Saving climate, that already seemed an ambitious mission for the European Union. In addition, a second mission is added: the European industry, which is struggling in a number of areas, maintaining it. And that without getting rid of the climate plans, if possible.
This double stroke is the use of the Clean Industrial Deal, which the European Commission will present this Wednesday. The recently started committee wants to show a planning rain that it is meeting the business community. On the same day, the committee comes with the first of a series of omnibus laws, which must simplify and relax rules on sustainability reports and investments. The message: we have heard you, companies.
If Europe does nothing, the industrial senes say, the continent will soon have no industry about it
The Clean Industrial Deal is a product of the same change of course, aimed at the economic sector that is most difficult for all sectors: industry. Energy prices, crucial for many industrial giants, are much higher in Europe than in the US and China. Old European companies in heavy industry are opposed to imminent American tariff walls for steel and aluminum. Car builders and ‘green’ companies fear their competitive position through subsidy violence from China. If Europe does nothing, the industrial sons themselves say, the continent will no longer have any industry.
The Clean Industrial Deal must offer an answer to these problems. That is not just arranged, according to leaked draft versions of the plans that already circulated in Brussels last week. The most eye is the space that the committee, usually cautious when it comes to government interventions, wants to create to intervene on the market and to lend a hand to its own companies of the continent.
Japanese
For example, new tendering rules should stipulate that government agencies place orders more often in the EU if those governments make green investments. Such criteria “can better align national expenditure to the EU agenda for Co2-Reduction and competitiveness, “says the draft text.
‘Buy European true’, in other words, in order to give European industry more customers and to prevent European industrial companies being blown away by competition from China and the US. The committee also wants to encourage the private sector to purchase more on its own, European soil.
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In addition, the EU countries are made easier to grant state aid if it is up to the committee, so that they can make investments in clean industry financially attractive. State aid is also considered to protect citizens at high energy prices.
Energie plays a leading role in almost every chapter of the industrial strategy. In addition to the plans from the Clean Industrial Deal, the committee has even drawn up an extra action plan to print energy prices in the coming years. Before that, Brussels looks at the national capitals in the first place: “Member States can already lower the electricity accounts today,” it sounds somewhat admonishing. After all, high energy taxes are levied there; Those of the Netherlands are among the highest in Europe.
In the future, the De Hoop committee has established on liquid gas (LNG). Importers from Europe should again be able to conclude long -term contracts for liquid gas, to “better protect them at price fluctuations and to give them access to lower prices, so that prices in the EU come closer to prices on the world market”.
The committee wants to go even further, it appears, by seeing if it pays to invest in the global infrastructure. In this design, inspired by the model with which the Japanese government imports its LNG at favorable prices, the EU countries or the EU suppliers could help with loans, among other things, in exchange for long-term access to affordable LNG.
Acceptable middle way
The focus on LNG is not surprising: liquid gas has been on the rise for years. The timing is at the same time spicy: in recent weeks, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly put pressure on to import more liquid gas from America.
And the recognition that it makes sense to use liquid gas for a long time is a break with the philosophy of the past years. Already at the creation of the Green Deal, politicians recognized that sustainable energy sources offered energy biberolar at low prices in the long term, but that the bridging period between fossil and new energy could still be difficult.
That became completely clear when European countries wanted to reduce their dependence on oil and gas from Russia as quickly as possible after the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Liquid gas – which is less polluting than oil and coal – is therefore a little longer than provided for an acceptable middle ground, the committee now says.
The Clean Industrial Deal can be seen as the successor to the Green Deal that the previous committee came with, and yet not. Yes, the new European Commission uses a change of course in which the economy is getting a little more weight and the sharpest edges of the climate policy are planed.
But: the Green Deal consisted of a laundry list of laws, while his industrial counterpart contains no law. It is rather an action plan. And the change of course is not that radical, the committee itself likes to emphasize. The goal of being climate neutral in 2050 remains intact.
Wopke Hoekstra, European Commissioner for Climate and Schone Growth, can take the implementation of the Clean Industrial Deal, together with two of his colleagues in the European Commission: Teresa Ribera, a Spanish Social Democrat, and Stéphane Séjourné, a French liberal.
The three represent all flavors from the political center. That will not be a superfluous luxury if the countries and the European Parliament have to get involved in the debate about the cord dance act between industrial policy and climate goals.