At a time when we need more ambitious plans and implementation to address major concerns arising from climate change, there is an undoubted backlash for many reasons that could seriously leave us well short of the impact we need for our mitigation actions. Kira Taylor discusses latest developments in an article on the EURACTIV website.
The twilight days of the European Green Deal
The European Union has been steaming ahead with its Green Deal for the past four years, but as it reaches the home stretch, a pushback on environmental legislation and shortcomings in industrial policy are set to slow it down.
The European Commission tabled its Green Deal in December 2019, at the beginning of its mandate, proclaiming this was Europe’s “man on the moon moment”.
The initiative, which included reforming much of the EU’s energy, climate and environment policy, weathered unexpected crises, including an economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine, which caused energy prices to soar.
The Green Deal not only survived these crises but also emerged stronger from them.
Between 2019 and 2022, the EU enshrined its net zero goal into law for 2050 and further increased its planned targets on emissions reduction, renewable energy and energy efficiency in response to the Ukraine war while strengthening its carbon market accordingly.
Other flagship initiatives under the Green Deal include a law banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars as of 2035 and a carbon tariff at the EU’s border to protect European industries against environmental dumping from countries like China.
“I think it’s very important to consider that all of these efforts were done during one of the most turbulent periods in our recent history,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at economic think tank Bruegel and a professor of energy, climate and environmental policy.
“I think that [Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission] have really set the right destination in the GPS, and they started the journey by rolling out the necessary legislation,” he told EURACTIV.
But despite this momentum, 2023 has seen a noticeable slowdown, with EU leaders calling for a halt on new green laws, the right wing of the European Parliament turning against biodiversity legislation, and the Commission’s Green Deal superstar, Frans Timmermans, looking to leave early.
Dwindling appetite for green legislation
This year, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a break from new green legislation, a sentiment quickly echoed by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
It marked the beginning of a slowdown for the Green Deal, most clearly seen in the battle that raged over the Nature Restoration Law.
A pillar of the Green Deal’s biodiversity objective, the Nature Restoration Law aimed at restoring 20% of land and sea areas by 2030. But it became extremely contentious, with EU countries baulking at the impact on farmers, while the centre-right European People’s Party launched a campaign to kill the proposal.
While the law ultimately passed to the next stage of negotiations with amendments to address concerns, the restoration actions were also significantly weakened by both the European Parliament and EU countries.
For the EPP, the battle on the Nature Restoration Law was also a test run to build new alliances in Parliament ahead of the 2024 elections, where nationalist parties in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group are expected to make big gains.
It also reflects a shifting political landscape where environmental legislation has become more controversial, especially when it comes to issues related to agriculture and land use, said Antoine Oger, a research director heading work on sustainable development goals at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), a think tank.
“The argument went from a scientific one – how much the soil in the EU can sustain in terms of yield and agricultural production over the long term – to politically-driven, short-term arguments related to adaptation costs,” he explained.
However, Oger stressed this debate is counterproductive as the biggest threat to the European population and farmers is not environmental legislation but the climate crisis.
Alongside this, there are questions about the impact of Timmermans’ early departure. While in the Commission’s top climate job, he fought hard for the Nature Restoration Law and has been a driving force for green legislation.
As the Green Deal’s architect turns his gaze to Dutch politics, he leaves big shoes to fill ahead of final negotiations on the Nature Restoration Law and the COP28 climate summit.
The slowdown has also affected other aspects of environmental policy, including a goal to strengthen Europe’s chemicals legislation overhaul, which has been delayed and is at risk of being watered down.
Industrial policy black hole
Energy policy is another area where the brakes have kicked in.
While Europe set ambitious objectives on renewables and decarbonisation for 2030, it has failed to implement a coherent industrial policy to back it up.
For instance, the electricity market reform, which countries had hoped to agree quickly, has been delayed by fights over nuclear power, reflecting deep divisions between EU member states over the role of atomic energy relative to renewables.
Similarly, the Net Zero Industry Act, designed to boost domestic manufacturing of technologies needed for the green transition, has become an ill-fitting substitute for a wider policy on industrial decarbonisation.
