoretical exercise and may lead to overoptimistic expectations, end of quote. Third, policy-driven allocations without structured analysis. The commission has been adapting calls for proposals, to accommodate emerging policy priorities, and I quote, without structural analysis covering the technologies' potential for greenhouse gas emission reduction, end of quote. As the commission proposed a new unprecedented EU budget for the next seven years, the lessons from the innovation fund are directly relevant. If we cannot demonstrate that the 40 billion innovation support has delivered measured emotion reduction, how do we justify scaling up this approach?
If we cannot spend citizens' money for the very purpose we collect it for, we should take the shortest way out. If we have not learned from history, we should at least learn from the conclusion of the court of auditors. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you to colleagues who have.
Caterina Chinnici
We also have colleagues representing the other political groups. And I'd like to ask, having heard from members, I'd like to ask Mr. Liao and Ms. Hisinger from the ECA and from the commission to answer the questions put to them. And I'll start by passing the floor to Mr.
Liao from the ECA to answer the questions and the comments that have been made. You have the floor, sir.
João Leão
Thank you very much. Regarding the type of projects that face delays or problems or cancellations, we find that all types of projects have been affected by these delays. Even though the projects are really interesting projects with delivering really innovative technologies, these problems affect both smaller and big, but it tilts the problem in the largest, bigger projects where we did find many more problems in terms of the delays. Regarding the question about the combination with other funding, there are three points I would like to make. First is that the innovation fund is in a very interesting fund because it covers a gap that is missing.
It's not covered well by the other funds, where we call that there is not enough resources without innovation fund to cover the last stage, the precommercialization stage before being deployed to the market that really needs enough, more funds. And this is the one can also, this fight. This is a big important point, is that in the next MFF, the European Commission is also proposing a big fund, the huge fund, the European Competitive Fund, to cover also this stage of the process to scaling up of new technologies and to strengthen the competitiveness across technology sectors. But we also find the second point, we only find that it's also interesting in innovation funds that out of the seven projects we visit on the spot, three projects had already been funded at the early stage in terms of research by other EU funding. So this year, complementary with other funds.
Where there is no complementary and there is overlapping, we need to find these with the Repower EU funds where we need to find that in some cases, there is overlap. We need to find in the case of a big project that cancels huge grants with the innovation fund because the RepowerU wasn't providing, the same finding with more flexibility. Another question made was what lessons should we learn? I think one key lesson is that we need much faster deployment and much faster results. And you make sure not only for the innovation fund, but for the European competitiveness fund that will also target the same type of support to firms in terms of the precommercial stage, the scaling up of new technologies, but in broader type in more sectors, not just the clean tech, that we have to make sure that the projects are much faster in delivering results.
Of course, we understand and you agree with the commission in the sense that these are really innovative projects that are very complex, that face challenges, natural. Some projects will fail even though they were affected by disruptions, but this assessment is less straightforward because part of disruptions were positive for these projects because they raise the cost of not decarbonization because the price of gas and oil increased significantly make the incentive to the canals even stronger. So in some cases, the disruptions could have even a positive impact on the incentives to deliver on these projects. And, finally, regarding the question of the structure analysis of the lack of a structure analysis. The problem is not the commission following the, the political, priorities.
That's what we understand. But it's important that the political priorities are based and guided in a structural analysis and informed by structural analysis that make sure that the decisions and the projects supported are the ones that deliver the most impact on CO2 reduction, greenhouse gas emission reduction, but also on the competitiveness, and there are projects that are met areas that are mature enough and can be sustainable in the future. Thank you.
Caterina Chinnici
Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll give the floor now to Miss Heisinger from the commissioner.
Stephanie Eisinger
Thank you, chair. Indeed, on the innovation fund, I think what I would really like to highlight once again is that the innovation fund supports first-of-a-kind projects. That means nobody has ever done this before in the European economic area. There may be 20% of projects that do not make it to the finish line, but 80% of those projects that nobody has ever done before do. So this is actually a positive story.
They continue. And I think it's really important that we realize this. We talk about innovative, nonbankable projects and projects for which up until the Innovation Fund was created, no support was available at the EU level because we are not talking about research and innovation projects. We talk about projects with a high technology readiness level that need to come to market. So that means the projects need to establish not only the technology, but also the business case.
