BRUSSELS — Water down the European Green Deal and you’ve got our vote.
That’s the message Germany’s pro-business liberals are sending to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ahead of this week’s Continent-wide election.
The Free Democrats (FDP), a member of the centrist Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, on Monday published a list of demands for the “necessary policy changes” the party wants to see after the election.
Its support for the new Commission, the party writes, is conditional on these changes being made. The FDP’s top priority: Dismantling new green regulations.
“The ‘Green Deal’ has become the epitome of excessive bureaucracy in Europe. The new EU Commission must turn the ‘Green Deal’ into a liberal ‘Yellow Deal,’” the document reads.
In a clear threat to von der Leyen, the party vowed to “exert its influence” regarding “personnel decisions for the new EU Commission.”
The FDP is part of Germany’s three-party governing coalition, and its veto could force Berlin to abstain in a European Council decision among EU leaders on which candidates to back for high-powered Commission posts. Its MEPs — it currently has five — could also vote against von der Leyen in July’s confirmation vote.
Removing red tape
The FDP, whose political color is yellow, said a ‘Yellow Deal’ would entail abolishing “small-scale detailed regulations” and country-specific climate targets.
The new Commission, the document adds, must commit itself to “technological neutrality,” meaning it should not favor specific technologies over others — such as heat pumps over gas boilers.
The FDP also demands that Brussels scrap rules that would ban the sale of new fossil fuel-powered cars in 2035, and eliminate all emissions targets for automobile manufacturers — going further than even the German Christian Democrats, the center-right party that controversially wants to abolish the combustion-engine phaseout.
All that is necessary, the party argues, to ensure the bloc’s future competitiveness.
“The EU is the largest contiguous market in the world … Nevertheless, under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union has dramatically lost competitiveness,” the document begins.
“With the Green Deal, sustainability reporting requirements and the ban on combustion engines in particular, the von der Leyen Commission has damaged the German and European economy and prevented growth,” the FDP continues.
Instead, the EU should rely “much more heavily on emissions trading as the sole guiding instrument of climate policy.”
Under the bloc’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the price per ton of carbon is currently around €75, down from its high near €100 last year.
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warned last week that “anything that deteriorates the long-term credibility of [the] EU’s climate targets could cause ETS carbon prices to collapse again in the short term and lead to insufficient climate protection investments.”
