The Economist July 17th 2021 Europe 49A lessthanjollygreengiant
A
simple rule applies when analysing an euscheme: the sillier
something’s name, the more important it is. When the eu
launched €750bn of common debt, it came under the seemingly
Star Trekinspired title of Next Generation eu. The European Se
mester, which makes little sense in any of the club’s 24 languages,
dictates whether a government’s budget fits with euspending
rules. Schengen, the radical experiment in passportfree travel
across an entire continent, is named after a nondescript village in
Luxembourg. Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics is a
vital tool for dishing out eufunds, turning Europe’s map from a
land of wiggly rivers and mountains into a patchwork gerryman
dered by cynical officials aiming to scrape up cash. It is better
known by a satisfying French acronym: nuts.
“Fit for 55” is the apogee of this rule. What sounds like a gentle
aerobics class for the middleaged is in fact a series of sweeping
environmental reforms that will set the direction of climate policy
for the next decade. In a glut of legislation, the European Commis
sion put forward 13 proposals with the aim of slashing emissions
to 55% below their 1990 level by 2030. Carbonintensive imports,
such as industrial materials, face a levy at the eu’s border for the
first time—which is already causing grumbling among trade part
ners (see Free exchange). Sectors once exempt from emissions
trading schemes, such as transport and domestic heating, will
have to pay for the carbon they spit out. Those already covered will
have to pay more. Cars with internal combustion engines will dis
appear from European forecourts by 2035.
Speak to the more enthusiastic officials and they claim this is
nothing less than a revolution, changing the way Europeans live,
determining the eu’s place in the world and providing the bloc
with a purpose for a generation. It is, in their mind, a legislative
“big bang” on a par with the creation of the single market or even
the euro. Speak to others and all they can see is an almighty politi
cal fight brewing.
Climate should be a perfect topic for the eu. At heart, the club is
a bet that nation states are a 19thcentury invention no longer fit
for the 21st century. Climate policy is an area where this argument
is strongest. Solo national efforts are absurd. There is little point
in Austria going green if petrolguzzling Audis spew out emis
sionsonGermanautobahns,orin the North Sea filling up with
Danish wind turbines if Poland still relies on coal.
Environmental policy is also a fine canvas for the eu’s geopolit
ical ambitions. The eufancies itself as a standardsetter: if the eu
goes green, other countries will follow, runs the logic. What the eu
lacks in hard power, it makes up for with regulatory clout. The
“Brussels effect” allows euregulations to ripple out from Belgium
to Borneo. A combination of the eu’s economic size and its (usual
ly) exacting standards means that other governments tend to
adopt its rules too to save their businesses from having to abide by
multiple codes.
Climate policy is the first big area where the “Brussels effect”
will be properly tested. On issues such as online privacy, where the
eu’s norms have become global ones, countries and companies
fall in line because it is not especially expensive to follow suit.
Likewise, timber producers in Indonesia have to abide by eurules
otherwise they will not be able to sell into its market. In short, the
Brussels effect works when following eurules is an easy or obvi
ous compromise to make. Expecting other countries to mimic an
expensive carbontrading system is a much bigger ask—particu
larly when all it guarantees is access to a market that will only
shrink as a proportion of the global economy. “Fit for 55” will dem
onstrate how much soft power the eucan actually wield.
With this potential comes peril. Environmental policy has long
been an eu-level matter, but it is one that has traditionally been
dealt with away from voters’ eyes, as businesses have been forced
to deal with the consequences and quietly pass the bill on to con
sumers. Now voters will be asked to give up petrol cars, take fewer
flights or pay far more for heating. They may rebel, as the gilets
jaunesdid in France in 2018 when fuel prices went up. Now this
tortuous debate will be played out primarily on a European stage,
rather than a national one. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch com
missioner overseeing the package and the main remaining expo
nent of British English within the eu’s institutions, declared that
reaching the target would be “bloody hard”.Good cop, green cop
Climate policy is, after all, meant to hurt. Some behaviour is sup
posed to become more awkward and expensive. This rubs against
the eu’s previous interactions with most citizens, which were to
make things easier and cheaper: as in cutprice flights or the aboli
tion of mobilephone roaming fees. When it comes to environ
mental policy, European institutions will find themselves in the
role they reluctantly played a decade ago during bailout pro
grammes in southern Europe: the face of unpopular reforms.
Rather than representing the ability to fly from Amsterdam to Ath
ens for the price of a round of drinks, the euwill come to be associ
ated with the steep tab for going green.
Slashing emissions is a rotten problem for the officials, politi
cians and diplomats who must solve it. The costs come now and
the benefits are reaped only in a generation, points out Elisabetta
Cornago of the Centre for European Reform, a thinktank. Indus
try lobbyists are happy to accept targets for climate neutrality by
2050, when they will have retired but—funnily enough—not by
2030 when they will mostly still be in their jobs. Voters, too, are
keen on going green, yet do not expect any aspect of their lives to
change significantly. National politicians have a choice: share the
political burden with Brussels, or shift the blame. Brusselspro
vides a convenient scapegoat. For the eu, the processofgoing
green will be painful, whatever silly name Eurocrats giveit.nCharlemagne
The euis better placed than national governments to set green standards. This will be painful