Yes to meaningful decarbonisation - no to greenwashing!

The sizzling heatwave currently affecting Europe is just one of many symptoms signalling the bleak future next generations will face if we do not manage to find a global path to climate neutrality. 

It is high time we start viewing climate breakdown, not as a daily unfortunate inconvenience that we must impotently endure, but as a fundamental risk to the security and safety of our societies, and a risk that we have both the means and the responsibility to counteract. To act, however, would require us to invest the necessary resources and political will to break up decades-long habits that we can no longer afford.

Sadly, the political will is evaporating in the EU. The European Green Deal, a raft of historic climate and environment-related measures introduced in the previous term, is under attack from the political right, including the European Parliament’s largest political grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP). Emboldened by new majorities, the EPP has repeatedly sought the support of far-right, extremist, and fascist forces to water down or roll back recently agreed laws, including measures to improve companies’ sustainability reporting and due diligence processes, rules to combat deforestation, and, most recently, a law aiming to protect consumers against corporate greenwashing. 

The EPP’s reasoning, based on the claim that environmental legislation is harming European businesses, is as simplistic as it is flawed. Stakeholders across industry, the financial sector, and civil society have repeatedly called on European lawmakers and regulators to protect these measures, citing their importance for investment certainty, harmonisation of rules, early risk identification and the protection of workers’ rights, in addition to the environmental benefits. In short, the EPP-driven erosion of the European Green Deal is not only harming the ecosystems Europeans depend on for their wealth and health, it is undercutting European competitiveness in key present and future technologies.

Volt MEP Kai Tegethoff, who sits on the Parliament’s environment committee, notes:

“The narrative that green policies harm economic competitiveness is fundamentally flawed. The European Green Deal was developed precisely as a growth strategy. It will boost investment in research and innovation, reduce household and consumer bills via energy and resource efficiency, kickstart a new generation of skills, define future-proof investments and reduce dependence on energy imports from unreliable partners. By trying to kill it, conservatives and far-right are driving us toward economic suicide.”

Tegethoff further criticised the EPP’s decision to give responsibility for negotiating the target to the far-right Patriots for Europe group: “The embarrassing decision to put the far-right in the driving seat on the 2040 climate target means we will likely show up to COP 30 empty-handed. This will be hugely damaging for our credibility at the very moment the US is retreating from international climate negotiations”.

In parallel, the European Commission has proposed introducing international carbon credits as an instrument to meet the 2040 climate target in a further sign of a weakening green agenda. International carbon credits - not to be confused with much needed instruments of climate finance - would see the EU potentially investing billions of euros abroad in badly regulated carbon offsetting projects, which scientific observers have repeatedly concluded overstate their contribution to emission reductions. International carbon credits are an expensive greenwashing tactic that, in their current form, achieve little in terms of emission reduction abroad whilst critically delaying and impeding the necessary investments in emission reductions in the EU. Carbon crediting mechanisms must be fundamentally reformed before they can be utilised in the EU’s decarbonisation efforts.

Volt strongly supports the open letter from over 150 civil society organisations, academic institutions and businesses to the European Commission and the European Parliament, calling on lawmakers not to allow international carbon credits to water down European decarbonisation goals. The actions of the European Commission in the last months highlight that the entire framework of the European Green Deal is at risk of unravelling into half-measures, regulatory loopholes, and political shell games. Ambitious decarbonisation is not only needed, it is feasible, economically sensible, and the only responsible course of action as the world is burning. Instead of diluting already insufficient decarbonisation efforts, Volt commits to fighting for full EU climate neutrality by 2040.

In the current geopolitical context of eroding multilateralism, the EU cannot afford to treat climate action like a political pawn that can be readily sacrificed in the never ending political wrangling between EU institutions and its Member States. Likewise, consequent decarbonisation must not fail victim to the EU-US trade negotiations. The international reputation of the EU, as a power that works honestly towards climate crisis mitigation, is at risk. The wealth and health of future generations is at risk. We all are at risk, as millions of Europeans tormented by summer temperatures of more than 35°C degrees can testify. The stakes are just too high.

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