And, yes, not everything is perfect when it comes to establishing that business case. This is also fully recognized in the clean industrial deal, communication from last year, and we are working with different initiatives on improving that business case. Yet, we see a very high response to all our calls for proposals. Every one of our calls is on average six times oversubscribed. So we have considerable budgets that we have in the innovation fund calls, 4 to 5,000,000,000 euros every year, and we have an oversubscription of six times these budgets.
So there is a lot of demand for support from projects that are close to market readiness, and there is a solid project pipeline. That in itself, I think, is really good use and a case to be made to continue with what we do under the innovation fund. There are obstacles, and Peter Lise mentioned them, yeah, quite in detail. Those need to be addressed, but we also need to realize those obstacles, or some of those obstacles, the innovation fund cannot solve them. We try with what we can within the remit of the fund, for example, through these mechanisms like auction as a service, where indeed we try to encourage member states to come forward with additional budgets to finance projects that we cannot finance from the annual budgets or from the budgets of the call under the Innovation Fund.
ETS revenues should go back to those who invest. Also important to note, the Innovation Fund is less than 5% of the ETS revenues expected over this decade. So indeed, there are more revenues that can be dedicated to the purpose. And our president recently announced or proposed an ETS investment booster that exactly should pursue this aim. One of the members mentioned the closeness to the national stakeholders, the need to speak in their own languages.
Indeed, our relations with stakeholders are crucial, and we're trying throughout the entire year to be very close to them. We have national contact points that are able to develop with the project developers in their country because they know the national circumstances of the project, and we also have technical assistance for member states with low effective participation in our calls. We have another initiative with the EIB on project development assistance, and we have very positive feedback from stakeholders on our stakeholder engagement, and that they actually, through the selection procedure of the Innovation Fund, learn a lot about their own projects. So, I think there's room for improvement, but we're trying very hard on different levels already to improve also the work with the projects. So, finally, just to conclude, we should learn.
And there, we very much agree. I mean, the innovation fund has already been learning a lot from the early stages of the fund. It has been developing. But I think learning is one thing, trying to improve, but also we need to acknowledge that the Innovation Fund has made so far an important difference in the EU funding landscape and for the projects that we support. Thank you.
Okay.
Caterina Chinnici
Thank you. Thank you for those answers. We'll now continue with questions from the other groups. I'll give the floor to the renew group to Mr. Martin Hoycic from the NV Committee.
You have the floor, sir.
Martin Hojsík
Graziemi, and thank you to ECA as well as the Commission for the important work. And I can only echo, this is the innovation fund. These are non-bankable things. Actually, 80% success rate is too high because it shows that we're not taking enough risk, that maybe some of these things could have been already bankable, that they could have been financed from the modernization fund and other sources, and that we are not bold. If we wanna say that we are cutting edge competitive industry and research, than hearing that, oh, we have 20% failure rate is actually going against it.
If you look at the investment that the Americans are doing, that they're using the state, they go for a much higher failure rate. And yes, I would like to see us, as a union, combining the grants with investments into the equity because that's going to make us also a profit and not just subsidies. And this is something that can make us stronger. So I strongly believe that we need to be bolder. And yes, it's only a tiny percentage of the ETS revenues, and I agree with Peter Liszt, we have to make sure the ETS revenues are used for the purpose of reducing emissions by the member states.
So all the industrial players who complain should ask, where is the money? But going more to the point on the innovation front, lots of interesting things. But for me, one of the questions is, what can you do to speed up the whole assessment process? I'm not saying it's easy, but I think this is something which we indeed need to be faster and bolder and maybe even simpler, and look at it from the perspective of accompanying the projects afterwards rather than going on too much selection. Second, how are you working within the commission on building in the learnings from the innovation fund into the whole competitiveness fund, which is going to be substantially larger in the next MFF?
And how do we assess the competitiveness? Honestly, here we have a benchmark of emission reduction at the end of the day. So this is going to be even more tricky if it's not just handouts to the correctly placed companies. And so that's something which is for me interesting to know. And to the ECA, could you please also elaborate on what you saw on the ground in terms of the deployment obstacles?
Was it that the permitting took too long, that there were risks in terms of the different technological sites? Or what can be done from your perspective to help create the right enabling environment for the innovation to take off. And very last comment, I would like to personally see much more support for the next-generation geothermal technologies. There was some, but I think this is something which is very under-supported and definitely deserves way more. Thank you.
Thank.
