Why a
little greenwashing law set off a political explosion in Brussels
Months of
chipping away at EU green rules has caused some lawmakers to finally blow their
tops.
June 25,
2025 4:43 am CET
By James
Fernyhough
The European
Commission set off a political cluster bomb Friday when it suddenly declared it
was killing a relatively minor rule on corporate greenwashing.
But why did
killing this little-known law — which would force companies to back up
environmental claims with verifiable evidence— cause such an almighty stink,
and why now?
The answer
may lie in months of rising pressure, in which right-wing forces have used
their increased influence in Brussels to relentlessly chip away at EU green
rules.
Leading this
anti-green push has been the center-right European People’s Party, the largest
force in the European Parliament. Often opposing it have been the remaining
partners in the once-powerful, now-enfeebled centrist bloc that includes the
center-left Socialists & Democrats, liberal Renew Group, and the Greens.
Two days
before the Commission said it was killing the Green Claims Directive, the EPP
sent a letter to the Commission saying it wanted the law dead. The Commission
seemed to capitulate without a fight, feeding a growing sense among the
center-left bloc that the EPP is controlling not just Parliament but also the
Commission.
Subsequent
developments have cast doubt on whether the Commission even really meant to
announce it was killing the law, or whether the spokesperson had made a
mistake.
But that
didn’t matter. The pressure cooker had blown its top, and the S&D, Renew
and the Greens were steaming mad.
“We are on
the brink of an institutional crisis,” Valérie Hayer, chair of the Renew Europe
group, told POLITICO.
Months of
failure to influence Brussels policy had finally caught up with them.
The Green
Deal backlash
Their
frustrations can be traced back to early last year, at the tail end of the
Green Deal Mandate.
The European
Green Deal, a huge package of environmental reforms covering climate,
biodiversity, pollution, agriculture, energy efficiency, recycling, and more,
defined Ursula von der Leyen’s first term as president of the Commission.
She launched
it in late 2019 when Greta Thunberg was at peak popularity and the climate
crisis was considered the world’s great existential threat. The Green Deal had
support across ideological lines.
Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shifted attention away from climate, but it was the
perhaps the farmers’ protests — in part against EU green rules — of late 2023
and early 2024 that marked the real turning point. Looming European elections,
in which the populist right was projected to make big gains, prompted the EPP
to cast itself as the party of farmers that would protect Europe’s rural
economy from environmental overreach.
The Nature
Restoration Law, designed to help restore Europe’s depleted biodiversity, was the EPP's first target. They succeeded in
watering this down, and would have killed it altogether if Austria’s
environment minister hadn't gone rogue. The EPP did, however, succeed in
killing rules that would have put limits on pesticide use.
European
elections in June brought a more right-wing Parliament, in which the EPP found
itself in a position to choose to form a majority with either hard- and
far-right groups, or with the traditional centrist block. Without the EPP,
neither side had the numbers.
In this new
environment, the EPP’s next target was anti-deforestation rules, which it tried
and failed to water down with the help of far-right groups — drawing
accusations of breaching the cordon sanitaire, the unofficial agreement among
centrist parties not to collaborate with the far right.
All aboard
the omnibus
Then came
von der Leyen's first omnibus simplification bill.
Proposed at
the behest of member countries and industry and backed by the EPP, the
awkwardly-named law opened up a number of green regulations for businesses,
with the goal of reducing red tape. The draft proposal, released in February,
was a bonfire of green regulation, slashing the content and reducing the scope
of the laws. And it started a trend.
Over the
intervening few months, the Commission, EU countries, and right-leaning groups
in Parliament have targeted an expanding list of green rules and policies,
including through more omnibus simplification bills.
Some of
these measures have originated with the EPP in Parliament, some from within the
Commission, and others from national governments — reflecting increased
influence of pro-business, anti-green sentiment across EU institutions.
Some moves
affecting green policies have included: cutting green regulations for farmers;
watering down laws on soil health; downgrading the protection status of wild
wolves; reducing the scope of chemical safety regulations; reducing the scope
of the carbon border tax; allowing billions in Covid-19 relief money earmarked
for climate projects to go to defense instead; blocking the use of the term
“Green Deal” in a Parliament report on water resilience; criticizing use of EU
money to fund green NGOs; watering down greenwashing laws; continued attacks on
anti-deforestation and forest monitoring laws.
The list
goes on.
Mostly these
have been at the less meaty end of the Green Deal, and have not affected the
core promise of slashing greenhouse gas emissions to create a climate-neutral
Europe by 2050.
But two
changes stand out. One is the Commission’s decision to cave in to industry
pressure for leniency on this vehicle year's emission targets, that were meant
to act as a milestone along the route to the 2035 ban on combustion engines —
and a softening on the scope of the ban itself.
The other is
the Commission’s draft plan to allow the use of carbon credits overseas to meet
the EU’s 2040 climate targets.
Pretty much
all of these policies have been opposed by the Greens and S&D and, to a
lesser extent, the centrist Renew — groups which held more sway in previous
mandates.
Which may
explain the eruption of frustrations this week.
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