The two lawmakers in charge of drafting the European Parliament’s position on the EU’s new social climate fund have gone a step further than the European Commission’s initial proposal by drafting a definition of both energy and transport poverty.

The social climate fund was put forward by the EU executive last year as part of a package of legislation aimed at cutting the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. The fund is intended as a protection mechanism for low-income households against an expected rise in fuel prices caused by the introduction of a new EU carbon market for buildings and road transport.

It is hard to tell how many people are affected by energy poverty in Europe. According to Eurostat, around 31 million Europeans lived in energy poverty last year but the EU executive’s own research body put the number at 50 million people in 2019. The problem is that there is currently no EU-wide definition of energy poverty.

In their amendments to the European Commission’s proposal, conservative lawmakers Esther de Lange and David Casa set out to change that, laying out definitions of both energy and transport poverty.

“We introduce – for the first time! – a European definition of energy poverty and transport poverty,” de Lange said on Twitter. “Definitions alone are of little use, so the member states must also make mandatory monitoring of these forms of poverty, in order to be able to share ‘best practices’ with each other,” the Dutch MEP added.

The two MEPs have defined energy poverty as “households in the lowest income deciles whose energy costs exceed twice the median ratio between energy costs and disposable income after deduction of housing costs”.

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