Rasmus Nordqvist
Thank you, chair, and thank you to ECAN, the commission for the answers until now. I've found the report really interesting also because, I mean, the innovation fund is crucial to address this investment gap we have when it comes to the green transition and that we know we have. And I think the discussion until now, I mean, I want to echo the former speaker, I mean, to focus on whether there's a success rate of 80%, and, I mean, we are talking innovations and we need to focus on this is innovation. And you only learn also from what’s not working. You're not only lurking, learning from successes.
So I hope that will not stay with the commission power. However, I think there's two key points for me that stands out when I read it. And one thing is a lack of political direction. It's a bit all over the place, and that perhaps is also making it slower to come out because there's no direction. And I think this should be yet another proof that this technology neutrality does not work.
We need to make a clear choice, a clear direction, and set it forward. And we need the direct electrification and not get distracted by all these nonrenewable hydrogens and other stuff. The second part is, I would say that it can appear to be too bureaucratic and it's too entangled with other funds and programs. And that can also cause delays and limit the flexibility we need. So two questions I have.
Well, the first one is to the commission. Are you looking to give a more clear direction, political direction, make choices to make it easier also to know who should apply and not, to also make it work faster? And here, think specifically to talk more about the direct electrification. To the ECA, this you're pointing to the bit, the overlap with other funds. Could you elaborate a bit on this?
And then really, I hope that this report is leading to constructive talks on how we make the fund work better and not start questioning cornerstones in our green transition policy, questions of do no significant harm and so forth, because they're crucial in the work we are doing in the green transition in Europe. Thank you.
Good afternoon.
Caterina Chinnici
Thank you very much. And now for the left group, mister has the floor.
Jonas Sjöstedt
Thank you, chair. And I would like to thank the Court of Auditors for this very important report. This is truly helpful, I think, to be able to be more effective in the support for innovation. And I think it's worrying that the disbursement of funds is going slow. It's worrying that the actual effects on emissions are not big enough.
But, hopefully, it will catch up as the commission says, or it has to actually. I mean, we are in a situation where we have a very uneven playing field globally. All our main competitors almost use state aid, China in particular, but also other countries. The EU is, in principle, banning state aid. So every tool that we can use to compensate for this not level playing field globally has to be used to its full potential.
And you could also discuss, of course, the stated regulation and what needs to change there. So having said that, I think it's vital to see the weaknesses and address them. And apart from those that are clearly pointed out in the report and they are answered to by the commission, I think we also have some other challenges. And, Mister Nordquist from The Greens pointed to one of them. That is what is the main direction.
And I think that we should focus more on the fields where we are lagging behind and not being able to meet the global competition. And I would point, for example, at solar. The European solar industry is struggling. Innovation is going very quickly in solar with new techniques, and we have to have a solar energy of our own. It's the main source of clean energy that we'll have in the future.
And to be totally dependent on others is not sustainable. Another one is, the batteries for the automotive industry, where we see that the Asians, be it the Chinese or South Koreans, are way ahead of us. And we lack independent technical solutions. Also in this field, innovation is going very fast. And I think we have to deliberately focus on some of the areas where European industry needs more innovation to be able to compete globally.
Secondly, I think we also have to take into account that parts of the innovation and investment that hopefully follow them are now not being done because companies are hesitant because they say that there is a political risk. With the new political environment, with new majorities in the European Parliament, in the commission and in the council, actually, a lot of industries doubt that the green transition will happen as it's decided. For example, when it comes to maritime fuels, when it comes to aviation fuels, when it comes to the phasing out of fossil fuels, they are not willing to take the political risk. And way that they don't take the risk, they stop the projects, and the innovation doesn't happen, and then it goes somewhere else. And that is happening now.
I can see that clearly in my own country, Sweden, where major projects in green fuels, aviation fuels, and maritime fuels are put on hold because they don't trust. They don't trust the commission. They don't trust the member states to actually do this. And then we're losing out on jobs, on investment. Battery technology is the same.
The automotive industry is reluctant to invest heavily because they don't trust the electrification fully of the European car industry, and this has devastating consequences. So no matter how good we are at innovation, if the industry doesn't trust that we'll actually do the transformation away from fossil fuels. So I think we also have to take these two challenges and risks into account, discussing this. Thank you.
Caterina Chinnici
Okay. Thank you very much. And now for the ESN group, Miss Anya Ant, you have the floor.
