Brussels, 08. March 2010 - EUFORES Board of Presidents, Claude Turmes (EUFORES President, Member of the European Parliament - MEP), Fiona Hall (EUFORES Vice-President, MEP) and Anni Podimata (EUFORES Vice-President, MEP) call upon Member States to submit ambitious National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) to the European Commission in June this year.

As part of the implementation of the Renewable Energy Directive (RES-Directive), the EU-27 Member States have to write their National Renewable Energy Action Plan, including the measures and instruments used for achieving their individual target. The overall goal of the Directive is to supply 20% of the European final energy consumption from renewable energy sources in 2020.

“The NREAPs are very important features of the RES-Directive” says EUFORES President Claude Turmes (MEP Luxembourg, Greens/EFA), who was also the Rapporteur of the Directive in the European Parliament. “The binding targets set out in the Directive, can only be met with strong action plans containing efficient instruments”.

“According to the forecast documents Member States submitted, the overall 20% target can be met and even exceeded. I really hope that Member States will prove that this is not only lip-service and will implement the necessary policies”, Fiona Hall (MEP UK, Liberal & Democrats), EUFORES Vice-President, adds.

EUFORES Vice-President Anni Podimata (MEP Greece, Socialists & Democrats) shares the position of her colleagues and stresses: “As parliamentarians it is our responsibility to scrutinise national governments. We demand ambitious action plans and to implement the Directive in a good and timely manner”.

All three EUFORES Presidents emphasise the important role, the REPAP2020 project is playing in accompanying the implementation of the RES-Directive. The project, which was initiated by a consortium of 13 European partners, has as a main goal the facilitation of the implementation. Among the activities of the project are workshops for the authors of the NREAPs from the national governments. So far, two workshops have taken place in Brussels with 17 and 21 Member States represented respectively. Additionally, industry stakeholders and the scientific partners of the project have developed 27 national RES-industry roadmaps, which are supposed as input documents for the NREAPs. After the submission of the action plans, the project will then also evaluate the results.

Source: EUFORES - European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources