Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Qatari Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi sounded the alarm on proposed European Union regulations, charging that they could deindustrialize Europe.
Breitbart News in August reported that the European Union’s (EU) proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) regulations would impose massive, mandatory, extraterritorial regulations on American companies. Lawmakers have argued that it would force American companies to adopt the EU’s “net zero” carbon emissions targets as the country shies away from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who introduced the PROTECT USA Act to protect American companies from these extraterritorial regulations, said in a statement in March, “American companies should be governed by U.S. laws, not unaccountable lawmakers in foreign capitals. The European Union’s ideologically motivated regulatory overreach is an affront to U.S. sovereignty. I will use every tool at my disposal to block it.”
The American Petroleum Institute explained that the CSDDD would force many American companies that do not directly do business Europe. For instance, if Exxon Mobil had a supplier that did business with the EU, then Exxon Mobil would have to comply with the requirements.
Now, the American energy secretary Wright and Qatari energy minister have sounded the alarm in a letter to the heads of state to the EU member states about the onerous regulations:
We have consistently and transparently communicated how the CSDDD, as it is worded today, poses a significant risk to the affordability and reliability of critical energy supplies for households and businesses across Europe and an existential threat to the future growth, competitiveness, and resilience of the EU’s industrial economy. It is our genuine belief, as allies and friends of the EU, that the CSDDD will cause considerable harm to the EU and its citizens, as it will lead to higher energy and other commodity prices, and have a chilling effect on investment and trade.
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Together, these provisions pose significant challenges and seriously undermine the ability of the American, Qatari, and broader international energy community to maintain and expand their partnerships and operations within the EU.
The two energy leaders wrote that the EU faces a “defining choice” to providing the EU’s citizens with affordable and reliable energy and to prevent “further deindustrialization.”
Dustin Meyer, the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) senior vice president of policy, economics, and regulatory affairs, told Breitbart News this letter is indicative of how widespread the opposition to the EU regulation is and how the international business community has become increasingly frustrated with it.
“The fundamental problems with this [CSDDD] are threefold. It’s incredibly broad. So, this is not just about emissions, and this is not just about production in Europe. This is across your full value chain. Two, it is unprecedentedly extraterritorial,” he explained “This is a Brussels-based directive that will impact an American company supply chain in the United States. And three, it’s completely incoherent. In the sense that even once it’s on paper, none of these industries or companies have a clear pathway as to what exactly would be required in order to be in compliance with that and so that why this is so fundamentally problematic, and why we need to need them to reverse course.”
Meyer said that the letter “sends such a powerful signal as to what the future investment environment is going to be in the European Union, and so it just seems as if they’re not willing to change course, despite all of these concerns raised by such a diverse set of industries, companies and other countries.”
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