Caterina Chinnici
Didn't ask for the floor today. Okay. Well, thank you, nevertheless. There's a request under catch the eye. Miss Wiesner is asking for the floor for the Envy Committee and the Renew Group.
So you have the floor straight away.
Emma Ytterell
Thank you so much, Cher. And I'm so sorry to our guests for arriving late, but I can assure you I was listening with a great deal of attention online before I joined. And, I must say I share a lot of the concerns raised by ECA, but also by our rapporteur. But at the same time, I also heard a lot of good answers from the commission. And we have to understand that this is the system that we built and that we designed.
And a lot of the things with the Innovation Fund are actually working as designed. But I'm mainly worried about the delay and that we are still slow in the uptake of the fund money, obviously, since a lot of us in this room agreed on the great purpose of the Innovation Fund. I think that the readiness is really our strength and our weakness, that we are using the Innovation Fund to aim for projects far from the market. That is really one of the strengths of the Innovation Fund that we have a fund dedicated that no other fund is doing, really upscaling new projects, but it is also our weakness that we are far from the market, and that is stalling also the uptake rate of the fund. To some extent, I agree a lot with my colleague, Martin Hoycek, 20% actually as a failure rate actually sounds too low if we're really going to go for this far away from market project.
But my question is, if we're going to maybe change the perspectives, are we too far away from the market? This is the way the fund is designed now. We tried the last ETS revision to bring the fund closer to the market, in order to speed things up. But as it is currently designed and the system set up, well, this is what it's supposed to aim at. But my question is, from ECA perspective and commission perspective, would the fund benefit in terms of speed and uptake if we brought the fund closer to the market, closer to the readiness, the bankable projects?
We lose some of the innovation aspects, but we get a higher success rate and also then higher emission reductions. Would you consider that a benefit or something that simply would stall innovation even further?
Okay.
Caterina Chinnici
It doesn't seem like anybody else is looking for the floor. Yes. Sorry. Yes, go ahead.
Thank you.
Heléne Fritzon
Thank you so much for the floor. Yes, the innovation fund is crucial, of course, but the result is too slow. And of course, we must use our common money to reach our targets. I can hear in the room in this discussion and debate that there is a political will. And my feeling is that we need to have the same political will in the Commission and in ECA, because otherwise, we cannot reach our targets.
And we must be, of course, more efficient. So fossil free and renewable must be key in all political areas, and also in all our funding. Of course, we must be independent from all fossil sources. And we can see that all the good examples, they show us that investment and innovation must go hand in hand, and then we can see, hopefully, better results. So I'm asking for the political will to reach better and higher results.
Thank you.
Caterina Chinnici
Vane? Okay.
Thank you to you two. Now there really aren't any other people looking for the floor. But as you can see, there are a lot of comments, a lot of questions indeed, in the second round of interventions. So without further ado, I'll give the floor to the representative of the Court of Auditors, Mr. Liao, to give his answers to the questions and points raised. You have the floor, sir.
João Leão
Thank you. One question was regarding the obstacles on the ground regarding permitting and regulation. The projects we visit were the projects that were succeeding. So they were already most in operation, the seven projects we did in spot. So these projects didn't have big problems in that sense.
But, from the other projects that we didn't visit, you were told that there were some significant problems in terms of permitting and relation at member state level. For example, in the case of hydrogen, there was questions of regulations in some member states that were not allowing the projects to go forward. So this is actually a problem. So there needs to be more done at member states as well to make sure that licensing the regulation doesn't interfere with the development of these projects. Regarding the overlap with the other funds, the most significant, that we didn't find was the regarding, with some other funds, they were doing the investment fund was doing very well in terms of complementing more in a precommercial stage, not focused on early research, but in precommercial stage.
But regarding especially with the Repower EU, there was overlap. I can also then ask George Guevara, my head of task, to explain the case more in detail, the case we indent identified, of a problem with this overlap. Regarding the important question of speed, making sure that there is a faster deployment of funds and the quicker results, I think there was a question of if the projects should be closer to the market stage or market deployments? Our assessment is that, if the project should be more mature, closer to be more ready to be, in that sense, the innovation fund has to evaluate if it's also, it means we're closer to the market in terms of making sure the projects are ready to start investment. There is also an important question that I want to highlight here in terms of why the deployment of funds is very slow.
