Europe is souring on green initiatives:
“This year, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a break from new green legislation, a sentiment quickly echoed by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
It marked the beginning of a slowdown for the Green Deal, most clearly seen in the battle that raged over the Nature Restoration Law.
A pillar of the Green Deal’s biodiversity objective, the Nature Restoration Law aimed at restoring 20% of land and sea areas by 2030. But it became extremely contentious, with EU countries baulking at the impact on farmers, while the centre-right European People’s Party launched a campaign to kill the proposal…
The slowdown has also affected other aspects of environmental policy, including a goal to strengthen Europe’s chemicals legislation overhaul, which has been delayed and is at risk of being watered down…
While Europe set ambitious objectives on renewables and decarbonisation for 2030, it has failed to implement a coherent industrial policy to back it up.
For instance, the electricity market reform, which countries had hoped to agree quickly, has been delayed by fights over nuclear power, reflecting deep divisions between EU member states over the role of atomic energy relative to renewables.
Similarly, the Net Zero Industry Act, designed to boost domestic manufacturing of technologies needed for the green transition, has become an ill-fitting substitute for a wider policy on industrial decarbonisation.”