On Wednesday 18 December, at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the centre-left and the most right-wing forces in the Chamber once again disagreed over the legitimacy of the European Green Deal.
The Green Deal has been described as a “nightmare” or even “sabotage” by members of the conservative right and the far right. They took advantage of a thematic debate on the need to restore the European Union’s competitiveness and to carry out an impact assessment of Green Deal policies to call for these decisions to be reversed.
On behalf of the ECR group, Nicola Procaccini from Italy listed the measures he described as “a poisoned chalice”. His main criticisms were the decision to end the use of internal combustion engines in new cars registered after 2035 and the relocation of car factories. He also criticised targets linked to the renovation of buildings and the Emissions Trading System, which he said would lead to “an increase in production costs for businesses”.
During the debate, a number of MEPs from the PfE, ECR and ENS groups noted that the EU’s emissions account for only 7% of global emissions, and that with the Green Deal, the EU is following an economic path that distances it further from those major industrialised economies with the highest emissions.
Markus Ferber (EPP, German), was meanwhile critical of the administrative burdens placed on businesses by the Green Deal, questioning whether there was a “smarter and less bureaucratic way of achieving climate objectives”. He also said that the promise of growth linked to investments in clean technologies was a hollow one. According to Michael Bloss (Greens/EFA, German), these comments are aimed at “stifling” innovation.
Anja Hazekamp (The Left, Dutch) asked the new Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Teresa Ribera, what she intended to do to combat disinformation on climate change coming from the far right.
Pursuit of objectives
In her opening remarks, Ms Ribera emphasised the historic nature of the Green Deal, which was launched almost five years ago. She reaffirmed her intention to continue along this pathway, without unravelling the existing legislative framework. In her view, it is impossible to be competitive “if our economy depends on fossil fuels that we do not produce”.
In order to promote European sovereignty, she reiterated the new European Commission’s commitment to presenting (non-)legislative measures to support industry and job creation, such as the presentation of a “law on accelerating the decarbonisation of industry”.
The Hungarian State Secretary for European Affairs, Barna Zsigmond, representing the Presidency of the Council of the EU, reiterated the need to implement the ‘Budapest Declaration’ on competitiveness, which was adopted in November by European leaders (see EUROPE 13521/2). In addition, he said he was looking forward to the European Commission’s proposals moving along these lines, such as the future ‘Clean Industrial Deal’, due to be unveiled at the end of February. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)