Greenpeace sees threat to Energiewende in EU Commission’s TTIP plans

Current plans for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA could threaten central instruments of Germany’s the energy transition, Greenpeace says in a press release. According to a leaked EU Commission draft, third-party access to each contract party’s energy transport infrastructure would be granted on “commercial terms that are reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory (including as between types of energy)”. This could threaten the German feed-in tariffs, as well as priority grid access for renewables, as they could be seen as commercially unreasonable and discriminatory respectively, writes Greenpeace. However, Spiegel Online points out that the Commission’s proposal includes a paragraph that would allow each contract party a “limited list of derogations from the right to third party access based on objective criteria set out in legislation, provided that they are necessary to fulfil a legitimate policy objective”.

Find the press release by Greenpeace in German here and the leaked Commission documents in English here.

Read the Spiegel Online article in German here and a Guardian article on the TTIP leak in English here.