LAST UPDATE | 13 Sep 2023
EUROPE’S GREEN ENERGY transition will be “fair and just” for farmers and businesses fearful of new regulations and unfair foreign competition, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has promised.
Speaking to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg this morning for her annual state of the union address, von der Leyen focused on voters’ economic concerns, climate change and EU expansion.
With nine months to go until European Parliament elections, von der Leyen set out bold future directives, including a “fair and just” green transition.
She said the EU would fast-track permits for new wind turbines and vowed that “agriculture and protection of the natural world can go hand in hand”.
Farmers in Ireland this week protested over incoming changes to Ireland’s nitrate derogation limit which will mean they will have to either reduce their cattle herd size or pay for additional land use.
Ireland’s nitrates derogation allows farmers to maintain denser herds as long as they take extra steps to protect the environment. The current limit is 250 kg/ha but this will be reduced to 220 kg/ha from 1 January.
The Irish Farmers’ Association wants the Agriculture Minister to renegotiate this limit, but Minister Charlie McConalogue has dismissed the possibility of doing so.
McConalogue said that given the position the state is in in terms of water quality requirements, a renegotiation of the 220 kg/ha limit was “not viable”.
Across Europe, there has been mounting anger among farmers who are concerned that new green rules threaten their livelihoods as the EU’s ongoing transition towards clean-energy technology remains at the heart of the commission’s agenda.
In the European Parliament, von der Leyen’s own conservative EPP group has begun trying to water down nature protection laws opposed by farmers, and the president herself marked her return from the summer break with a surprise vow to review the wolf’s protected status.
“I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to our farmers, to thank them for providing us with food day after day,” von der Leyen said.
“It is not always an easy task, as the consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, climate change bringing droughts, forest fires and flooding, and new obligations are all having a growing impact on farmers’ work and incomes. We must bear that in mind.”
Von der Leyen also promised to engage farmers in dialogue on the changes in store as the EU works to “fast track” wind power installation permits as part of a broader “European Wind Power Package”.
This came in response to headwinds from the EPP, which has sought to slow von der Leyen’s ambitious green transition goals.
The EPP, the biggest grouping in the European Parliament, says those ambitions unfairly burden farmers, who form a key constituency ahead of European elections next year.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had been the centrepiece of the previous year’s address, but played a less central role this time, with the focus on what the EU must do to prepare itself to accommodate Kyiv and the countries of the Western Balkans as new members.
Some member states have dragged their feet on EU enlargement in the past, arguing that Brussels must streamline its decision-making rules – under which the 27 existing member states wield a veto in many areas – before taking on any more members.
But von der Leyen, who is due to report back to member states next month on Ukraine’s progress towards meeting the criteria for membership talks, said that Kyiv had made “great strides” and that reform of EU rules should not be an excuse for delay.
“The future of Ukraine is in our Union. The future of the Western Balkans is in our Union. The future of Moldova is in our union,” she declared.
Elsewhere, von der Leyen also addressed the issue of inflation across the eurozone, which remains persistently high, and said that it will not quickly fall to the European Central Bank’s two-percent target.
“We know that returning to the ECB’s medium-term target will take some time,” she said.
The annual rate of inflation in the eurozone reached 5.3 percent in August, below a peak of 10.6 percent in October last year.
The European Commission predicted inflation would fall to 2.9 percent in 2024 in its latest forecast published on Monday.
All eyes are on the ECB ahead of Thursday’s meeting, with divided opinions on whether it will raise interest rates or pause its historic hiking cycle.
During her speech, von der Leyen also welcomed falling energy prices.
“The good news is that Europe has started bringing energy prices down,” she said, pointing to the price of gas now worth around 35 euros per megawatt hour compared with more than 300 euros a year ago.
There had been worries the EU would struggle following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year after it decided to move away from relying on Russian energy imports.
European industry, meanwhile, is faced with the challenge of the United States and China pouring subsidies into their own battery, solar and electrical vehicle sectors.
“It is a crucial industry for the clean economy, with a huge potential for Europe,” von der Leyen said.
“But global markets are now flooded with cheaper Chinese electric cars, and their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies,” she said, promising “an anti-subsidy investigation” that could theoretically lead to restrictions on imports.
Von der Leyen also promised this morning to organise an international conference on ways to fight human traffickers bringing migrants to Europe.
The EU Parliament voted today on measures linked to air quality and and a type of aircraft fuel with lower, but still significant, emissions known as Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
The parliament voted narrowly to tighten limits on air pollution around Europe, aligning the EU’s 2030 air pollution target with WHO limits.
It also voted to create stronger protections against air pollution around community buildings like schools and hospitals and to increase the mandatory minimum number of air monitoring stations.
In a second vote on Sustainable Aviation Fuels, MEPs voted to require planes flying in the EU to use a certain amount of the fuels by law, starting with 2% in 2025 and rising gradually to 70% by 2050.
Irish MEP Ciarán Cuffe, the Green Party’s co-negotiator on the targets, said that the new law “marks an important point of departure from the industry’s reliance on fossil fuels” after decades of airlines “polluting for free with no incentives to decarbonise”.
The EU has also decided to monitor the levels of aromatic and sulphur content burned in jet fuel and for the EU Commission to develop measures on those levels by 2027.
“While we have taken important steps with ReFuel, I know that we can and should accelerate the timelines,” Cuffe said in a statement.
“In particular, I’m calling on the Commission to propose concrete measures to tackle non- C02 effects by early 2025, not 2027. The science is clear: this is doable now, and we have no time to lose,” he said.
“In the meantime, we still have a long way to go before flying becomes a more sustainable travel option. That’s why we must simultaneously help people to make greener choices, by delivering cheap, frequent, and reliable travel alternatives.”
Additional reporting by Lauren Boland
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