On August 20, 2018, in Stockholm, a 15-year-old high school student decided to go on strike to denounce the inaction of governments in the face of climate change. She sits in front of the Swedish parliament with a cardboard sign that reads: “school strike for climate“. Very quickly, his weekly ritual will attract the attention of the media, and inspire thousands of young people across Europe, then around the world. The climate marches follow one after the other, constantly attracting more people, while Greta Thunberg calls on the powerful around the world.
At that time, Ursula von der Leyen was Minister of Defense in Germany: she was the favorite to succeed Angela Merkel. But the European elections of May 26, 2019 will change the situation: the environmentalist parties are making a very strong push, which responds to the demonstrations of young people. In France, the Greens list, led by Yannick Jadot, comes in third position, with 13.6% of the vote. As Yannick Jadot said on the evening of the election: there is a European green wave.
A new president of the European Commission must be appointed to replace the departing Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker. Ursula von der Leyen, from the left wing of the EPP, and therefore much more acceptable to socialists and ecologists, will be appointed in July 2019. Frans Timmermans will become her first vice-president, in charge of the environment. And it is the duo who will carry the European Green Deal. It is a question of responding to the mobilizations of young people with ambitious legislation: on December 11, 2019, Ursula von der Leyen presented the Green Deal.
Pascal Canfin, for his part, was elected MEP. He is appointed president of the Parliament’s Environment Commission. “The origin of the Green Deal is the 2019 European elections and the youth movements across Europe which make climate very high on the political agendahe explains. Plus the concrete manifestations of the impact of climate change, forest fires, droughts, floods, heatwaves, etc. And all this becomes a system and we start the Green Deal. (…) We are adopting a work program which begins with the European climate law which sets the objectives, therefore -50 5% for 2030. Climate neutrality 2050, 2050 may seem far away to those who listen to us, but it is less than a generation. So transforming our entire economy in less than a generation, I can tell you that it’s not very far. We need a little time anyway. And that is the first text. Then, roll out a battery of legislative texts on all subjects to change the rules of the game.”
And indeed, the texts address all the subjects to decarbonize the European economy. The whole is clearly the cornerstone of the mandate of this commission. Around fifty measures are proposed, in all areas: energy, waste, circular economy, carbon market, everything goes. On December 11, 2019, the Green Deal was adopted by the European Commission, and presented by Ursula von der Leyen.
In July 2021, the Commission is proposing twelve measures, brought together under the label ‘Fit for 55’, which should precisely make it possible to achieve the objectives we have set ourselves. Among these measures, there is notably the reform of the European carbon market, but also a border adjustment mechanism, that is to say a carbon tax at European borders, for imported goods. It is also a question of stimulating investments in renewable energies, and in particular in hydrogen, which has sometimes appeared to be a risky bet.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine will considerably accelerate the adoption of the energy component of the Green Deal. Europeans are still very dependent on Russian gas, and therefore initially find it impossible to do without it, without putting their own economy in difficulty. Dependence on fossil fuels is now seen as a geopolitical Achilles heel, and the war in Ukraine is spectacularly relaunching the idea of a common energy policy.
But one measure will crystallize several tensions: the ban on the sale of thermal cars on the European market by 2035. Road transport represents a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, and it is a sector in which emissions are hardly decreasing: since 1990, its emissions have increased by 25%. It is therefore a major lever for decarbonization, if we want to meet the objectives of the Green Deal. But European car manufacturers are obviously hearing another story: they fear being less competitive, especially compared to their Chinese competitors, who have massively invested in the electric competition market.
In March 2023, Germany obtained the postponement of the final vote on the measure, by threatening an abstention. German manufacturers are putting pressure on the German liberal party, which itself is putting pressure on the Greens, who nevertheless hold the economy portfolio. While in the meantime, French manufacturers have adapted and are now asking that the rules of the game no longer be changed. “Manufacturers are in support of the ecological transition in the automobile sector because they know that in any case, the Americans have just set the same rulesjudge Pascal Canfin. The Chinese have left. And so if they don’t just do that, they disappear and disappear from the map. And so we must create the conditions for success. We need to master technologies, we need access to raw materials, we need batteries here, there need to be charging stations for people. But those are the conditions for success. It is not the questioning of what has been fixed. And I see that car manufacturers are still very clearly in support of this transition.”