So after almost five years of the period of financing period, we are still the only paid less than 1% of the overall €40,000,000,000. And part of this reason is that all the innovation fund is financed. So being financed by the ETS allowance, the budget of the innovation fund is uncertain because of the price of the allowances. The price varies a lot, quite a lot. So they cannot, as opposed to the other funds, they cannot commit the budgets that they have for the period.
They have only to commit the budget, the reviews that they already have got. And so given that they cannot commit the reviews they'd already receive, but then they open calls that will take ten years, more than ten years to be paid. It takes a lot of time to deploy the funds. So this is a big difference compared with the other funds, that adds another obstacle to a faster deployment of funds. Now if you allow me, I will pass the floor to George to explain this overlap of funding.
Jorge Guevara
Thank you very much. Jorge Guarra from an auditor at the court. Yes. The specific case we referred to, of replacement of funding, is quoted in box two of the special report, and this is a case where a hydrogen project, so a project selected through the competitive bidding process to promote the production of green hydrogen, abandoned the project once it had been selected because it obtained another grant for the same purpose with a slightly higher amount. And according to what we obtained from the participants, also getting better financing terms in terms of when they got the money.
So this is an illustration of a case of replacement of financing. So a project that was already there, actually opted for other financing ultimately covered by the European budget as well.
Okay.
Caterina Chinnici
Thank you very much. Thank you to the representatives of the Court of Auditors for their observations and answers. And now I'll give the floor to Miss Hiesinger for the commission, so you can field the questions put to you and give your concluding remarks as well. You have the floor, madam.
Stephanie Eisinger
Thank you, chair. I only, well, up until the intervention of the Court of Fortesite, I only had three remarks, but now I have four. First, to on the speed of the assessment process. Yes, we are looking at that on a constant basis. How to get quicker to the results?
It is a challenge. We have tried or we have good results in, for example, in last year's battery call, where the results were delivered within three months after the closure of the application deadline. The same for the auctions, where we deliver the results faster than for the general call for proposals. But it's also part of the reality that under the general call for proposals in 2024, which is the last one that has already finished, we received 359 applications. That is 359 first of a kind projects that need to be assessed by the colleagues in Sinea.
So it is also a big endeavor from an administrative perspective to assess all these projects at the quality that is needed. But yet, as I've said, we are trying to speed up this process and trying also in the upcoming calls for this year to make changes in this regard. On the question of should there be more direction, in particular, towards electrification, I would just like to refer to the heat auction that we launched in December, which is an initiative that directly fosters the electrification of industrial process heat and which the results will be coming out soon. But there is this, well, not only are we not only looking at political priorities, but we are also trying, you know, to support these kinds of, well, initiatives that industry also, you know, comes forward with. More direction in terms of what projects to finance.
We very much like the bottom-up approach that we pursue with the innovation fund because we may not always know with certainty what is actually out there. So it's also good that projects can come to the innovation fund and present themselves with their innovations. And that is actually the remark I had now after the ECAAS intervention, I really need to highlight the budget of the Innovation Fund is not uncertain because it is financed by the ETS. We do auction the allowances that are assigned to the Innovation Fund in the ETS directive, over time. But just because there is a risk, as was said, linked to the carbon price.
And it is just good administrative practice to spread this risk over time and not auction all allowances at once, creating also impacts on the EU carbon markets. However, that does not mean that we cannot commit the funds to the project, and that is what we are doing even more also since the 2023 ETS reform. So we are already committing under our calls to future revenues that will be realized in auctioning allowances from the Innovation Fund. In relation to the replacement of funding by national revenues, yes, it happened, but it only happened once in this case where the project was selected under the hydrogen auction and then decided to be financed by the member state directly. To conclude, let me just emphasize one thing.
So I fully agree that when you operate a €40,000,000,000 fund, scrutiny is important. Public scrutiny is crucial. €40,000,000,000 is a lot of money, but the investment needs are even higher. We have no money to lose, and we also do not have unspent funds under the Innovation Fund. That is not true that we have committed a lot of money to projects.
Those projects are now working to become operational. The sample that is underlying the European Court of Auditors report was very small. It was just mentioned, in the intervention. They looked at seven projects, seven out of a portfolio that today is 208 projects. So I'm very happy to come back next year or the year after to tell you about how we are doing and whether we progress as intended, but I do think it is too early to draw a firm conclusion on that.
Thank you.
Okay.
