Germany pulls the brakes on green reforms
After France's reasonable request to pause the new green rules, an even stronger opposition arrives in Germany…
The Spectator asks: Is Germany opposing the EU Green Deal?
Last week it was President Macron who backtracked on the green measures. In a speech he said that Europe, for now, has gone far enough: if it introduces more rules without the rest of the world following suit, it will jeopardize investments and hurt the economy. This week, the European People's Party – a centre-right grouping comprising Germany's Christian Democrats, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – appears to have joined him.
The party is reportedly considering withdrawing its support for the European Commission's Green Deal. This is a set of proposals which includes, for example, a European-wide target for eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050. While 11 EU countries have already set themselves legally binding targets to reach net zero by 2050 (or 2045 in the case of Germany and Sweden), if the Green Deal were to fall through there would be no obligation for other member states to follow suit.
Germany now appears to be taking over from France as the seedbed of opposition to zero-carbon policies, not least because it has tougher policies – and because its self-imposed goal of reaching net zero by 2045 seems increasingly distant from the reality.
Last week a new party, "Burger in Wut" (Angry Citizens or BiW) obtained 9.6% of the vote in the Bremen state election. Yet another populist and anti-green party making a name for itself in a German city. As was the case with the Dutch Citizen-Farmer Movement (BoerburgerBeweging, or BBB), which topped the country's regional elections in March to protest government efforts to close farms to meet nitrate targets, it was the speed of BiW's rise to take many by surprise.
In 2020, the Brussels parliamentarians welcomed Greta Thunberg as a diva and accepted her diktats with astonishing superficiality. Since then they have legislated in the most absurdly supine way to green dictates possible, without any discussion and without any detailed impact study. Now we are starting to see the industrial and citizens' pockets of these measures and all countries are trying to back down. Too bad that, without disposing of Von Der Leyen, it's a bit late.
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The articleGermany pulls the brakes on Green reforms comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-germania-tira-il-freno-sulle-riforme-green/ on Thu, 25 May 2023 21:12:30 +0000.