Duggan Flanakin
Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
Elections for the European Parliament will be held in June, and big changes appear on the horizon. The Green parties, who won big in 2019 and pushed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to present an ambitious climate agenda, are in decline. Led by disgruntled (and targeted) farmers, voters in at least 18 of the EU’s 27 member nations are expected to express disapproval of EU policies at the ballot box.
Perhaps the tiniest of the protests belongs to the European People’s Party (EPP). Just 19 months ago, self-described planet savers were cheering the European Parliament’s vote to ban the sale of internal combustion engines by 2035. Today, after first Germany and then other nations began questioning the wisdom of ceding the world’s automotive future to the inscrutable Chinese, the EPP has called for an end to government by fiat.
But the EPP just wants the EU to try carrots rather than sticks to impose their climate agenda. Rather than forcing Europeans into largely unwanted electric vehicles, the EPP called for relying on “innovative concepts and market-based instruments for climate protection with emissions trading, the expansion of renewable energies, and a circular economy.”
The EPP also pledged to “further develop” von der Leyen’s “Green Deal” package of economy-stifling climate laws. Net Zero by 2050, they insist, can be accomplished by persuasion and better policies – not mandates. But they dared not question the “science” that follows Al Gore’s mantra that decarbonization must be the “central organizing principle of civilization.”
What poppycock!
Germany’s weak proposal was to allow internal combustion engines in vehicles that only use synthetic “green” fuels – which today are quite expensive. Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic agreed, and soon after, EU climate czar Frans Timmermans announced “an agreement with Germany on the future of e-fuels in cars.”
Kinda like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The German-initiated tweak of the EU’s Net Zero strategy was a sop to automakers who have recognized they cannot compete in price or quantity with the Chinese. But Germany has led the way in the deindustrialization of Europe with its outrageous phaseout of non-polluting, reliable nuclear power plants.
Today, as a result of these and other “misguided” energy policies, the cost of electricity across the continent has become so high – three times pre-pandemic levels — that trade unions are seeing the writing on the wall. Their jobs will soon be gone unless Europe abandons its vainglorious battle against an enemy that does not exist – one that China, India, and emerging African nations surely see as benign.
While the EPP’s proposal tinkers at the perimeter, many Europeans appear to be realizing they are being scammed. Farmers in France, Poland, the Netherlands, and even Germany are leading the fight against the EU’s job- and livelihood-killing mandates. French farmers blocked major roads with enormous tractor-led convoys to show their disgust with excessive EU regulations.
Farmers even staged a protest in Brussels, Belgium, home of the EU. The French farmers’ union, Rural Coordination, called for a demonstration against the “ever-increasing constraints of European regulations and ever-lower incomes.” Rural Coordination President Veronique Le Floc’h said, “Today, when we see that all the farmers in France are gathering near roundabouts blocking highways … It shows they are fed up. It’s a revolt.”
Early polling indicates that anti-EU-policy parties are likely to win big in nine member nations and come in second or third in another nine. “Eurosceptic” parties are expected to be strongest in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia. Anti-technocrat support is growing in Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, according to a new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The protests are evidence of a growing divide between the “technocratic” EU and working-class Europeans. French farmer union leader Arnaud Rousseau says there is a “growing lack of understanding between a technocratic structure walled into its Brussels offices and the reality of what we experience on our farms.”
If current trends hold, the European Parliament could see a populist majority that would likely oppose “ambitious” EU actions to drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions across the continent.
And for good reason.
Those actions include taking internal combustion engines off European roads and highways, banning the use of natural gas and forcing people to purchase expensive, ineffective heat pumps, and even slaughtering cattle, sheep, and other farm animals – all guaranteed to lower the standard of living for most Europeans.
But even with a majority in the EU Parliament, the people’s parties may find victory just out of their grasp. The final plenary session before the June elections will be in late April, and climate activists are working overtime to adopt new energy and climate policies that would be binding unless overturned – a more difficult job than just blocking them from being enacted.
Among “unfinished” business for the lawmakers is the final adoption of the very controversial Nature Restoration Law, a regulation to reduce methane emissions and carbon dioxide standards for heavy-duty vehicles. In theory, at least, the plenary vote should be a rubber stamp – unless that is, some members decide their reelection hinges on stalling the vote.
The first job of the newly elected Parliament will be to choose a designated European Commission president – and that choice may determine just how far the populists can go in reshaping the EU’s long-term climate agenda.
The next job is to set the “Strategic Agenda for the EU,” which starts with setting the “political guidelines” that give the public (and journalists) information about the EU’s likely direction for the next five years. Only then – and that could be as late as September – will the President be formally elected.
The Identity and Democracy group, which includes France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, and Italy’s League, possibly gaining more than 30 new seats to become the third-largest alliance in the European Parliament. That would give those opposed to the globalist agendas more sway in EU decision-making since Parliament became directly elected in 1979.
Should this coalition strike a deal with the EPP, the death march toward Net Zero might be slowed if not halted altogether. That could enable Europeans to take a longer look at the outcomes for people of the policies their governments want to impose – and decide which are worth keeping and which are too destructive of the European and local economies.
This, of course, causes the climate radicals (who call themselves mainstream) to shudder. What if, said Professor Simon Hix, an author of the ECFR report, this “backdrop” of stirring populism is fueled by the return of Donald Trump as U.S. president in November? “Parties of the political mainstream need to wake up and take clear stock of voter demands,” he said.
Hix added, “They should make clear, on key issues relating to democracy and the rule of law, that it is they, and not those on the political fringes, who are best placed to protect fundamental European rights.”
That’s a funny way of describing opposition to climate alarmist legislation and to policies the people, by their vote, have determined are not in their interest.
