PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s new crusade against European green rules is causing outrage, even among his allies.
Heavyweights from the French president’s camp are speaking out against a push by Paris to water down upcoming European Union rules requiring companies to report on their environmental footprint and potential human rights violations in their supply chains.
They complain that France has betrayed its reputation as one of Europe’s loudest green champions, and warn that yielding to anti-green pressure from business groups and from countries outside the EU — most notably the United States — will not serve the interests of France or the EU in the long run.
“We are aiming at the wrong target,” Macronist lawmaker and former minister Olivia Grégoire told POLITICO in defense of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires that companies disclose their environmental impact and exposure to the risks of climate change. France strongly supported the directive until recently.
“My fear is disavowal, my fear is that we are naive enough to think for a minute that we’ll be able to confront the new American economy with the tools it uses itself,” said Grégoire, who negotiated the text of the CSRD in Brussels as a minister.
In a confidential note last month revealed by POLITICO, France urged the European Commission to delay indefinitely a new EU directive on corporate due diligence (CSDDD) and to delay the CSRD by two years — broadening the Commission’s proposed “omnibus” legislation to simplify those two laws, due out on Feb. 26.
The French government now argues that Europe is shooting itself in the foot by asking companies to comply with more ambitious green rules.
That push reached its acme with Macron’s January call for a “massive regulatory break,” describing the upcoming rules as a threat to Europe’s struggling economy.
“We ourselves have supported certain regulations with very good intentions, and I share their philosophy. But at the moment we’re living in, we need to be able to suspend them until we’ve regained our ability to compete,” Macron told French ambassadors.
Macron’s U-turn is reflected in the new course charted by the European Commission, which since last year’s European election has turned its attention from green policymaking to pro-business industrial policy, including red tape-slashing measures like the omnibus package. That shift is seen by many as a capitulation to right-wing forces, which are growing across Europe, and is causing unrest among Macron’s liberal allies.
“Let’s not give in to populism that consists in thinking, like the far right, that every time there is a rule, you shoot against it,” said Gregoire, warning that if Europe doesn’t stick to its green reporting standards it will end up obeying those imposed by other powers such as Washington. New U.S. President Donald Trump has comprehensively rejected the environmental programs of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
“We don’t see any reason to postpone,” said French MEP Pascal Canfin from Macron’s Renew Europe group, adding that Renew’s position is “yes to simplification, but no to delay.”
Trumpism-light
France was one of the first EU countries to adopt a due diligence law at the national level back in 2017. The French government proudly showcased the EU due diligence directive — which requires companies to check that their suppliers comply with environmental and forced labor rules — as a Europe-wide version of what France already did at home.
When France took the helm of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2022, French ministers and even Macron put the due diligence directive and the CSRD high up on their economic agenda. Even then, however, some accused France of not being as supportive of the text as it claimed to be in public. (Paris and other countries, for example, managed to exempt the financial sector from due diligence rules.)
But with European business groups complaining that excessive red tape will penalize them against their competitors, especially in the U.S. and China, the French government has aligned itself with their arguments.
A French industry lobbyist with direct knowledge of the negotiation, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, said they had been “positively surprised” by the evolution of the French position, and that Macron’s office had played a key role in that change. For Macron’s allies, however, the surprise was less welcome.
“France was the one that defended and obtained these achievements at [the] European level in recent years. It is not acceptable to start a movement in which we would undo regulations and standards,” MP Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, who chairs the National Assembly’s European affairs committee and is a member of Macron’s party, told his colleagues in January.
Clément Beaune, who was Macron’s Europe minister during the French EU presidency, also slammed the move, warning of the dangers of Europe and France flirting with “light Trumpism.”
Shifting politics
France’s shift was gradual and followed the rise of populist anti-green forces across Europe. When Macron called for a “regulatory break” back in 2023, his words were seen as a wink at conservative parties and voters months before an EU election in which right-wing parties gained ground.
Those comments forced the Elysée to clarify that Macron was not questioning the texts that had already been agreed or were under negotiation, such as the CSRD and the due diligence directive.
But last month, when Macron doubled down and called for a “massive regulatory break,” there was no need to explain his thinking as it was clear that France was already questioning some key pieces of the EU’s Green Deal.
Increasing complaints from powerful business lobbies, as well as the rise of right-wing political forces critical of EU green rules, contributed to France’s change of position, said Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, head of the Jacques Delors Energy Center in Paris.
French officials, however, stress that the geopolitical context, with European companies struggling to compete with their American and Asian rivals, is the main driver for that change.
“There have been many changes in context, but there has also been an objective observation, made in the Letta and Draghi reports, that Europe’s appetite for regulation has become an obstacle to competitiveness,” said a French diplomat, referencing reports on EU competitiveness and the single market, filed last year respectively by former Italian PMs Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta.
Some argue that France’s new position just shows that Macron has never been fully committed to the battle for higher green standards.
“When it was quite consensual to build political momentum, he acted as a driving force to promote higher green standards. [But] when the political context changed, Macron’s position changed, even if it directly contradicted his past stance,” Nguyen said.“He went where the wind blows.”
Sofiane Zaizoune contributed to this report
The post Macron’s U-turn against EU green rules triggers internal revolt appeared first on Politico.
