The EU’s top climate warrior

The EU’s top climate warrior

By Alex Barker and Jim Brunsden

June 14, 2019

Brussels Briefing

If there is a political herd in Brussels, it is moving towards anything that looks green.

For mainstream pro-EU parties, last month’s European Parliament elections showed environmental credibility can win votes. For prospective European Commission presidents, the likely need for the greens in any parliament majority showed that engagement on the climate can also win jobs.

From right to left, Brussels politicians are racing to prove their environmental mettle. Frans Timmermans, the Socialist lead candidate, memorably declared in the election campaign that “green is not the sole property of the Green party”. Manfred Weber, the centre-right EPP’s top candidate, clearly took that to heart by hugging the Green group as tightly as possible in coalition talks.

But the Brussels Briefing has been delving into the archives. And there is one person on the long-list for Commission president who can probably claim the greenest pedigree or all — or at least the oldest.

Who was hobnobbing with Al Gore about looming environmental disaster as far back as 1989? Or was drawing up a 100-point plan about the “ecological challenge” when some of today’s green political leaders were still in junior school? The answer: the one and only Michel Barnier.

The EU’s Brexit negotiator is these days publicly pledging his loyalty to Weber. But he has been an ever-green candidate for Brussels’ top job since 2004. The expectation in Brussels — at the moment — is that he may well miss out again.

But if the contest this time becomes messy, and EU leaders look beyond the lead candidates of parties, Barnier’s past as a young, idealistic MP on a mission to save the planet could come in quite handy.

A lover of the great outdoors in his native Savoie, Barnier in 1989 was tasked by the French parliament with preparing a report on the “economy of the environment”, an undertaking that began a far more extensive mission of ecological awareness-raising.

At a time when the environmental movement in France was largely seen as the preserve of tree-hugging obsessives, Barnier was already setting out a manifesto that reads like it could belong to the French green party in 2019.

His 1990 book, “One for All” delivered a blunt message to the French people that “the planet is in danger,” beset by everything from rising energy consumption to chronic biodiversity loss.

Some of the echoes to today’s debates are deafening: point 1 of the book's 100 point plan was to make environmental protection a priority in France’s constitution, in much the same way as Emmanuel Macron is seeking to do.

He advocated the creation of a “high authority” that could strike down environmentally damaging laws — an idea not dissimilar to the bulked-up EU impact studies that Europe’s greens are pushing for.

Proposals for eco-labels on household products, and for green VAT, were also years ahead of their time.

“One for All” was not the end of Barnier’s green crusade.

Further books followed in the 1990s, including an “atlas for a sustainable world,” printed using natural inks on recycled paper, and an “atlas of major risks.” Most importantly, he actually became the man in charge, serving as France’s environment minister from 1993-95.

When Barnier earlier this year called for a “Green New Deal”, few realised that it was 30 years in the making.