By Jorge Liboreiro
What once seemed like a temporary storm might soon become an almighty hurricane.
The backlash against the Green Deal, which came to the fore early this year during the farmers’ protests that brought burning tires, piles of hay and liquefied manure to Brussels, is gaining traction by the day, amassing critical voices that stretch from Rome to Jakarta. The movement already exceeds the conservative circles where it originated and is now spreading across the political conversation like wildfire, forcing a collective re-examination of environmental policies, right and left.
It’s a dramatic turnaround for the European Union, which spent the last five years working against the clock to approve ambitious legislation to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% before the decade's end and ensure the bloc can achieve full climate neutrality by 2050. It was a mammoth task, the likes of which lawmakers had never seen. For many, it was a message of hope that the Paris Agreement could stay alive, even if moribundly hanging by a thread.
But as soon as the ideals on paper (where it must be noted, mostly everybody agreed) met with the reality on the ground, the rightful mission stumbled and wobbled, deprived of the stable ground (that is, political will) that was supposed to bring it to the finish line.
Take, for instance, the EU’s deforestation law that introduces due diligence rules on seven key commodities: palm oil, cattle, wood, coffee, cocoa, rubber and soy. Under the law, traders are compelled to trace their goods back to the plot of land where they were produced. If they have been subject to deforestation, these products cannot be allowed to be imported into the EU market or exported by EU companies.
The legislation was initially hailed as a ground-breaking project to combat the degradation of forests, an unrelenting phenomenon driven by our consumption patterns that contributes to the release of noxious gasses and worsens global warming. But as the deadline for implementation (30 December 2024) approached, the contestation grew louder, with a particular focus on the challenges that producers will face mapping forests and tracing supply chains.
First, it started in the Global South, the leading exporters of the commodities targeted by the law. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ghana, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru and Thailand were among those calling for changes to the legislation, which they described as an “inherently discriminatory and punitive unilateral benchmarking system.” Then it was Australia, who raised “real” concerns about its implementation and asked for a delay. Then it was the United States, who asked for the exact same thing. Then, China. Then, again, Brazil. And then, in a new twist, Germany.
“The regulation must be practicable,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this month.
In parallel, another rebellion. This week, Adolfo Urso, Italy’s business minister, travelled to Brussels and asked to reassess the CO2 regulation that will ban new sales of petrol and diesel cars as of 2035. Under the law, the European Commission is expected to carry out a review in 2026 to see if the “technological developments” in the market are advanced enough to achieve the 2035 target and the transition towards zero-emission mobility can be “economically viable and socially fair.”
Urso argued the sharp decline in sales of electric vehicles across Europe (new registrations fell by 18.3% in August) and the ongoing turmoil in the automaker sector, like the drastic cost-cutting measures that Volkswagen has announced, indicate that “we are now certain that with this timing the objectives set for 2035 will not be achieved.” According to the minister, his initiative to anticipate the review has received the backing of Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Malta, Cyprus, Poland and the Czech Republic, while Spain and Germany said they were on board as long as the 2035 cut-off date was maintained.
That, of course, would be the crux of the matter. Triggering the review will effectively open Pandora’s Box and spark a cascade of demands from all member states (and car-makers, lobbyists and NGOs). We just have to remember how Berlin suddenly hijacked the last stretch of negotiations when it pushed for e-fuels, a nascent technology of unclear potential, to be exempted from the 2035 ban. If that request was accepted in early 2023, when the backlash against environmental policies was subdued, just imagine how similar requests would play out in 2025, amid a full-throated reckoning with the Green Deal.
Caught in the middle is the European Commission, which finds itself beset by questions about the deforestation law and the combustion-engine ban. For the time being, spokespeople insist no major changes are foreseen and the regulations will enter into force as agreed by the Parliament and (believe it or not) member states. However, it’s difficult to see how the executive led by Ursula von der Leyen, the mastermind of the Green Deal, will be able to withstand this political battle waged on multiple fronts, inside and outside Europe.
Last year, von der Leyen was forced to withdraw a law to halve the use of pesticides that had become a casus belli for farmers and conservatives. It marked the first defeat of the Green Deal. The Nature Restoration Law was poised to be the second victim until an Austrian minister mounted a uprising against her own government and rescued the law from a perpetual limbo. But that just was a brief reprieve. The knives are once again out, searching for a fresh sacrifice. |
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Green Deal under siege
