Collapsing EU Environment Unity Threatens Green Deal

From its very inception, the European Union has considered international collaboration on the environment to be of pivotal importance.

This inclination became even more pronounced when Ursula von der Leyen became European Commission President in 2019. In the years since, EU member states have moved as one to adopt a raft of bold measures to proactively tackle climate change. Among them, achieving net zero by 2050, reducing overall energy consumption, and reforming the bloc’s greenhouse gas trading system.

Yet, pronounced chinks are now rapidly and profusely proliferating in Europe’s environmental armour. A landmark vote by EU parliamentarians in June last year to ban internal combustion engines in all vehicles was scuttled on the eve of implementation this March by Berlin. Lawmakers in Germany shocked Brussels insiders by demanding a loophole be inserted into the legislation, allowing the environmentally destructive mechanisms to remain in operation past the 2035 deadline, if they run on synthetic fuels.

Fast forward to the start of May, and it was the turn of Paris to throw a wrench in the works. In a speech laying out plans for the “reindustrialisation” of France, President Emmanuel Macron urged a “European regulatory pause” on the environment, and for existing commitments to be upheld before further legislation was considered.

“We are ahead, in regulatory terms, of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world,” he warned. “We must not make new changes to the rules.”

Mere days later, Belgian Prime minister Alexander De Croo forcefully demanded a moratorium on bloc-wide nature preservation. In turn, the EU parliament’s European People’s Party grouping, and Fisheries and Agriculture Committees, reinforced the premier’s opposition.

“Parliament is not ready to accept a proposal that only increases costs and insecurity for farmers, fishers and consumers,” said Siegfried Mureşan, EPP Group vice chair for budget and structural policies.

The risk of a domino effect sweeping the bloc - member state after member state following the lead of Europe’s biggest and richest states, and picking and choosing what regulations they do and do not implement - is not lost on Frans Timmermans, the EU Commission’s top climate official and de facto Green Deal chief.

“You can’t say I support the Green Deal, but not the ambition to restore nature. It’s not an à la carte menu,” he declared in a recent address to EU parliamentarians. “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. So we need to get these two together.”

© Scoop Media