What is the European Green Deal?

Launched in 2019 at the European level in response to the climate challenge, the European Green Deal is a plan of unprecedented scope within the European Union. It constitutes the EU's roadmap and its new growth strategy to fight against global warming and environmental degradation. Objective ? Make Europe the first climate-neutral continent! 

This action plan is considered one of the most ambitious political initiatives carried by the European Union, which raises many hopes. For the Member States, this is a real opportunity to act jointly and effectively at the European level to fight against global warming.
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What is the European Green Deal? What is its content and what are the objectives set by this ambitious plan? Today, 4 years after its launch, where do we stand? Is the implementation of this plan a success or, on the contrary, insufficient? 

We will address all these questions together so that you become experts on the subject

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What are the motivations and ambitions of the European Green Deal? 

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The birth of the European Green Deal: when climate urgency meets political initiative 

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To respond to the climate emergency, the European Commission chaired by Ursula Von der Leyen presented in December 2019 its European Green Deal - also known as the Green Pact for Europe. 

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This key political initiative of the European Union is a commitment taken by the 27 Member States to face the challenges of climate change and the ongoing degradation of the environment. Through this Green Pact for Europe, the Member States set themselves the objective of achieving climate neutrality in 2050, thus respecting the objectives set in the Paris Agreement. 

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Concretely, it consists of a set of binding legislative measures and political initiatives, covering various areas and aiming to achieve this famous objective of carbon neutrality in 2050. The President of the European Commission even considers this plan as the number one priority of her mandate. 

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Objective of carbon neutrality in 2050 for the European Union!

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The will of the European Union through the Green Deal is to transform the European economy by making it more sustainable and resilient. This wish is translated on paper by several concrete objectives: 

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• The main objective is to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This means that all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be absorbed by carbon sinks and that net emissions will be zero.

• To achieve this main objective, the European Commission has set an intermediate objective in the shorter term: the reduction of at least 55% of net GHG emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. 

• Two other non-quantified objectives have been stated by the European Commission: 

• Economic growth dissociated from the use of resources
  
• Ensuring that no social group or territory is left behind: it insists on the need to implement a transition promoting sustainable growth while promoting social justice. 

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To achieve its ambitions, Europe equips itself with a legislative weapon called the “Climate Package” or “Fit for 55” package. It concerns all sectors and consists of several concrete legislative texts aiming to achieve the objectives of reducing GHG emissions. 

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How is the European Green Deal organized?

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The key sectors of the European Green Deal and the priority projects

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The measures announced and planned in the Green Deal are ambitious and cover all sectors of the economy. A quick overview of the different strategies of the European Union.

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Transforming the European energy mix

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In 2020, the European Union's energy mix was made up of nearly 70% of fossil fuels - oil (36%), natural gas (22%) and coal (11%) while renewable energies represent 22% of the energy mix. In recent years, the share of fossil fuels in the European mix has decreased while the share of renewable energies has increased (22% in 2020 against 16% in 2012). 

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Regarding Europe's dependence on hydrocarbons, Eurostat estimates that in 2021 the European Union depended 55.5% on its imports for its total energy consumption and that 40% of the gas consumed in the European Union in 2021 came from Russia. 

The war in Ukraine has indeed strengthened the consensus around the need to reduce external energy dependence and accelerate the transition to renewable energies.

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In order to achieve carbon neutrality, the European Commission is betting on two key tracks:  

• Increase the share of renewable energies in the European energy mix while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The initial goal was to increase the share of renewable energies in the European energy mix to 40% by 2030. After very long negotiations, the Parliament, the Commission and the Member States finally reached an agreement last March. Objective: increase the share of renewable energies in the European electricity mix to 42.5% by 2030.
• Improve energy efficiency (buildings, etc.) by reducing energy losses from 36% to 39%. 

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‍Promote the rise of sustainable mobility 

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Transport is another key area of the Green Deal. This is one of the most emitting sectors: it alone accounts for 1/4 of CO2e emissions at the European level and it is the only sector whose emissions have increased over the past 20 years. The goal of the Green Deal is to reduce emissions from this sector by 90% by 2050 ! This shows how profound the transformations are likely to be.

