Cracks emerge in Europe’s united front to battle climate change
The European Union has been at the forefront of the fight against climate change and the protection of nature for years. But it now finds itself under pressure from within to pause new environmental efforts amid fears they will hurt the economy.
With the next European Parliament elections set for 2024, some leaders and lawmakers are concerned about antagonising workers and voters with new binding legislation and restrictive measures and are urging the bloc to hit the brakes.
Since Ursula von der Leyen took the helm of the powerful European Commission in 2019, environmental policies have topped the agenda. EU nations have endorsed plans to become climate neutral by 2050 and adopted a wide range of measures, from reducing energy consumption to sharply cutting transport emissions and reforming the EU’s trading system for greenhouse gases.
But cracks in the European united front against climate change have emerged in recent months. The first sign was when Germany delayed a deal to ban new internal combustion engines in the EU by 2035 amid ideological divisions inside the German Government.
An agreement was finally reached in March, but just weeks later, France, called for a pause on EU environmental regulation. President Emmanuel Macron said: “We have already passed a lot of regulations at European level, more than our neighbours. Now we have to execute, not make new rules, because otherwise we will lose all players.”
Macron has been particularly concerned by a United States clean energy law that benefits electric vehicles and other products made in North America, fearing it will expose
European companies to unfair competition. Macron’s logic basically holds that a pause on environmental constraints would help EU businesses keep producing on home soil. Belgian Prime minister Alexander De Croo called this week for a moratorium on the introduction of EU legislation aimed at nature preservation.
The law proposed by the EU’s executive arm aims, by 2030, to cover at least 20 per cent of the EU’s land and sea areas with nature restoration measures, “and eventually extend these to all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050”.
De Croo said that climate legislation should not be overloaded with restoration measures or limits on agricultural nitrogen pollution, warning that businesses would no longer be able to keep up.
Macron and De Croo have found allies at the European Parliament, where members of the biggest group, the Christian Democrat EPP, have asked the Commission to withdraw the nature restoration law proposal on grounds that it will threaten agriculture and undermine food security in Europe. The move came after the Fisheries Committee and the Agriculture Committee rejected the planned legislation. EPP lawmakers claim that abandoning farmland will lead to an increase in food prices, more imports and drive farmers out of businesses.
The growing opposition to the nature restoration law has caused great concern among environmental
NGOs, and Frans Timmermans, the EU Commission’s top climate official in charge of its Green Deal, warned he would not put forward an alternative proposal because there isn’t time. “You can’t say I support the Green Deal, but not the ambition to restore nature. It’s not ‘a` la carte menu.”
The EU commission has also proposed setting legally binding targets to reduce the use of pesticides by 50 per cent by 2030 and a ban on all pesticide use in public parks, playgrounds and schools. Farmers would be able to use EU funds to cover the cost of the new requirements for five years.
“If one piece falls, the other pieces fall. I don’t see how we can maintain the Green Deal without the nature pillar, because without the nature pillar, the climate pillar is also not viable,” Timmermans said. “So we need to get these two together.”