EU lawmakers put bloc’s green ambition to the test

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Good morning. It’s election day in the Netherlands. Polls predict a four-way fight between the governing VVD, a left-wing alliance led by the EU’s former climate chief Frans Timmermans, centre-right newcomer Pieter Omtzigt and the far-right Freedom party of Geert Wilders. No matter the outcome, it’s safe to say the formation of a new government will take time.

Today, our environment correspondent has the lowdown on a slate of green votes in the European parliament. And our Rome bureau chief explains how Italy’s foreign minister wants to reinvigorate the Forza Italia party ahead of the EU elections.

Green days

The ambition of the EU’s climate laws is being put to the test this week as MEPs vote on five key pieces of green legislation, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: Brussels’s sweeping Green Deal package includes some 75 bits of legislation and has been in the works since 2019. It aims to overhaul the EU’s economy in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

More than 30 laws are already in force, but 37 are still under negotiation (and the remainder have been either watered down, scrapped, or not yet announced by the European Commission).

Among those on the European parliament agenda this week is a highly politicised vote on pesticides, scheduled today alongside a decision on the intensely lobbied packaging regulation (see our chart du jour).

Conservative lawmakers have turned the debate on pesticides into another pro-farmer crusade. According to a parliament official, strong divisions over the law, which aims to cut pesticide use in half by 2030, mean that it is “unclear, really, what the outcome will be”.

Yesterday’s votes already indicate that the appetite for ambitious green policies is mixed.

Lawmakers approved the EU’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act, Washington’s package of clean tech subsidies. The so-called Net Zero Industry Act aims to speed up permitting and cut red tape in the EU.

Conservative MEP Christian Ehler, who led the negotiations, said they would prevent Europe from facing “decarbonisation by deindustrialisation”.

But campaigners criticised Ehler’s laundry list of “net zero” technologies that will be more eligible for subsidies, arguing that this risked spreading the bloc’s already thin resources. “Taxpayers’ money will be diverted from the key green technologies,” said Camille Maury from WWF Europe.

Environmentalists have also criticised the parliament for approving loopholes in rules for emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, including for biofuels.

Lawmakers yesterday also voted on certificates for removing carbon from the atmosphere, aiming to nudge farmers to invest in sustainable techniques in order to certify their lands. But climate activists said that proper guidelines were missing for how to use them.

The laws still need to be negotiated with member states — and could be watered down further.

Chart du jour: Rubbish

The packaging regulation to be voted on by European lawmakers today aims to cut millions of tonnes of packaging waste. Though plastic is among the more contested waste products the EU wants to reduce, paper manufacturers too have been among those staunchly opposing the rules.

After Silvio

When Italy’s ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi died this year, foreign minister Antonio Tajani was one of many who questioned whether his party, Forza Italia, could survive without its charismatic and deep-pocketed founder, writes Amy Kazmin.

But Tajani, who now leads the party as caretaker, is increasingly confident it has a future in Italy as a liberal, centre-right party.

Context: Berlusconi, a media tycoon and once Italy’s richest man, established Forza Italia as an extension of his business empire in 1994, after Italy’s postwar political establishment collapsed amid allegations of corruption. He ran the party as his personal fiefdom until his death, aged 86, in mid-June.

Tajani, who was on an official trip to Washington when he died, rushed back, visibly bereft.

“My first idea on that day was, ‘we are close to the end of Forza Italia because everybody will leave the party’,” he told the FT. “But the reaction of our supporters has been exactly the opposite.”

Recent polls show Forza Italia — part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s three-party coalition — is supported by around 7 per cent of Italian voters. That’s a far cry from the 37 per cent at the peak of Berlusconi’s popularity in 2008, but no less than when he died.

The party will hold a congress to chart its future in February.

Tajani said he hoped Forza Italia can secure more than 10 per cent of Italy’s vote in next year’s European elections, wooing voters that previously abstained because of disenchantment with other political parties.

“They want stability — they don’t want an aggressive party. They want to choose a moderate party,” he said. “It is possible to be moderate and at the same time, strong.”

What to watch today

1. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosts Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Berlin.

2. European Central Bank publishes its financial stability review.

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