The renewal of MEPs at the beginning of June will be decisive for the future of the European Green Deal, which aims to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050 within the EU and its member states.
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The European Parliament is meeting in plenary session until Thursday April 25 in Strasbourg, for the last time before the European elections. In particular, on Wednesday, he will debate “attempts by the far right and conservatives to destroy the Green Deal”the European Union’s major plan which aims to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. A reminder of the place taken by issues linked to climate and the environment during this mandate, and of the lively debates that they will have sparked until the end.
Will the 720 new MEPs elected from June 6 to 9 keep the same course? Will they back down on sometimes contested measures, such as the end of the sale of new combustion engine vehicles in 2035? “The political balance which will result from the European elections will determine a large part of the European Union’s climate ambition for the coming years. warns Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, cresearcher specializing in French and European energy policies at the Jacques-Delors Institute. This is one of the major issues of the election, even if it does not dominate the campaign in France.
The environment is in fact among the major prerogatives of Brussels. Like energy, transport or agriculture, itThis is one of the areas in which competences are shared between the EU and its Member States, recalls the European Commission website. The Lisbon Treaty, which governs the functioning of the EU, allows it to “legislate if the European level is more relevant”explains Nicolas Berghmans, Europe manager at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Iddri). “Environmental protection and the fight against climate change concern the daily lives of all Europeans and are key issues globalhe recalls. There is therefore a strong interest in coordinating efforts to ensure the effectiveness of public action, and bring a common message to the international level.”
Objectives set in Brussels before being implemented in France
The European Union thus advocates unity in order to weigh with one voice, as for the carbon tax at the borders, an unprecedented mechanism aimed at “greening” Europe’s industrial imports by charging for the carbon emissions linked to their production. “France is a confetti in the world, while at 27, we are starting to weigh in on emerging countries, China or the United States”judges the MEP Karima Delli (Ecologists). The European Union “has more impact on global warming when a decision is taken in the name of 500 million Europeans”agrees Pascal Canfin (Renaissance, Renew at European level), who chairs the environment committee of the European Parliament.
Most often, decision-making is actually shared. “There is a lively interaction between European and national rights, with the possibility for States to be ever more ambitious,” remember Pascal Canfin. “The EU is a normative machine which establishes standards in a collegial manner, which will then be implemented by the Statesexplains Phuc-Vinh Nguyen. Each country has latitude depending on its specificities, it must only comply with the standards set, under penalty of sanctions.”
France was thus ordered to pay a fine of 500 million euros por not having achieved the European objectives in terms of renewable energies in 2020: they represented only 19.1% of the French energy mix, below the 23% planned by the EU (which does not include nuclear among these energies). From, Brussels has set a even more ambitious objective of at least 42.5% of renewable energies in European consumption by 2030. “cap” that each country will follow in its own way, insists Phuc-Vinh Nguyen:
“Countries remain sovereign in the deployment of these technologies, according to their specificities, namely focusing on more offshore wind power if they have a seafront, on more solar depending on the sunshine, on hydraulics. ..”
Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, researcher specializing in energy policies in Europeat franceinfo
This new encouragement to develop renewable energies is among the flagship measures of the European Green Deal, introduced in 2019 by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. More broadly, it targets a 55% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 compared to 1990 levels, then carbon neutrality in 2050. It also includes the end of the sale of new vehicles with thermal engines in 2035, a regulation on the restoration of nature or even ulegislation aimed at halving the use of pesticides in the EU by 2030, rejected by the European Parliament in November.
The States essential for implementing and financing the measures
The Green Deal, as it is also called, has become a scarecrow for part of the right and the extreme right. There head of the National Rally list for the European elections, Jordan Bardella, judges it thus “harmful to the interests of the French.” The agricultural crisis has revived criticism of the European Union, accused of increasing constraints and imposing its standards. The proportion of regulations resulting from European law in France depends on the sectors and remains a source of debate: this share reaches “around 40%” in terms of agriculture, according to the European Commission website, but 80% in environmental matters, according to the French representation in Brussels.
Both levels are essential, recalls Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, who makes the distinction between the EU, which sets a framework, and the States, which implement the common policy. “When we talk about measures that apply in 2030, 2035, we cannot expect the EU to instantly change our daily lives, because it does not have the skills. Investments are released at the national level, for example in France with the creation of MaPrimeRenov'”, illustrates the researcher. For Nicolas Berghmans, States play a key role in “the policy to be implemented sector by sector” as well as the financing of these measures, “which cannot today depend solely on the European budget given its limited size”.
The European Commission says it has reserved 37% of the 750 billion euros of its post-Covid recovery plan for the environment and the climate. It estimates today, according to its website, that the public or private investments necessary to achieve carbon neutrality will have to increase up to 660 billion euros per year in energy, and 870 billion per year in transport, here in 2050. What to say to theGreen MEP Karima Delli “that it will be necessary to make a financial Green Deal in the next mandate, in order to ensure that the measures [promises] are financed”. Another question which will strongly depend on the face of the European Parliament on the evening of June 9, after the elections.