Enlarge image
EU Commission chief von der Leyen on Wednesday in Brussels
Photo: STEPHANIE LECOCQ / EPA
When Ursula von der Leyen enters the press room of the EU Commission on Wednesday afternoon, the stage gets really full. Two female and four female commissioners crowd next to the president. The enormous amount of personnel involved shows that this is perhaps the most important moment of von der Leyen's term of office: the introduction of the “Fit for 55” package. The world's most extensive climate law project to date is intended to ensure that the EU will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels and become climate neutral by 2050.
Von der Leyen called this the “man on the moon” moment, and the “Fit for 55” presentation is, so to speak, the launch of the rocket. "Europe is now the very first continent to present a comprehensive architecture for implementing its climate goals," enthuses von der Leyen. "We agree on the goals and the direction."
But there is little to be seen of unity even in von der Leyen's own team. At first, the commission argued over the details for months. On Wednesday, just before the package was published, the von der Leyens meeting with its 27 commissioners broke out. A third of them - including Social Democrats, Liberals, but also heavyweights from Leyen's own political family, the Christian Democratic European People's Party - reported serious concerns, according to insiders.
For the first time since von der Leyens took office, there was then a formal vote in the committee.
In the end there was only one vote against, because the opponents did not want to torpedo the entire package.
However, they are said to have insisted on recording their rejection in the official minutes of the meeting.
According to the commission, von der Leyen's people presented the cabinets of the commissioners involved with a fait accompli and wiped their concerns off the table.
Von der Leyen himself completely underestimated the conflict.
Tough negotiations with the EU Parliament and member states
It is not a good omen for the negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council of Member States that are now to follow.
You have to get the legislative package approved, and it is unlikely that it will go away without major conflict and change.
The regulations are important for the EU in many respects.
It's not just about averting a global climate catastrophe, but also about redistributing economic weights in the world - and about saving the already ailing European industry, on which more than 20 percent of the EU's economic output and around 35 million jobs depend .
It's about dominance in green future markets.
About independence from external energy supplies.
About saving and creating new jobs.
It is about the question of how affordable electricity, heat and mobility will be for EU citizens in the future.
Whether it is not only greener in Europe, but also continues to live well.
Ultimately, it is about social peace on the continent.
The EU competes with other regions of the world such as China and Asia on all these points, with stakes billions.
And it essentially pursues a dual strategy: Almost every measure that von der Leyen presented on Wednesday has either a defensive or an offensive function.
Many even have both.
The defensive part
aims to ensure that Europe's economy remains competitive on the world market and that decarbonization does not trigger EU-wide yellow vests protests.
The offensive part aims to sell many green technologies and CO₂-free products all over the world as soon as possible and to draw cultural soft power and political capital from the successes.
The chances for both are not bad at first.
The starting point: Europe in pole position
According to a study by management consultancy McKinsey, 60 percent of the technologies for socio-economic restructuring have long been ready for the market, and another 25 percent are well developed.
There is no shortage of capital either.
"We can hardly save ourselves from orders," says Dieter Rentsch, co-founder of the Hamburg investment house Aquila Capital, which invests in renewable energy projects across Europe.
"Investors scramble for serious green electricity and climate protection projects."
This is also because the green change pays off.
According to McKinsey, European countries, companies and private households would have to invest around 28 trillion euros by 2050.
However, the additional expenditure will be almost completely offset in the following years by lower energy and operating costs.
The EU Commission is doing the rest to attract capital.
Even before the “Fit for 55” package, it promised to invest a good 540 billion euros in green electricity systems, climate protection projects and green industrial systems by 2027.
This includes, among other things, transitional aid for regions in which many jobs depend on fossil fuels, subsidies for start-ups and government grants for private investments in order to make projects more attractive for private investors.
The EU is also in a good starting position politically.
Your welfare states are "better able to cushion the social consequences of the change," writes McKinsey.
Unlike the USA, the EU is also getting resilient climate laws passed - which makes the upheaval for investors and companies at least halfway predictable.
Nevertheless, it is by no means said that von Leyen's eco-strategy will work.
The “Fit for 55” compromise shows how tough and complicated it is to negotiate real cuts and concessions when it comes to the climate.
The master plan: where
"
Fit for 55
" is
convincing - and where it is not
From a German perspective, the new requirements for the
automotive industry are
particularly exciting.
The average annual emissions of new vehicles must therefore be 55 percent lower from 2030 than in the current year.
All new vehicles registered from 2035 should even be completely emission-free.
According to insiders, the political exchange of blows on this point should have been fierce.
At the meeting of the EU Commission on Wednesday, for example, Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean, Internal Market Director Thierry Breton and Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis criticized the planned end of the internal combustion engine in 2035.
Ultimately, von der Leyen was able to prevail, which may also be due to the fact that the lobby pressure towards the end of the burner was not so great in the end.
At least Germany's carmakers are currently racing to see who will be the first to sell only electric models.
The European manufacturers' association Acea also recently stopped protesting against a petrol and diesel ban.
He only called for the necessary infrastructure to be built for so many new electric vehicles.
That, in turn, has the EU Commission on its screen.
A corresponding directive should oblige all member states to install charging stations for e-cars every 60 kilometers along the major roads and filling stations for hydrogen cars every 150 kilometers.
