For the President of the European Parliament, the “Green Deal” fuels populism

2023-09-12 19:45:23
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, on January 18, 2022, in Strasbourg. JEAN-FRANCOIS BADIAS / AP

A few days before delivering her speech on the State of the Union to MEPs – the last before the end of her mandate – on Wednesday September 13, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, added, on the community executive website, a counter to count the number of days, hours, minutes and even seconds which still separated the European citizen from speaking out. In Strasbourg, where Angela Merkel’s former minister was to speak, the countdown to the European elections, which will be held on June 6 and 9, 2024, has begun.

When preparing for the exercise, Ursula von der Leyen had in mind the growing criticism, in her own conservative camp, against one of the pillars of her policy, the “Green Pact”, designed to allow the Twenty-Seven to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. In an interview with several newspapers, including The worldTuesday September 12, another figure from the conservatives of the European People’s Party (EPP), the most important political group in the European Parliament, the president of this parliamentary institution, Roberta Metsola, was invited to the debate.

While the far right could emerge strengthened from the June election, the Maltese considers it necessary to make some adjustments to the “Green Pact”. “If we want a climate policy that remains ambitious, we must take into account SMEs and citizens”she explains. “There are those who lose their homes due to climate disasters and those who cannot financially comply with regulations that are too restrictive for them. We can’t afford to lose these.” for the benefit of populists, continues Roberta Metsola.

« L’anti-Green Deal »

“I speak as President of Parliament, not on behalf of the EPP”, she wants to clarify, even if her political party is now calling for a moratorium on the “Green Deal”. After supporting him, the EPP made a strategic change a year ago, judging that the war in Ukraine and the return of inflation were changing the situation. “Metsola speaks on behalf of the EPP and the far right. She is anti-Green Deal”judges MEP (social democrat, S&D) Raphaël Glucksmann, who adds: “The ideological debate that is taking place is the question of whether the Green Deal was a parenthesis or whether it opens a new era of the EU. Countryside [des élections européennes] is thrown. »

Since 2019, 75 pieces of legislation relating to the “Green Deal” have been tabled, of which 32 have entered into force or are in the process of entering into force, and an almost equivalent number should be completed before the end of the legislature. End of the thermal engine in 2035, implementation of a carbon tax at the borders, planned increase in power from renewable energies… the subjects concerned affect the entire economy and stakeholders.

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