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The tacit approval of permits for new energy projects has emerged as one of the most politically explosive issues in the EU’s negotiations over the renewal of its ageing power grids, according to a document seen by Euronews.
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Under proposals for the EU’s new European Grids Package_,_ certain stages of the permit process for energy infrastructure projects aimed at revamping the bloc’s electricity grid could automatically proceed if national authorities fail to respond within set deadlines.
The idea of a silent consent for such projects is unsettling EU capitals, which fear Brussels is quietly trying to transfer power from national authorities.
The legislative texts under the Grids Package “introduce a system of tacit approval for intermediary steps of the permit-granting procedures and administrative decisions. Member states have raised concerns about this approach and indicated that more flexibility might be needed,” reads the official document.
The European Commission argues that the proposed rules to accelerate electricity grid and renewable energy projects are designed to balance environmental protection with urgent climate and energy goals.
Under its proposal tabled in December, the EU executive states that grid projects may receive a presumption of overriding public interest, meaning they are assumed to provide important public benefits unless proven otherwise.
The measure is designed to tackle one of the EU’s biggest obstacles to reaching climate neutrality by 2050 — projects trapped for years in administrative limbo.
The Commission’s impact assessment, unveiled last December alongside its legislative proposal, shows that electricity projects take about 3.5–7.5 years for distribution grids and 7–10 years for transmission grids, identifying slow permitting as a key cause of delays, responsible for more than half of them.
According to the proposal, if national authorities don’t act within two or three years, depending on the project’s complexity, intermediate permits or actions throughout the process are automatically deemed approved.
EU leaders have been stressing the importance of revamping the bloc’s power grid as a condition for achieving its climate goals. They argue the EU can’t electrify its economy, phase out fossil fuels or compete industrially without building or upgrading grid infrastructure at unprecedented speed.
The renewable energy sector is also affected, with wind farms waiting years for grid connections. Cross-border interconnectors remain stalled in the permitting process and national administrations often move too slowly to match the EU’s climate targets.
Power transfer?
Across European capitals, governments increasingly see the proposal not as administrative streamlining, but as a quiet transfer of power from national authorities to Brussels.
During behind-the-door negotiations, EU countries warned that automatic procedural approvals could create legal uncertainty, weaken environmental oversight and undermine domestic administrative systems.
Several countries demanded “more flexibility” in how tacit approval rules are designed, according to compromise documents circulated by the EU’s Cypriot presidency, including making silent consent non-mandatory.
While countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia found the Commission’s proposal reasonable, France and Germany opposed the idea of a mandatory tacit approval of permitting and administrative decisions related to new energy projects, according to an EU official.
Other member states asked the Presidency to leave it to each EU country to decide whether tacit approval would be mandatory or optional — a measure the Cyprus Presidency is likely to adopt.
“The Commission would like it to be obligatory for everything, while the Presidency proposed it would be only for the final decision (of projects seeking permits),” a second EU diplomat told Euronews.
Elsewhere, the Baltics asked for more safeguards to avoid compromising national security.
The dispute has become one of the defining political fault lines in negotiations over the EU’s so-called Grids Package. In many member states, permitting decisions touch politically explosive territory — land rights, local opposition, environmental litigation and regional planning authority.
Governments fear being blamed domestically for projects that appear to have been “rubber-stamped” under EU pressure.
The sensitivity is especially acute in countries where land-use planning is regarded as a core national competence, such as Austria and Germany. Negotiators are simultaneously fighting over separate provisions that would limit how broadly governments can designate areas where renewable energy projects are prohibited.
Sense of urgency vs national sovereignty
Together, the measures have fuelled accusations from some delegations that Brussels is using the energy transition to expand its reach into traditionally national spheres of power. Such a predicament leaves the Cypriot Presidency trying to broker a compromise between two increasingly incompatible pressures — the urgency argument and national sovereignty.
The Council has already demanded an “ambitious grids package” to strengthen Europe’s infrastructure resilience and accelerate permitting procedures across the bloc. EU officials have been warning that without radical acceleration, Europe’s grid bottlenecks could become one of the greatest threats to industrial competitiveness and decarbonisation.
But governments stand determined to preserve national discretion over politically sensitive infrastructure decisions.
The EU increasingly wants to synchronise coordination to deliver energy security and climate neutrality. But member states remain reluctant to surrender control over how those objectives are implemented on their own territory.
The Cypriot Presidency of the EU is aiming to secure a general agreement at the upcoming meeting of energy ministers in Brussels on 26 June, effectively setting the Council’s negotiating position ahead of more intensive talks with the European Parliament later in the year.
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