The environmental protection organization WWF has sharply criticized the EU Commission's proposal to classify nuclear energy as climate-friendly under certain conditions.
"Close your eyes and through, that seems to be the motto of the EU Commission for nuclear power and natural gas," commented Matthias Kopp, Head of Sustainable Finance at WWF Germany, on Sunday in Berlin.
The left in the Bundestag is also critical. She has called on the federal government to take legal action against the plans together with Austria. "Germany should support Austria's legal action against the classification of nuclear power as sustainable and climate-friendly," said the group's Europe expert, Andrej Hunko, on Sunday in Berlin. "A simple non-approval in the EU Council is not enough and would de facto waved the Commission proposal through because a qualified majority is necessary there, which is currently not achievable."
The deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch had told the dpa: "Germany should exhaust all possibilities to prevent this technology from being promoted at European level." We do not see any approval of the new proposals of the EU Commission. "
The EU Commission wants to classify investments in gas and nuclear power plants as climate-friendly under certain conditions. This emerges from the draft legal act of the Brussels authority, which became public on New Year's Day. Specifically, the proposal provides that planned investments in new nuclear power plants, especially in France, can be classified as green if the systems meet the latest technical standards and a specific plan for a disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste is submitted by 2050 at the latest. Austria's Climate Protection Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) announced on Twitter: "If these plans are implemented in this way, we will sue."
After months of delays, the commission gave the expert groups of the member states only eight working days to deal with the relevant draft, criticized WWF expert Matthias Kopp.
Scientists, citizens and financial institutions are excluded from the "mini-consultation".
The EU Commission knows that it is "leaving the science-based path".
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is gambling away trust with the procedure and thus jeopardizing her own “Green Deal” for sustainable growth in the European Union.
Salvini now wants to build nuclear power plants again
Italy has meanwhile started to debate a return to nuclear power.
Matteo Salvini from the right-wing Lega welcomed the news from Brussels and wants to build nuclear power plants again in Italy.
The country should not stand still, the politician tweeted at the weekend: "The Lega is ready to collect signatures for a referendum that will lead our country into a future that is energetically independent, safe and clean."
Italy had already phased out nuclear energy after the Chernobyl reactor disaster at the end of the 1980s.
The country gets some of its electricity from abroad, nuclear power can be included.
A return to nuclear energy was rejected in a referendum in 2011.
Other parties like the Five Stars, like the Lega in the multi-party government, reject nuclear power.