Carta a la Ministra Ribera ante la intención del Consejo de la UE del despliegue de renovables a costa de la conservación de la biodiversidad.

Four conservation foundations: Fundación Naturaleza y Hombre, Fundacion Oso Pardo, Fundación Global Nature and Fundación Quebrantahuesos (FCQ) , show our concern about the regulation that is being voted today in the Energy Council of the European Union, which proposes the declaration of overriding public interest in the planning and operation of renewable installations, which allows minimizing the environmental impact assessment of these projects. We set this out in a letter to the Minister of Ecological Transition and Democratic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, in which we also consider that, based on Article 122 of the Treaty on European Union, which is clearly economic in nature, there can be no basis for a step backwards in environmental protection for the sake of streamlining and simplifying permitting procedures in order to accelerate the deployment of renewable energies, hand in hand with the current energy crisis. We share with most of society and the government the urgent need for an energy transition, and that these projects can be considered to be in the greater public interest. However, even if they contain measures to mitigate the collisions or disturbances that they will produce, in no way should the control of prior environmental assessments for the implementation of new renewable energy projects be reduced and relaxed, limiting citizen participation or with an a posteriori control of their installation. The control and evaluation processes must continue to be prior to the authorization of these projects and cannot be reduced considering that the deaths of fauna are not intentional, whose protection must be ensured under the protection of the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC and the Birds Directive 2009/147/EEC.