Caterina Chinnici
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for being here to the representatives of the court of auditors, mister Liao and his staff, and to the commission, to miss Heisinger and all the members for their useful contributions. Of course, we're looking forward with bated breath to seeing the updated recommendations from the court of auditors. And thank you then to everybody for such an interesting debate.
Thank.
You, Miss Kinichi.
Pierfrancesco Maran
For the consideration of amendments on the ENV draft opinion on the revision of the critical raw material act. Rapporteur for envy is mister Yacek Ostoba. I give the floor to the rapporteur for 5 minutes.
We're just right.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Sorry. We maybe we wait. If you need one minute, you okay to yes. Okay.
And they we closed the con the meeting with.
Although we closed the meeting with Conte in Okay. So I kindly ask to leave the room who is not interested in the next item, and I leave the floor to mister Osdoba, rapporteur for the opinion about the Critical Raw Material Act.
Jacek Ozdoba
Thank you very much. I speak Polish.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome our attempts at solving this whole issue of access to raw materials in Europe. But as regards commission's proposal, we want to draw your attention to the fact that we must draw good lessons from our historical mistakes, Nord Stream one, Nord Stream two pipelines, for instance. Also, think we have to strive to become independent of China because commission proposals are tantamount to ever growing dependence on supply chains from China. EU is almost wholly dependent on supplies of critical raw materials from outside of Europe. So now we are not in a position to evaluate what will happen if we face further geopolitical shocks.
So recycling of critical raw materials, for instance, could be a way to boost our independence. I'm talking about recovering magnesium.
Okay.
Jacek Ozdoba
Sorry, I was reading too fast. I'm a dynamic speaker. I will try to be more interpreter-friendly from now on. So the commission was right to identify our growing dependence on imports of critical raw materials. This will be exacerbated, furthermore, by our Green Deal policy.
So imposed electromobility means greater risks, changing one dependence into another. So let's be frank, the problem we are dealing with is that the whole strategy, in spite of the commission's good intentions, will make us more dependent on imports from another country. So we are saying that there will be problems with accessibility of rare earth metals and our other critical raw materials necessary for our production from China or the Middle East. Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we open the floor to the group, two minutes each. We start with EPP, Hildegard Bentele.
Hildegard Bentele
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, dear colleague rapporteur. Dear colleague, can I catch your attention? Is the translation there? Okay.
Thank you very much. Just to outline, we have the Critical Raw Materials Act. It's there. We address our dependencies. The act entered into force only two years ago, and we are now doing a targeted revision.
So we are not the problem about our dependencies and our supply chains has been addressed two years ago. We are now doing the commission proposal, it is a very targeted revision. And I would ask you also to keep it as a very targeted revision, and also to keep the scope of our competence in the NV Committee. As EPP, we welcome the proposal of the Commission and also the switch of reporting obligations from member states to the Commission, because they have not been fulfilled. I think this will make the CRM Act much more effective without introducing unnecessary burdens on companies.
What we would like to address, and we do this in a recycle, is the need for specific recycling targets in order to make it really viable for the different materials. Because currently, we have a general recycling target of about 25%, which was a placeholder, but we have to be more specific. And this is what we would like to address in a recital that the commission comes up with at the end of the year, also with the Circular Economy Act, that we address this issue. This is why we have put an amendment forward in this regard. But in general, we would like to argue to keep the legislation lean and not interfere too much.
Marie-Luce Brasier-Clain
Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you to the rapporteur for the work he’s done. We welcome and support that work. Indeed, the commission, sorry, the NV Committee's position is meant to clarify rules, simplify rules for recycling and the secondary market for critical raw materials. But this approach, at the same time, is imposing on businesses too much red tape, obligatory cartography of the supply chain.
This form of mapping is literally impossible because of the impossibility of accessing data from their suppliers and the content of pre-consumer waste streams. There's a diversification of supply chains. But what are you meant to do if you're obliged to do that and alternatives don't exist? Obligation to provide information to the public on separate information on waste streams, pre-consumer and post-consumer waste streams as well. All of that constitutes a considerable burden, which is wasteful.
In general, the commission should restrict itself to providing guidelines and having an advisory role. And finally, when we're talking about identifying the big companies operating in the EU using strategic primary raw materials, we think it's the member states and not the Commission who should be the competent body. And this should not flow to dual-use or military technologies. We should be guided by the will to ensure proportionality and measures adopted, reducing administrative burden, and protecting commercially sensitive information. Thank you.
