Malaysia Urges EC To Look At Draft Delegated Regulation In Holistic Manner

KUALA LUMPUR, March 6 (Bernama) -- Malaysia Tuesday strongly urged the European Commission (EC) to look at the draft delegated regulation of the European Union Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED II) in a more holistic, balanced and unbiased manner. The draft has been found to be lacking in transparency, scientific credibility and many of the assumptions therein fail to reflect the actual sustainable practices in the industry. "It was also biased against palm oil bio-fuels compared with the other crop-based biofuels. "We therefore concluded that overall, palm oil has been unfairly labeled as a high ILUC risk among the eight feed stocks cited in the draft regulation, said the Ministry of Primary Industries in a statement after a stakeholders meeting Tuesday on high and low indirect land use change (ILUC) risk biofuels under the recast of the EU RED II held in Brussel, Belgium. The Malaysian delegation comprising the Malaysian ambassador to Belgium Hasnudin Hamzah and high-level ministry officials, representatives from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, Malaysian Palm Oil Council and Malaysian Palm Oil Certification Council, was led by the secretary-general of the Ministry of Primary Industries Dr Tan Yew Chong. The ministry also said the participation in the meeting was important to provide clear, accurate and scientific based information to stakeholders. Malaysia reiterated that the classification of all palm oil produced as a high ILUC risk biofuel feedstock was unacceptable since such damaging findings were obtained by erroneous and biased interpretations by the EC. "This will have significant detrimental effects on palm oil producing countries which depend on this industry to raise the socio-economic well being of their people and to help these nations achieve the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals," said the statement. The ministry also emphasised that it was of extreme and urgent importance for the EU to pay specific attention to Malaysia’s on-going efforts to make its entire palm oil supply chain sustainable by Jan 1, 2020 through its mandatory Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) Certification Scheme and to accept MSPO as one of the voluntary schemes under the EU RED II. Malaysia further restated its willingness to work with EU experts to help address any concerns regarding the draft delegated regulation that aimed to classify all palm oil produced as high ILUC risk. -- BERNAMA