It remains to be seen whether the combustion ban will survive the further legislative process unscathed.
"This discussion is not over yet," says the CDU MEP Peter Liese.
The liberals also announced resistance.
A "general ban" on the internal combustion engine does not serve the goal of climate neutrality, said the FDP MEP Jan-Christoh Oetjen.
"Such technology bans cannot get the approval of the Free Democrats."
The plans for an
energy-intensive industry with
lower CO2 emissions also appear risky
.
In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, the so-called emissions trading system was set up in 2005.
It stipulates that certain companies need pollution certificates for the emission of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and perfluorinated hydrocarbons, which they either have to purchase at auction or are given free of charge.
Now the number of rights issued should decrease more quickly.
The industrial sector must now emit at least 62 percent less than in 2005 by 2030.
So far, only a reduction of 43 percent had been set.
From 2026 onwards, companies should also receive fewer free certificates.
Both of these will drive up the price of CO2 and thus companies' production costs.
However, it has not yet been decided when and how exactly the allocation of the certificates will decrease.
The companies therefore do not yet have any real planning security.
What is certain, however, is that industry will also receive support in the transition to the new energy world beyond the “Fit for 55” package.
In aviation and fuel production, new cross-national industrial alliances have been planned for some time.
Entire member states should pool their resources in battery research.
More subsidies will soon be allowed in the energy sector.
It is such accompanying measures that noticeably mitigate the major protest against rising CO2 prices.
On another point, however, the industry is very concerned right now.
The EU Commission wants to impose customs duties on steel or cement containing CO₂ from abroad from 2026 onwards.
Europe's basic materials groups, whose green products are often more expensive, are to be protected from unfair competition.
However, the Federation of German Industry and the Federal Government fear that such climate tariffs will give rise to new trade disputes.
Retaliatory tariffs on German cars, machines or chemical products could then be the result.
The Commission's plans in the
transport and heating sector
are also highly controversial
.
Brussels wants to create an emissions trading system for the fuels used there and thus make technologies such as building insulation, more environmentally friendly heating systems and e-cars more economically attractive.
However, this would increase the price of fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, diesel and petrol and result in social injustices.
There are large differences in purchasing power across the EU, which would mean that consumers in countries with lower incomes would be burdened more than average.
There were violent objections to the project in the EU Commission. There is also a threat of conflicts in parliament. While the CDU, for example, advocates certificate trading, large sections of the other parties in the EU Parliament are critical of it. One of the fiercest opponents is the liberal Pascal Canfin, a confidante of French President Emmanuel Macron. He warns that the yellow vests protests that rocked France are spilling over to other EU countries. Canfin describes the expansion of emissions trading as "political suicide."
In order to avoid social unrest, a so-called climate social fund is now to be set up.
This is to be financed initially with 25 percent of the expected income from the new emissions trading.
In the coming EU budget, which will apply from 2025 to 2032, 72.2 billion euros are also planned for the fund.
The national governments of the EU countries should go that extra mile.
This may prevent new yellow vests protests.
However, it is also clear that there will be a lot of money haggling on this point in the coming years.
The blind spot: what »Fit for 55« does not solve - and how problematic that is
The “Fit for 55” package comprises more than 1000 pages.
Nevertheless, even this bundle does not provide a convincing answer to two fundamental problems.
Problem one
is the dispute over land for renewable energies. Experts estimate that in order to be supplied 100 percent with green energy, Europe must designate 50 times as many areas for wind and solar parks as for conventional power plants. According to the Potsdam Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research, the EU needs almost 100,000 square kilometers for green electricity systems. That is roughly the size of Portugal.
Now the EU Commission has just increased its target for the generation of energy from renewable sources.
By 2030, their share is now expected to increase to 40 percent.
So far, 27 percent was planned.
Joint projects of several EU countries for the generation of green electricity are to be made less bureaucratic and more strongly promoted.
Floating solar and offshore wind farms and tidal power plants are to be built off Europe's coasts.
To this end, the EU electricity grid is to be better integrated, and the electricity flows between the member states are to grow.
The only thing is that the commission does not reveal where all the areas for the green electricity will come from.
So far, there are no correspondingly ambitious approaches to this either in the “Fit for 55” papers or in any of the other legal texts of the Green Deal.
Renewables are the biggest bottleneck in the Green Deal.
Problem two
is the lack of availability of so-called green hydrogen, which was generated with green electricity. Without H2 there would be no climate-neutral freight traffic, no CO2-free blast furnaces, no carbon dioxide-free European industry. Brussels, however, made the entry into this technology a central goal only late. Accordingly, there is hardly any production capacity for this in the EU so far. Countries like Japan, China and South Korea now have a head start in the new mega-market.
The EU is threatened with a supply shortage, especially in the initial phase of the hydrogen era. Because of its lack of space, it will probably never be able to supply itself with H2 entirely. Accordingly, pilot projects are running to secure imports - for example in Morocco, Chile or Australia. But many other countries have long since staked their claims at favorable locations. For the EU it is
»
high time to follow suit«, writes the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management in an expert report. If she doesn't, she simply lacks the fuel for her “Fit for 55” strategy.