Maria Ohisalo
Dear chair, dear colleagues, commission, I'm speaking on behalf of the Green Shadow, Masjidlind Baye today. First of all, I would like to thank the commission for its targeted amendment proposal of the Critical Raw Materials Act. The Greens/EFA has drafted several amendments that insist on increasing the use of secondary raw materials, reducing demand, and improving resource efficiency throughout the text. The EU can be resilient only if we develop a circular economy of critical raw materials. For the Green CFA Group, there are three additional priorities.
First of all, clarifying what the preconsumer waste is about. We welcome the S and D proposal to have a definition that mirrors the definition in the battery regulation, ensuring regulatory coherence. And secondly, pre-consumer and post-consumer waste should be communicated separately. And we need to know whether the waste was produced inside or outside the EU. It is essential to track the recycled content of critical raw materials in the EU, in line with the latest recommendations of the European Court of Auditors.
In that respect, we also want the commission to gather more data on how the strategic projects contribute to the EU's objectives, and to provide better indications on the mitigation measures foreseen for companies. And thirdly, finally, imported products should be in the scope of the union's recycled content requirements only if it can be verified that those imported products include certain percentages of recycled content. Otherwise, the intended environmental and supply resilience benefits will not be achieved, leaving the door open for greenwashing. Thank you.
Li Andersson
Thank you. Faudleft, Leandersen.
Thank you very much, Chair. We, of course, all know the high strategic importance of critical raw materials and, as was already mentioned, also the problems that are connected with high dependency on third parties for many important resources that are essential for the green transition, technological sovereignty, and critical infrastructure. So a clear view of these dependencies and a decisive role for the public sector in mapping, trading, and keeping supply chains rolling is essential. I think proposals to strengthen the circularity framework and increase recovery and reuse of critical raw materials are important, as well as increased obligations for large companies to diversify through critical raw material supply chains. But that being said, we think that we also must be able to better guarantee labor and environmental standards, as well as the involvement and guidance of local communities.
There has already been quite some examples of problematic implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act, notably the ones that we refer to in our amendments from Portugal, Sweden, and Finland. In Finland, for example, the Sakatti mine, which has been designated a strategic project under the act, would be established in an area that is protected both through the Natura 2000 program based on several EU environmental directives and also on a national nature conservation program. This is, of course, unacceptable. So we want the commission to publish guidelines on the implementation that guarantee the respect with regards to these three aspects: social and labor rights, environmental standards, and respect and involvement for local communities. And we also think that an assessment of the supply chain's compliance with European and international environmental and labor rights rules should be added as one part of the obligations of the large companies identified.
Thank you.
Jadwiga Wiśniewska
Thank you, chair. I think that the revision proposed by the commission is not sufficient. And it's only an alibi showing that the EU institutions are doing something. However, the proposals of changes do not tackle the key issues, like, for example, the protection sector of critical raw materials. Like, for example, yacht JSW Cox is badly managed and is in a dramatic financial situation because of the ETS costs.
And also, the European market is flooded with cheap cuts from Indonesia and other third countries. So I would like to appeal to the commission that the cox producers should be excluded from the costs of ETS. Also, I would like to exclude the coking coal mines from the methane regulation. Please be rational in your revision of raw materials, critical raw materials regulation. Please be very comprehensive in that revision.
Emma Fourreau
Make extractivism great again. New
commission credo. A step back for the EU with the opening of new mines, total overhauling of which way we should go. So, how do we get out of this? You want mines, yes, but not anywhere. We are applying a neocolonial approach in Finland, in the North of Sweden, to Sami land without consulting the people concerned.
And Sami people are against the mining projects under the CRM. And in fact, there's been an accusation that the EU is violating human rights and is looting the territories of an indigenous people. We therefore ask for a review of all mining projects so as to protect lands already subject to climate change, but no response from the Commission. Now we have a copper mine as well, which is supported by the EU. This gets too fast.
And there's going to be wastewater released. Commission has no scruples in defending this outside of our continent. Hypocrisy. So you are, in fact, imposing your extractivist obsession at the cost of peoples and ecosystems. Please give up on such projects.
Keep it in the ground.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Merci. So we leave the floor to the commission for their comments. Is Madeline Ivanica deputy head of unit of Digi Grow?