To achieve this, the EU is trying to build ambitious legislation. 

It envisages: 

• A 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 2030 (50% for light commercial vehicles) 
• The ban on the sale of new thermal cars from 2035.

The European Union is also seeking to promote sustainable mobility: use of low-emission vehicles, development of electrification and recharging infrastructure, reform of the carbon market by extending its scope to private road transport, etc. 

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The freight transport sector is also concerned. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA) in 2020, this sector is responsible for 9% of French greenhouse gas emissions (which corresponds to 40 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent). 

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A proposal from the European Commission aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy goods vehicles by 45% by 2030 to reach 90% by 2040. To achieve this, the EU plans to activate several decarbonisation levers: redefinition of the energy mix of this sector, strong modal shift of road freight to rail and waterways, improvement of the fill rate through the pooling and optimisation of loads, support and training of workers and implementation of "decarbonisation effort" certifications. 

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The Green Deal also provides for a profound transformation of the aviation sector by encouraging the development of sustainable biofuels and investing in research. The ReFuelEU Aviation proposal establishes new rules requiring fuel suppliers to provide a minimum share of sustainable aviation fuels to be blended with kerosene: at least 2% by 2025 and 70% by 2050.
In April last year, a political agreement was reached on this proposal.

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The Green Deal also proposes carbon pricing for the aviation sector, which was previously exempted (as was the navigation sector, which should also be affected).

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Launch a "3rd clean industrial revolution" by betting on innovation

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The Green Deal provides for the transformation of the industrial sector by encouraging innovation and investing in clean technologies. 

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The European Union therefore sees in the ecological emergency the opportunity to develop new markets while creating many green jobs. For example, it aims to create 160,000 additional green jobs in the construction sector by 2030. 

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The expected transformations in all economic sectors will profoundly change the face of the European economic fabric. Some activities will disappear, others on the contrary will be widely encouraged. Overall, all sectors will be subject to profound decarbonisation and some very polluting sectors such as the automotive or heavy industry (cement, steel, etc.) risk being transformed: development of battery factories for the electrification of the automotive fleet, modification of production processes towards carbon-neutral technologies, etc... 

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The green taxonomy is a tool created by the EU to classify economic activities with a favourable impact on the environment. Objective: to direct the investments of the European Union towards activities considered sustainable! On 31 December 2021, the European Commission proposed a new classification integrating gas and nuclear, two controversial sectors. After numerous debates, the Parliament finally considered that nuclear and gas could be included in the green taxonomy.

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 Bring nature back into our lives: protect biodiversity and health!

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World Wildlife Fund (WWF) published a report in 2022 warning of the decline in biodiversity worldwide: 70% loss of vertebrates in 50 years and nearly a million species threatened with extinction in the coming years. Europe is not spared, insect populations are collapsing and the number of birds has decreased by 25% in 40 years. In this context of crisis, the European Union has launched its biodiversity strategy entitled "Bringing nature back into our lives". It was adopted by the European Parliament in 2021. 

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To capture and store carbon quickly and at low cost, the European Union's strategy is to preserve or restore natural spaces (soils, forests, wetlands, peatlands, etc.) and biodiversity to the maximum. The European Union is investing in nature-based solutions. For example, it is the European LIFE Fund that finances the Life Anthropofens program in the Hauts-de-France and Wallonia to restore peatlands.

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Regarding agriculture, the Green Deal aims to encourage the transition to sustainable agricultural practices through its “Farm to Fork” initiative, preserving soils and health, such as organic farming, agroecology, and reducing the use of pesticides. 

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The European Green Deal represents a real opportunity to reorient the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounts for ⅓ of the EU budget, towards a policy that can meet the objectives of the Green Deal.

Even though the new CAP 2023-2027, which came into force on January 1, 2023, was supposed to be a key element of the agricultural component of the Green Deal (and even the main tool for this sector to achieve the objectives), it must be acknowledged that its impact is widely contested by NGOs and many experts who criticize its lack of environmental ambition.

