Europe's top competition enforcer is ready to grant another 12 years of state aid to the coal industry, according to new European Union documents seen by AFP on Thursday.
An existing subsidy regime for the coal industry — the origins of the 27-nation bloc that is now home to half a billion people and the world's biggest trading market — was due to expire at the end of this year.
However, a new European Commission working document warns that a "sudden end of subsidies" leading to the "immediate closure of the mines" would create a "flood of redundant mine workers."
"Taking into account jobs in related industries, up to 100,000 jobs may be at stake," it said.
EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia is planning to present new proposals for the sector, with subsidies predominantly focused on Germany's Ruhr valley, in northwest Spain and in Romania, on July 6.
Almunia told the European parliament's finance and economics committee on Tuesday that subsidies should be reduced before eventually disappearing.
But a phasing-out of "sector-specific" rules to fall under general state aid principles should be allowed to run until a deadline "which does not extend beyond 31 December, 2022," the document states.
The decision comes as G20 leaders meeting in Toronto, Canada, this weekend seek to harden up pledges made last year to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels blamed by environmentalists for dramatically upping carbon emissions and accelerating global warming.
Greens Euro lawmaker Claude Turmes accused Almunia of pandering to Spanish government desires, saying: "There is a conflict of interest."
"Coal is not an energy priority, there is nothing more damaging to our climate."
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