Special report No 18/2016: The EU system for the certification of sustainable biofuels

The Member States must ensure that the share of energy from renewable sources in transport in 2020 will be at least 10 % of the final energy consumption in this sector. They can count towards this target biofuels certified as sustainable by voluntary schemes recognised by the Commission.

This report concludes that, because of weaknesses in the Commission’s recognition procedure and in the subsequent supervision of voluntary schemes, the EU certification system for the sustainability of biofuels is not fully reliable.

As regards the achievement of the 10 % transport target, the European Court of Auditors found that the statistics might be overestimated, because Member States could report as sustainable biofuel whose sustainability was not verified.