The European Commission set off a political cluster bomb Friday when it suddenly declared it was killing a relatively minor rule on corporate greenwashing.
But why did killing this little-known law — which would force companies to back up environmental claims with verifiable evidence— cause such an almighty stink, and why now?
The answer may lie in months of rising pressure, in which right-wing forces have used their increased influence in Brussels to relentlessly chip away at EU green rules.
Leading this anti-green push has been the center-right European People’s Party, the largest force in the European Parliament. Often opposing it have been the remaining partners in the once-powerful, now-enfeebled centrist bloc that includes the center-left Socialists & Democrats, liberal Renew Group, and the Greens.
Two days before the Commission said it was killing the Green Claims Directive, the EPP sent a letter to the Commission saying it wanted the law dead. The Commission seemed to capitulate without a fight, feeding a growing sense among the center-left bloc that the EPP is controlling not just Parliament but also the Commission.
Subsequent developments have cast doubt on whether the Commission even really meant to announce it was killing the law, or whether the spokesperson had made a mistake.
But that didn’t matter. The pressure cooker had blown its top, and the S&D, Renew and the Greens were steaming mad.
“We are on the brink of an institutional crisis,” Valérie Hayer, chair of the Renew Europe group, told POLITICO.
Months of failure to influence Brussels policy had finally caught up with them.
The Green Deal backlash
Their frustrations can be traced back to early last year, at the tail end of the Green Deal Mandate.
The European Green Deal, a huge package of environmental reforms covering climate, biodiversity, pollution, agriculture, energy efficiency, recycling, and more, defined Ursula von der Leyen’s first term as president of the Commission.
She launched it in late 2019 when Greta Thunberg was at peak popularity and the climate crisis was considered the world’s great existential threat. The Green Deal had support across ideological lines.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shifted attention away from climate, but it was the perhaps the farmers’ protests — in part against EU green rules — of late 2023 and early 2024 that marked the real turning point. Looming European elections, in which the populist right was projected to make big gains, prompted the EPP to cast itself as the party of farmers that would protect Europe’s rural economy from environmental overreach.
The Nature Restoration Law, designed to help restore Europe’s depleted biodiversity, was the EPP’s first target. They succeeded in watering this down, and would have killed it altogether if Austria’s environment minister hadn’t gone rogue. The EPP did, however, succeed in killing rules that would have put limits on pesticide use.
European elections in June brought a more right-wing Parliament, in which the EPP found itself in a position to choose to form a majority with either hard- and far-right groups, or with the traditional centrist block. Without the EPP, neither side had the numbers.
In this new environment, the EPP’s next target was anti-deforestation rules, which it tried and failed to water down with the help of far-right groups — drawing accusations of breaching the cordon sanitaire, the unofficial agreement among centrist parties not to collaborate with the far right.
All aboard the omnibus
Then came von der Leyen’s first omnibus simplification bill.
Proposed at the behest of member countries and industry and backed by the EPP, the awkwardly-named law opened up a number of green regulations for businesses, with the goal of reducing red tape. The draft proposal, released in February, was a bonfire of green regulation, slashing the content and reducing the scope of the laws. And it started a trend.
Over the intervening few months, the Commission, EU countries, and right-leaning groups in Parliament have targeted an expanding list of green rules and policies, including through more omnibus simplification bills.
Some of these measures have originated with the EPP in Parliament, some from within the Commission, and others from national governments — reflecting increased influence of pro-business, anti-green sentiment across EU institutions.
Some moves affecting green policies have included: cutting green regulations for farmers; watering down laws on soil health; downgrading the protection status of wild wolves; reducing the scope of chemical safety regulations; reducing the scope of the carbon border tax; allowing billions in Covid-19 relief money earmarked for climate projects to go to defense instead; blocking the use of the term “Green Deal” in a Parliament report on water resilience; criticizing use of EU money to fund green NGOs; watering down greenwashing laws; continued attacks on anti-deforestation and forest monitoring laws.
The list goes on.
Mostly these have been at the less meaty end of the Green Deal, and have not affected the core promise of slashing greenhouse gas emissions to create a climate-neutral Europe by 2050.
But two changes stand out. One is the Commission’s decision to cave in to industry pressure for leniency on this vehicle year’s emission targets, that were meant to act as a milestone along the route to the 2035 ban on combustion engines — and a softening on the scope of the ban itself.
The other is the Commission’s draft plan to allow the use of carbon credits overseas to meet the EU’s 2040 climate targets.
Pretty much all of these policies have been opposed by the Greens and S&D and, to a lesser extent, the centrist Renew — groups which held more sway in previous mandates.
Which may explain the eruption of frustrations this week.
The post Why a little greenwashing law set off a political explosion in Brussels appeared first on Politico.
