Politicians are searching for answers and they’re finding a Europe that is grayer, less dynamic and less innovative than ever before. They’re betting everything on turning the economy around, even if it means ditching former cherished goals ― the choices that made Europe Europe ― such as protecting the environment, standing up for human rights, or having a generous welfare state.
What the European Union calls “competitiveness” ― and that really means making Europe as productive, wealthy and dynamic as the United States, while keeping ahead of China ― runs like a thread through Ursula von der Leyen’s vision for her second presidency of the European Commission.
I wonder whether the European on the street would accept the reduction of of the safety net?
French politicians had a difficult time raising the retirement age to 64.
The French are very protective of the country’s universal health care and generous Social Security system.
Supply-side economic. Pork 80% of Central Europeans. Build up the military and build up the billionaires. Find cheaper labor. Offshore factory production.
Why dress it up in garbage? adding I forgot supply-side economics is about spreading lies.
Copy the US? Ha
We are going elsewhere. We are making our country wealthier.
Will reshoring happen in Europe? They are taking steps to protect the auto industry with tariffs on EVs from China.
If they are serious about green, maybe green electricity rather than hydrogen. Will that work? Electrified railroads, yes. Electric trucks and busses are more problematic.
Compared to LNG, green electricity might look cheap. Can industry adapt? Or will they import more from lower cost energy countries?
It’s not just low cost labor. Now its also lower cost energy. Jobs in sales and distribution should do fine but manufacturing has to be a tough one.
Only 2 or 3 European countries have appreciable auto industries. The other 20 want less expensive cars … often from China.
Maybe. But apparently they are more serious about politics. Germany, for example, shut down nuclear and left coal running, instead of the opposite which is far more green.
My last real fist fight was with an idiot German Green who went insane on me (in a Berlin gay bar!) on a late Sunday night way back in the 2013 or so. I taunted him on the idiocy of shutting Nuclear and burning coal.
We both lost. And he wasn’t even cute. Probably the real cause of our disturbance was my preference for Bavarian over Berlin beers.
They take their beer very seriously there! I used to spend some time in Erlangen on business trips, and it’s a relatively small city. Yes despite being a small city has at least 10 breweries. And their beer is quite good.
Germany shut down 15 coal-fired power plants over the weekend as its government ramps up plans to phase out the fossil fuel in an effort to meet climate targets.
On Sunday, seven of the 15 coal plants, with a total combined capacity of around 3.1GW, were disconnected from the grid in the Rhenish mining area and in Brandenburg. On Monday, the economy ministry announced that eight additional coal power stations with a total capacity of 1.3GW will also be taken offline.
Germany has a target to fully phase out coal power by the end of the decade. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent European energy crisis, the government decided to keep several coal plants online as backup amid concerns over market prices and energy security.
German economy minister Robert Habeck told reporters the plants were now “neither necessary nor economical”. He added: “Several coal-fired power plants that were still on the grid as a precautionary measure over the last two years are therefore now superfluous and can be taken off the grid for good.”
Germany and Europe were early adopters of especially solar and wind turbines. They paid good prices for green energy and encouraged investment. But gradually subsidies were dropped.
Germany in particular is strongly anti-nuclear. They planned to use Russian natural gas while building green energy capacity. Ukraine invasion required alternatives like much LNG but at higher cost.
Meanwhile voters seem far more concerned about immigration and are backing away from support for green programs. UK trimmed plans to require heat pumps to replace older heating systems.
Europe continues to evolve. Loss of manufacturing and rising unemployment has to hurt. How will their economies recover? Voters seem unwilling!!
A leaked draft of the European Commission’s competitiveness compass — an economic doctrine to guide the EU executive’s work for the coming five years — points toward widespread deregulation targeting the European Green Deal in particular. “This Commission will deliver an unprecedented simplification effort,” the document reads, singling out new rules governing financial and corporate sustainability efforts…
Still, the compass vows the EU will “stay the course” on its climate targets. But the document’s focus on slashing environmental red tape to boost the European economy fits neatly into growing calls to revise or repeal large parts of the Green Deal — the slate of rules designed to get the EU to net zero emissions by 2050. The loudest demands for a green rethink have come from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the political family of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose leaders ramped up their attacks on the Green Deal this week.
Last weekend, a German-led EPP leaders’ meeting produced a document calling on the Commission to delay the financial and corporate sustainability rules as well as the EU’s new carbon border tax for at least two years. The leaders also said they opposed renewable energy targets, a Green Deal element that had enjoyed widespread consensus until then. The EPP insists the EU’s climate policy should be “technology-neutral” — not preferring certain technologies over others, for example, heat pumps over boilers or renewables over nuclear, and not banning technologies such as combustion engines in cars.
Tusk outlined Warsaw’s view on climate and energy policies during the country’s recently-started six-month presidency of the EU’s council of ministers.
“If we go bankrupt no-one will care about the world’s environment any more,” Tusk said, calling for an honest, full and “very critical review of all regulations, including those arising from the Green Deal”. Launched in 2019 under the previous European Commission term, also led by president Ursula von der Leyen, the Green Deal was adopted in 2023 and notably included revisions of the emissions trading system (ETS) to support a steeper 55pc reduction in the bloc’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.
Tusk wants any review to identify and change EU laws that may lead to higher energy prices. “There is, for example, the issue of ETS 2 in front of us,” he said, singling out the separate trading system covering emissions from road transport and heating fuels, which is scheduled to launch in 2027…
“Our union will only survive if we continue to implement the Green Deal, the sole instrument capable of ensuring the survival of our planet,” warned Spanish MEP Iratxe Garcia, leader of parliament’s second largest group, the centre-left S&D.
