A group of DiEM25 members will organise a protest action as part of the Don’t Paint it Green campaign, launched earlier this year, to challenge the “green” labelling of nuclear energy and gas proposed by the European Commission, a resolution that will be voted on during the Parliament’s plenary session taking place from 4 to 7 July in Strasbourg. 

The protest action will take place during the demonstration scheduled for Tuesday, July 5, at noon, at the Palais Universitaire in Strasbourg (9 Place de l’Université), where members of the DiEM25 Coordinating Collective, including DiEM25’s political director, Erik Edman, will wear hazmat suits and carry a barrel of toxic waste to protest the EU’s green labelling of gas and nuclear power. 

While the world looks in the direction of war, the EU has sneakily introduced a taxonomy labelling nuclear and gas energy as ‘sustainable’. 

Nuclear energy is a starting point for nuclear weapons, and it’s unreliable, expensive, dangerous and slow to install. And gas is finite, destructive, and contributes to the problem that the Commission claims to want to solve. Experts and people across Europe who oppose this destructive taxonomy all depends on politicians to stop it in its tracks.

Fortunately, on Tuesday June 14, in a joint meeting of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, MEPs adopted an objection to the Commission’s proposal to include specific nuclear and gas energy activities in the list of environmentally sustainable economic activities covered by the so-called EU Taxonomy, with 76 votes to 62 votes and 4 abstentions.

And now the resolution is scheduled for a vote during Parliament’s plenary session of 4-7 July 2022. Parliament and Council have until July 11 2022 to decide whether to veto the Commission’s proposal. If an absolute majority of MEPs (353) objects to the Commission’s proposal, the Commission will have to withdraw or amend it.

Contact on site: 

Davide Castro
Mobile: +32 488 03 41 87

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