Stop the extermination of the rivers of Europe! Remove hydropower from the Renewable Energy Directive!

The riverine systems in Europe are mostly destroyed by overexploitation by hydropower. All the priceless ecosystem services they used to provide to Europeans for thousands of years were ruthlessly wiped out for an electricity production amounting to only 17% of the electricity production in EU. It is obviously an irrational sacrifice.
The war profiteers are trying to impose hydropower as a solution to the so called energy crisis, to push the destruction of rivers even further.
Now a revision of the Renewable Energy Directive is driven into the wrong direction, promoting, instead of hindering, the ecocides of rivers. And this is happening while all the EU members are UN members, and we are in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. All EU members are also signatories to the Ramsar Convention. Furthermore, the EU Biodiversity Strategy states that at least 25,000 km of rivers should be restored into free-flowing rivers by 2030. On top of that, the Water Framework Directive prevents further deterioration and compels to protection and enhancement of the status of aquatic ecosystems. So this „promotion" of hydropower is an attack not only on environment, but also on the rule of law.
The new EU law proposals, even as drafts, already triggered the issuing of the Ordinance of Ecocides in Romania, the largest attack on nature in the nowadays Europe, comprising mutilation of 23 Natura 2000 sites, 3 national parks, a nature park and a Ramsar site. Imagine what the adoption can trigger!
https://balkanriverdefence.org/news/basca-mare-dam-plans-resurrected/
The danger comes from "Renewable Energy Directive revision" and from "REPowerEU Plan". If the directive is adopted the way the hydropower lobby orders, the implementation of Water Framework Directive, already severely hindered, will become impossible. Besides, in a rule of law cannot be approved new legislative proposals that block the implementation of a law already in force.
130+ NGOs from around the world asked, in an open letter, "Counting on new hydropower in Europe is irresponsible", to exclude new hydropower plants from go-to areas.
https://irp.cdn-website.com/53007095/files/uploaded/open_letter_counting_on_new_hydropower_is_irresponsible_2_03_2023.pdf
WWF, in its position paper " Go-to Areas for Renewables, Making the Puzzle Fit", wrote that hydropower is "extremely problematic in climate and/or biodiversity terms and must be treated differently from other forms of renewable energy". But this is not enough.
Instead of getting bogged down in assessing what is renewable but not sustainable, letting fake assessments financed by the rich industry in case prevail and exhausting, in complicated lawsuits, the capacity of our weaker and weaker civil society (thus sabotaging democracy), there is a straight and proper way to solve this violent attack on nature, on our right to a healthy environment: Hydropower must be removed from the list of renewable energy sources, on the grounds below.
Scientific studies conclude that a single dam can destroy a whole river. New studies showed that there is not only a longitudinal impact along the whole river course, but terrestrial habitats around hydropower plans are severely degraded. Hydropower plants irreversibly destroy the riverine systems. No dam removal can bring back the ecosystems as they were, or the vanished populations of the whole array of species impacted. As we all know from the astounding documentary "Blue Heart", "no other energy source destroys nature on such a dimension as hydropower".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhmHByZ0Xd8
As if it would not be enough, it hits where it hurts the most, freshwater species being the most threatened on Earth.
Massive and irreversible destruction cannot fall within the renewable concept. The renewable concept cannot stick to the narrow vision of the water cycle, all the impacts of this unsustainable industry must be considered. Water is replenished (or not, look at the drought that hit hydropower in Europe in 2022) but the destroyed ecosystems and landscapes are not. The slaughtered habitats and wildlife are not renewed!
Not only conservationists, but even some energy experts acknowledge that hydropower does not represent renewable energy.
While in USA dams are decommissioned, the devastating hydropower industry found fertile ground for lobbying in the notorious corruption at the European Parliament. Even more shocking, a politician whose career was launched by the very Romanian prime minister (key person of the hydropower lobby) which caused the slaughter of rivers in the Carpathians (that brought Romania into infringement no. INFR(2015)4036) was the leading negotiator on behalf of the European Parliament. In the dark night of March 30, 2023, when, "at night as thieves", the participants at the trilogue decided to cut the veins of Europe! The name of this politician is Cristian Bușoi, he is the chair of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee. And the members of the European Parliament will vote for something that others decided, behind closed doors. It is no secret that these trilogues represent a lack of democracy.
https://www.eesc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/qe-01-17-783-en-n.pdf
Besides being a fake renewable, hydropower involves massive, still unassessed, greenhouse gases emissions, because: reservoirs release huge methane emissions, concrete production has a large carbon print, the massive building works issue substantial emissions, the ecosystems directly destroyed on the river valleys are carbon sinks, the 16 million dams are blocking the connection between continental and oceanic C cycles, hindering the carbon sequestration on the ocean floor etc.
Destruction of nature is as big a threat to humanity as climate change.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2201697-destruction-of-nature-is-as-big-a-threat-to-humanity-as-climate-change/
But hydropower is not only about nature and environment, hydropower also destroys world heritage sites (see Hasankeyf case) and does not hold back from ethnocide (see Belo Monte case).
Hydropower is promoted as cheap, but this is possible only because it does not cover the damages it causes. In the declaration from the first European Rivers Summit, held in Sarajevo in 2018, it was requested:
"To ensure EU Member States and candidate countries achieve full recovery of the environmental and resource costs of hydropower projects and include these costs in the RBMPs pricing measures for hydropower activities. This will contribute to achieving the environmental objectives of the WFD, in accordance with the polluter pays principle."
None of the member states has done anything in this regard since.
Hydropower is not an economically sound investment, Copernicus Climate Change Service reported, for 2022, that "Europe's rivers saw their driest year on record".
Even without new hydropower plants, the free flowing river stretches in Europe are in danger, because of climate change, gravel extraction, deforestation, pollution and other impacts.
The slaughter of rivers could not be possible if the institutions that administrate the rivers would not be marked by conflicts of interests. The European Parliament, in the resolution 2020/2613(RSP), "calls on the Member States to create legal frameworks that avoid situations in which the entities managing bodies of water are financed from activities that deteriorate their chemical and ecological status; calls on the Member States to clearly separate the entities in charge of management and those in charge of assessing the status of bodies of water." But the member states refuse to act accordingly.
In Budapest in 1988, while the communist regime was still standing, tens of thousands of people were protesting on the streets against hydropower, against this violent industry which cuts the veins of the Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKFQssTZQRA
Now, in the European democracies, people are numb, they lost the conscious connection with nature. But they still depend on it, even if they are not aware anymore.
Greenwashing of hydropower, labelling it as something it is not, is an extremely counterproductive measure, we will not save our environment, our future by lying just to make the renewable percent look better.
We need to bring life back to Europe's rivers, not to choke them to death by dams.