EU’s new economic vision is speaking to Green Deal critics

 

EU’s new economic vision is speaking to Green Deal critics

 

A draft document shows Brussels putting deregulation before decarbonization.

 

January 24, 2025 5:31 pm CET

By Zia Weise

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-economic-vision-is-speaking-to-green-deal-critics-competitiveness-compass/

 

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s new economic “compass” has a north star the burgeoning movement to revoke stringent green rules will love.

 

A leaked draft of the European Commission’s competitiveness compass — an economic doctrine to guide the EU executive’s work for the coming five years — points toward widespread deregulation targeting the European Green Deal in particular.

 

“This Commission will deliver an unprecedented simplification effort,” the document reads, singling out new rules governing financial and corporate sustainability efforts.

 

A law to streamline these rules is expected in February, but the compass suggests more is to come, describing next month’s proposal as merely the “first” simplification bill.

 

“In some areas, existing policies will have to be accelerated and upgraded, in others a change of approach is needed to adapt to new realities,” the draft document says.

 

Still, the compass vows the EU will “stay the course” on its climate targets. But the document’s focus on slashing environmental red tape to boost the European economy fits neatly into growing calls to revise or repeal large parts of the Green Deal — the slate of rules designed to get the EU to net zero emissions by 2050.

 

The loudest demands for a green rethink have come from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the political family of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose leaders ramped up their attacks on the Green Deal this week.

 

Last weekend, a German-led EPP leaders’ meeting produced a document calling on the Commission to delay the financial and corporate sustainability rules as well as the EU’s new carbon border tax for at least two years.

 

The leaders also said they opposed renewable energy targets, a Green Deal element that had enjoyed widespread consensus until then. The EPP insists the EU’s climate policy should be “technology-neutral” — not preferring certain technologies over others, for example, heat pumps over boilers or renewables over nuclear, and not banning technologies such as combustion engines in cars.

 

Then, on Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, an EPP politician, appeared to blame the EU’s new climate legislation — much of which has yet to come into effect — for the bloc’s high energy prices.

 

He called for a “review of all legal acts including those under the Green Deal” and for “courage to change those rules that might result in prohibitively high energy prices,” attacking, in particular, a carbon fee on fossil fuels used to heat homes and power cars coming into force in 2027. Tusk’s remarks were welcomed by conservative Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala.

 

Another EPP politician, Romanian Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja, this week said he was working on a “detailed report on the negative effects of Green Deal policies” for Romania, praising the country’s natural gas reserves and coal-fired power capacity.

 

 

“The transition to a decarbonised economy must be competitiveness-friendly and technology neutral,” the draft document reads. |

 

“What can hold us back is a suffocating bureaucracy and a Green Deal that ignores the realities on the ground,” he said. “That is why what is needed, as EPP leaders have said, is a robust debate about how and whether the EU will continue the Green Deal for the next few years.”

 

It’s not just Europe’s conservatives, though — centrist-led France is asking the EU to indefinitely delay corporate sustainability rules. Von der Leyen mentioned the same law when promising “far-reaching simplification” in her speech in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

 

At a press conference on Friday, Commission spokesman Stefan De Keersmaecker told reporters that while “one of the important pillars of the compass is to cut red tape … the commitments that have been taken in the context of the Green Deal remain fully valid.”

 

But the EU’s new economic doctrine appears to put deregulation before decarbonization, with climate efforts taking a backseat to the Commission’s newfound focus on competitiveness.

 

“The transition to a decarbonised economy must be competitiveness-friendly and technology neutral,” the draft document reads. “The Compass goal is a Europe where tomorrow’s technologies and clean products are invented, manufactured and marketed, as we stay the course to carbon neutrality.”