Madalina Ivanica
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. The commission proposal is to provide targeted amendment to the Critical Raw Materials Act, and this is what we have taken as a commitment as part of the resource view action plan.
And we've done that because we do have the Critical Raw Materials Act, and we would like to accelerate what we have set ourselves as goals under this legal framework. The Critical Raw Materials Act is telling us to strengthen the domestic capacities in the EU on critical raw materials along the value chain. We also want to create a strong secondary raw materials market in the EU, and we also want to diversify and reduce our dependencies on single suppliers. So that we have as our goals, and that's why we needed to come back with Resource EU to have targeted, very targeted amendments to a few of the articles that will allow us to go further and accelerate what we have started already doing. And besides that, we also had to have a response to the trade measures adopted by China last year, so in 2023, showing that we have dependencies, strong dependencies, and we also have vulnerabilities.
With our amendments, we want to ensure that we do prepare the European Union and our companies to face the new disruptions that could come in their supply chains. Now the amendments that we put forward target some of the elements and are twofold. The first one is to streamline and strengthen the obligations on large companies that are using strategic raw materials to produce products. The idea is to push these companies to be better prepared and aware of their full supply chains in order to prevent disruptions in the future, and to take risk mitigation measures. Second, we want to support the emergence of a secondary market for permanent magnets as a tool to precisely boost the diversification when it comes to rare earth elements.
So, let me now take our proposals one by one. When it comes to the number of calls for strategic projects that we prepared, this should remain flexible. The current implementation, so over the last two years, where we had two calls for applications for strategic projects, shows us that the companies need certainty when it comes to their planning, but also that the current procedure to evaluate the applications, and we received many of them with our two calls, takes on average nine months. So this means that in one year, we can have up to four courses maximum per year. So that's why we are proposing to include up to 4 per year.
When it comes to the identification of large companies, this is essential for knowing which companies are actually operating in the EU. And bringing this identification at the EU level means that we will avoid duplication of work. So, for the member states that currently, under the Critical Raw Materials Act, are supposed to identify the large companies. And we also ensure simplification, because these companies obviously operate in more than one member state. The proposal, it is now with the CRMA, specifies that the companies that manufacture products using strategic raw material need to already do a risk assessment.
It's a report that they need to present to the board. But now we like this information to be shared so that we can also see that they have a full assessment of their full value chain, and that they also take measures, risk mitigation measures, to ensure that future disruptions are avoided. Companies, that's so, we are proposing this amendment because we've seen with last year's situation with the export restriction from China that the companies sometimes are not aware of the full supply chains and that the risk mitigation measures that they should take precisely to diversify their supply are not yet taken into consideration. On the secondary content of permanent magnets in products, we support the uptake of secondary materials. As with the Critical Raw Materials Act, we want to create demand for secondary raw materials, and we want to support the building and strengthening of new recycling capacities.
When it comes to the rare earths and the permanent magnets, obviously, we have strong dependencies, and we are aware of that. And that's why we are proposing one of the amendments that we are proposing is actually to increase the number of products that contain permanent magnets that will need to have a label indicating the fact of the presence of the permanent magnets in composition, so that we are able to recover and recycle afterwards the rare earth's content. We want to do all this, obviously, in a feasible way for companies, and that's why we also propose and support pre consumer waste to be added to the post consumer waste. And that's because this will allow us to capture the midstream and also upstream flows, and not only the manufacturing stage. It's important also to mention that the objective of supporting the recycling of end of life products remains unchanged.
And on this, we stand ready to provide technical support if need be. Thank you.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Thank you. Now we leave the floor again to the rapporteur, mister Azuba.
Jacek Ozdoba
Thank you. I'd like to.
point to Mrs. Vishnevska has said. She said that your actions are not sufficient. You know that the coking coal is on the list of critical materials. It is necessary for steel production.
Of course, you are creating new laws. However, I have the impression that your actions are not sufficient. We know that we have geopolitical problems, and all the amendments submitted should result in independence of Europe from the sources of critical materials. And I see that we have a special specific lobby here, and we can see it.
Pierfrancesco Maran
Table will be the vote in envy for April 27. In Italy, it has to be confirmed that it should be June 24. The next item, as you know, is postponed to a later envy meeting. We don't have any other business. The next meeting will take place on April 27 in Strasbourg and in May in Brussels.
Thank you. And the meeting is closed.
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