Another measure that will cause debate is the regulation on nature restoration, which aims to restore degraded ecosystems in the European Union, and in particular 20% of land and seas by 2030. Pascal Canfin remembers: “We are in the summer of 2023 and after fairly standard weeks of negotiating a text, we do not all agree on everything, but we are looking for compromises”. As the European Parliament is elected by proportional representation, there is no automatic majority, so each text must find its majority. “All of a sudden, we have a political line from the European center-right party, the EPP, which is hardening and going from ‘I am ready to negotiate’ to ‘In any case, I want to reject this text ‘continues the MEP. He makes this text a symbol of his opposition to the Green Deal in agricultural matters and he says “I want to bring it down, I do not want to improve it, amend it, reduce its ambitions. No, I want make him fall”, period. And that, usually, is the strategy of the extreme right.”. A few weeks later, another text on agricultural transition on pesticides is under debate, “where, again, we have the same alliance. But this time, instead of winning by a few votes, we lose by a few votes. And so the text on pesticides fell”.
It is of course agricultural tensions that tensions will crystallize. It all started with the appearance of a small rural and populist party in the Netherlands, in 2019. The Boer Burger Beweging (BBB), that is to say the Farmer-Citizen Movement, is a small party which was formed initially to protest against the Dutch government’s nitrogen plan, which imposes more constraints on pig farmers, and more generally against the Dutch government’s agricultural decarbonization project, which would have led to a reduction in the size of the herd. Against all expectations, in the 2023 provincial elections, the BBB becomes the first party in the country, leading in each of the twelve provinces, with 19% of the votes at the national level. The liberal Prime Minister, Mark Rütte, is forced to resign, and the BBB enters the government in May 2024, with the far right of Geert Wilders.
The success of the BBB will be the starting point of agricultural anger which will spread throughout Europe, and which will quickly turn against the Green Deal, even though its agricultural component has not yet been truly implemented. .
Pascal Canfin sees this as a form of exploitation: for some, the Green Deal is today seen as a scarecrow. “When we come back to the agricultural demands, I can tell you, having read them, that the first demands were not at all linked to the standards of the Green Dealbelieves the MEP. They were linked to contracts in mass distribution. They were linked to prices, they were linked to remuneration conditions and they were economic elements. And then came the Ukrainian subject which was very powerful in some sectors which were destabilized by Ukrainian competition, chicken for example. It’s crazy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Green Deal. And politically, the opposite happened.” Beyond the setbacks on agriculture themselves, another collateral victim of these renunciations is the idea that once launched, the transition was irreversible. Beyond the setbacks, it is the course itself that is threatened, and therefore the signal that is sent to industries and investors.
Will the Green Deal resist the attacks of populists? Pascal Canfin remains confident. “Why are we getting into the hard part of the transition today?he asks himself. Precisely because we have taken the first step of the Green Deal and now we are entering a new age of the Green Deal, that is to say deploying and succeeding in the industrial, technological battle is more simply about setting the right rules of the game (…) The question is not to deny these tensions, the question is to manage them to succeed in achieving the objectives that we have set for ourselves.”
Will the Green Deal be the basis of a new European democratic project, or a new failed attempt to develop an ambitious climate policy? It’s too early to tell, probably. But the simple fact that this question remains, at a time of a climate emergency which is more pressing than ever, shows us how action for the climate remains a constant battle, which has lasted for almost 50 years.
“Climate failures”, a franceinfo podcast by François Gemenne in collaboration with Pauline Pennanec’h, produced by François Richer, broadcast by Thomas Coudreuse. A podcast to be found on the franceinfo website, the Radio France application and several other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Podcast Addict, Spotify, or Deezer.