The General Court of the EU has ruled that the European Commission has wrong, considering it unnecessary to set a threshold for emissions of methane from ships powered by liquefied natural gas in the criteria of the green taxonomy. The ruling, filed on Wednesday by the First Chamber, partially annuls the decision by which The European executive had rejected the request for internal review presented by the three environmental organisations Dryade (Belgium), Fossielvrij NL (Netherlands) and Protect Our Winters Austria. January 14 2024, the NGOs had in fact requested the Commission, pursuant to the Aarhus Regulation, the review of the European Delegated Regulation No 2485 of 27 June 2023. That act included in the EU taxonomy, that is, in the EU system that determines which activities economic conditions can be said to be sustainable, new screening criteria Aircraft Construction & Leasing Technician, Transportation and maritime transport of goods and passengers. Rejection of 16 June 2024.

According to the NGOs, the criteria were too weak and could have been classify as sustainable investments in ships and aircraft in fossil fuels, in contrast with the objective of a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions designed to limiting global warming to within the 1.5 °C threshold compared to pre-industrial levels, in line with the Paris. In support of the appeal, they had invoked five pleas in law.

The EU Courts rejected the first three pleas: the one on the General requirements of Article 19 of the Regulation on taxonomy, the one on the verifiability of the criteria for aviation and the one on manifest errors of assessment in the same sector. The "replacement rate" criterion for aircraft, one of the most contested aspects, has therefore subject to the scrutiny of the Court. On maritime transport, the fourth motif was divided into three parts. The first and second were declared inadmissible, in particular because the arguments were new compared to those presented in the request for review. The third was instead accepted in part, and is that that makes the difference.

For natural gas-powered vessels that fail to comply with the emission criterion zero discharge, the criteria require, among other things, to demonstrate "the use of cutting-edge measures and technologies" to mitigate methane slip, i.e. the unburned methane that escapes the engines. NGOs argued that, without a definition of measures and without an emissions threshold, compliance with the criterion was not easily verifiable, as required by the Article 19(1)(k) of the Regulation.

The Court of First Instance rejected the first complaint: the Commission had not required to define in detail the "technologies described in the technical and non-technical literature disputed on this point by the applicants. Instead, it upheld the second. The Commission argued that the safeguard was of a nature but at the same time admitted that the verification of the compliance would have taken place through the thresholds provided for by the FuelEU Maritime Regulation and guidelines still under development elaboration. For the judges, the reasoning is adversarial process. If the verification requires compliance with thresholds, the criterion must contain them or expressly refer to a rule that Otherwise, verification cannot be said to be easy.

The General Court also rejected the argument, put forward by the by the Commission, according to which account should be taken of the regulatory context: that context may or may not be quite clear. The absence of thresholds in the criterion seems rather depend on a question of timing, given that the FuelEU Maritime was adopted after the Delegated Regulation.

The fifth plea, put forward in the alternative, which challenged that there was conclusive scientific evidence on the contribution of the climate mitigation criterion, has been rejected partly because it was inadmissible, partly because unfounded. According to the General Court, to argue that the criteria are not ambitious enough is not sufficient to demonstrate a manifest error of evaluation. It would have been necessary to prove that they were not suitable to gradually reduce emissions, which the applicants have not neither demonstrated nor supported.

The operative part therefore annuls the Commission's decision European only in so far as it considered it unnecessary to fix a threshold or limit for methane emissions in the criteria for Sections 6.10(e) and 6.11(d). The judgment of the General Court of the European Union European transport, therefore, does not remove maritime transport from the taxonomy and does not automatically render ships ineligible LNG-powered vehicles. The Commission will now have to determine how define and enter the threshold within the taxonomy framework.

The applicant organisations upheld the decision on the methane as a signal that goes beyond maritime transport. Gas - argued - cannot be considered a fuel clean transition, because its methane emissions do not can be ignored. However, they said they were disappointed by the rest of the judgment. Dryade noted that the General Court did not censured any aviation criteria and assigns to the Commission wide discretion, which leaves the Bottom line: fossil fuel ships and planes are not should be labeled as sustainable investments. Fossielvrij NL spoke of a "weak call" to the Committee and recalled that the taxonomy was created to make it easier and more attractive for banks and pension funds financing of genuine climate solutions. Also for This - noted the Dutch association - vehicles today purchased will remain in service for up to thirty years, with the risk to crystallize dependence on fossil fuels for decades.

As regards the fifth plea put forward by the applicant NGOs, Dryade has then explained why, in his opinion, the issue is so materialising: the weight of the taxonomy on financial flows is systemic, given that it is used by public financial institutions and private companies to build their sustainability strategies and guides business investment. As regards aviation, the Belgian organization cited a report by the European Commission Delft, taken up in an Opportunity Green document last year, month, according to which more than half of capital expenditure of European airlines in 2025 were ranked as aligned with the taxonomy, almost all as a transition for new fossil fuel aircraft and their maintenance. It would be the only case, out of 115 sectors examined, with such a high share. In a sector that according to projections will account for 90% of transport emissions EU in 2050, for NGOs, this shows that the criteria are too permissive.

The game, however, does not end with the sentence filed Wednesday. Within two months of publication, each party may appeal to the Court of Justice limited to legal grounds, and NGOs have announced that the EU has been who will study the text together with their lawyers before deciding.

Meanwhile, the picture moves on other fronts. Organizations recalled a recent judgment of the General Court of the EU according to in which the exclusion of private jets from the taxonomy was not supported evidence, and the European Commission would now be considering whether to include that activity as well. By the end of the day December is also expected to be published by the Commission of a revised and "simplified" version of the technical criteria of the taxonomy, including for air transport and maritime sector. According to NGOs, the drafts for aviation and transport would lengthen the period in which ships and aircraft at fossil fuels could be compliant.

Fossielvrij NL asked the European Commissioner for Climate, Wopke Hoekstra, to take this opportunity to exclude the most pollutants. For Dryade, the new criteria should be based on evidence scientific standards and not on models provided by industry. In the should exclude fuel-powered ships fossil fuels, including liquefied natural gas, due to the risk of Unburned methane leaking from engines. For aviation should only include electric or fuel-powered aircraft synthetic frameworks. They should also take into account, throughout the cycle of climate, including non-CO2-related climate effects, such as contrails and nitrogen oxides from aircraft.