“We have never been able to develop a solid green industrial policy in the EU,” said Tagliapietra, adding this is not a fault of the Commission but due to EU countries seeing this as an issue of national sovereignty and competition.
“It’s crystal clear that if Europe wants to face China, the United States and their massive green industrial policies, we need to act together and leverage our single market and economies of scale. If we don’t do that, we are irrelevant at the global level,” he warned.
‘Green Deal 2.0’
Tagliapietra believes this needs to be tackled by the next European Commission, which will take over in 2024.
According to him, this could take the form of a “Green Deal 2.0”, focusing on concrete initiatives fostering the decarbonisation of Europe’s economy in a way people understand and which provides economic and social benefits.
“This time around, we need to really get serious about the industrial economic dimension of this. We need to be honest, we need to be clear that this will have economic implications, which we can manage with good policymaking, and we can really turn this into an opportunity if we are good at setting the right policies,” he explained.
“And we need to clarify that there is no plan B. There is no possibility of doing nothing or slowing down the process because we see what happens [otherwise],” he said, referring to the wildfires, heatwaves and droughts that have swept across Europe.
Focus on implementation
A major part of the next European Commission’s job on the green front will be to ensure the agreed laws are properly rolled out in EU countries. Without this, the EU’s agreed climate and energy targets simply risk being missed.
However, this could be challenging as some of the legislation, like the ban on sales of new combustion engines in 2035 and new building standards, directly impacts European citizens.
“These are sectors where climate policy directly enters the ordinary life of people,” said Tagliapietra.
“There might be a higher risk that people see these as something imposed on them by a faraway elite in Brussels. And that is something we need to avoid,” he added, warning against a “vicious cycle” where politicians agree on green legislation in Brussels, but complain about it back home.
The outcome of the European elections will also dictate the next Commission’s agenda, particularly as the “green wave” seen during the last European elections could well be receding in favour of nationalist parties with a noticeable distaste for EU environmental policies.
“Another green wave is very unexpected,” said Oger. “Every poll at the moment tends to go towards the reinforcements of the conservative bloc at European level,” he told EURACTIV, although he added that the recent Spanish elections showed polls are not always 100% accurate.
For instance, Oger points to the extreme heatwave and wildfires experienced this summer, saying could help tip the scales in favour of green politicians next year.
External link
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 
Missing from the entirety of this “blather” are citizens & their interests. One of the memes that flows out of EU institutions is “prosumers”, political shorthand for households that both consumer energy (usually electricity) and can export it, usually via roof-top PV. So, how do things look on the roof-top front? Google Earth provides the answers (zoom in and set the view to sometime in late-2022 or 2023). There is a total absence of residential roof-top PV in Spain. That’s because the wholly-owned subsidiary of the major Spanish energy companies (Iberdrola et al) i.e. the Spanish gov, has enacted legislation against roof-top PV in Spain. Situation in France, the same (Edf and its subsidiary – the French gov’). Why this situation? Cos roof-top PV disintermediates the energy corporates (vertically integrated but with a synthetic separation between generation and retail).
As for resistance to “green policies” – all depends on how you present them. I guarantee if you went out on the street and asked people: “would you like half price green electricity forever from PV on your roof-top”– they’d be happy to sign in blood. If I was Marine le Pen, I’d make this a centrepiece in the next French elections – she’d tear the heart out of Macron.
Regulatory pause? This is the corporates pulling politicos strings – one must not go too quickly because otherwise the corporates might lose out. Thus the regulatory pause is needed for the corporates to organise themselves and have a think (hmm where do we want things to go so we can maximise profits).
I don’t usually agree with Breugel, who for the most part are doctrinaire economists, however, they are (for once) correct on the total absence of an EU industrial policy. Indeed, arguably, given the recent action raising interest rates by the perma—tanned moron that runs the ECB, the EU has a negative industrial policy – compare & contrast: in China industrials get super low cost money. The ECB, every day in every way making the EU poorer – but you won’t hear that sort of critique from the Breugels of this world. EU: no industrial policy of any sort, fiscal policy devised by imbeciles.
You articulate these points extremely well. Thanks Mike