Climate crisis must not become a wedge issue in EU elections, politicians warned
Europe’s climate chief has warned against politicians trying to use the climate crisis as a wedge issue in the forthcoming EU parliament elections, calling instead for climate policy that will bring wider economic benefits.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU commissioner for climate action, said Europe had no choice but to press ahead with strong measures to cut greenhouse gases, whoever was in power. But he added that more attention was needed to helping businesses thrive in a low-carbon world.
“There is no alternative than to continue with climate action,” he said. “We need to continue in the direction of travel we have set. We need to speed up our pace.”
Rightwing parties are widely expected in polls to do well in the election, to be held from 6 to 9 June, largely at the expense of the Greens and socialist parties. Protests by farmers in EU capitals have attacked climate policies, and some rightwing parties have stepped up anti-green rhetoric. But Hoekstra maintained that policies to tackle the climate crisis must be a key focus, and were needed for Europe to thrive economically.
“That is what the next commission should be all about: continued climate action, mitigation [of greenhouse gases], but I think also more about adaptation [to extreme weather] and a just transition [to a low-carbon economy],” he said.
He cited recent extreme weather, including floods in eastern Europe and Germany, as examples of the human and economic tolls the climate crisis was already taking, and he said Europe also needed to forge ahead in the global economic race to create low-carbon technology. “To those who might have reservations on climate action, how needed it is, [I say] it is not only a matter of nature, it is also a matter of geopolitics and, in the end, finance,” he said.
Hoekstra said he did not see the opposition to climate action in Europe that some on the right wing of politics have tried to claim.
“Eighty per cent of EU citizens articulate that they have significant worries about what is happening to our climate,” he noted.
He denied that Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was turning away from climate action, as some critics have claimed. “I would say it’s rather the contrary,” he said. “I don’t know a single example in the domain of climate where we have watered anything down.” But he added that more emphasis was needed on the economic consequences of policies to phase out fossil fuels, for instance on energy prices and jobs.
He said: “We have three pillars to this part of our future: climate action; competitiveness for our companies; and a just transition for our people. What we need to acknowledge is that we cannot have one without the others. A one-dimensional solution will not do.”
To be successful, politicians would have to ensure that people could see the benefits of cutting emissions, by providing retraining to those whose jobs in fossil fuel-dependent industries would disappear, and to spread the benefits of low-carbon technology.
“We can make sure that there is a bright future for Europe, that there is employability, that there is reschooling,” he said. Hoekstra also signalled he was willing to get tough with other countries, including China, that are still increasing their greenhouse gas emissions. “I can only commend the Chinese for the renewables transition in their own country. I’m way less enthusiastic about their idea to build new coal plants.”
China has been accused of destroying the solar-panel-manufacturing industries in the EU and US by generating a surplus of products that are then dumped cheaply on international markets.
One of the remedies the EU has been working on is a green tariff that would be charged on imports of certain high-carbon goods, such as cement and fertilisers. This would penalise imports from countries that are dependent on coal and have high emissions, with the aim of deterring companies from moving abroad to take advantage of lax climate rules.