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The European Green Deal 4 years after its launch: where do we stand?

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The Green Deal is making progress! Focus on concrete advances
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The Green Deal is making progress, especially in the last two years! More than 50 directives have been reformed and it continues to be expanded over time.

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Here are some of the most significant legislative advances:

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• Reform and strengthening of the community carbon market: the platform for trading greenhouse gas emission quotas (the Emissions Trading System 1 or ETS1) becomes even more stringent and its scope is extended to the aviation and maritime sectors. A second carbon market impacting individuals (for road fuel and heating) will be implemented from 2027. 

• Creation of a carbon border tax: the European deputies voted last April in favor of a “carbon tax” also called “carbon border adjustment mechanism” (CBAM). The aim is to penalize industrial imports whose production is highly CO2-emitting (aluminum, cement, steel, etc.) and to ensure the competitiveness of European industrialists by increasing the price of carbon. The mechanism will come into force definitively in 2026. 

• Creation of a Social Climate Fund from 2026: this Fund, endowed with nearly 87 billion euros, will help the most vulnerable to engage in this energy transition without suffering too much from it. The fact of integrating the private road transport sector and the housing sector into the European carbon market risks hitting the least affluent households hard and increasing social inequalities. To rectify this, the Social Fund can in particular help finance the purchase of an electric vehicle or the renovation of the housing of people strongly affected by the rise in the price of fossil energies. It is also planned that this Fund will help finance, in the longer term, the development of charging infrastructures and public transport.

• Adoption of the first part of the "Fit for 55" package in March 2023. Among the important advances:
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• The end of thermal cars in 2035 is finally enacted despite an initial blockade by Germany.
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• A provisional agreement has been reached on the directive on renewable energies aiming to increase the share of renewable energies in the EU's overall energy consumption to 42.5% by 2030 (almost double the current share). 

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Another important advance, in February 2023, the EU launched the industrial plan of the European Green Deal entitled “A Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Climate Neutrality Era”. 

This plan is based on 4 pillars: Establishing a more flexible, clear and predictable legislative framework, simplifying and accelerating access to financing, improving the skills of workers in low-carbon innovations, facilitating international cooperation.

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All the advances are available on the dedicated page of the European Commission.

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The main blockages and contested texts

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The Green Deal is an ambitious approach that requires close cooperation between the different Member States of the European Union and between the different institutions that make it up. It must be acknowledged that finding a consensus among 27 is no easy task!

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Here are some examples of blockages:

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• The revision of the REACH regulation on chemical substances was removed from the Commission's work program in 2023 due to the difficulties of the industrial sector to cope with the rise in energy prices. 

• Measures to reduce pesticides are criticized as they would be too impactful for some Member States and the project continues to be postponed. Due to these blockages, some people believe that “the agricultural Green Deal will not happen”. 
• Germany initially blocked the text providing for the end of thermal cars.

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Are the objectives set by the European Green Deal really achievable?

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On some aspects of the Green Deal, several major blockages persist:

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The ambition of some measures: in parallel with the difficulty of finding a consensus among 27, it must be acknowledged that there are some texts whose ambition seems insufficient to really achieve the objectives. For some sectors such as mobility or the circular economy, the Green Deal remains quite vague about the measures to be implemented. 

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Implementation obstacles: The success of the European Green Deal lies in its concrete implementation, which is also the most uncertain part: difficulty in finding a consensus among 27 countries, trilogue negotiations, blockages between the different Member States on certain texts, etc. In France, Emmanuel Macron has just asked for a regulatory pause for the green industry, a decision strongly criticized by environmental protection associations and unions. 

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To illustrate the difficulty of implementing this plan, let's take the example of the key sector of freight transport. Decarbonizing this sector, which is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, is a long road. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), road freight demand is expected to double by 2050, while this sector should ideally achieve a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

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Green Deal financing: The Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE) states that to follow the trajectory set by the National Low Carbon Strategy, much more money for the climate needs to be invested in France. According to Greenpeace France, the rescue of polluting industries makes it difficult to achieve the objectives set by the Green Deal, and the funds allocated are not at all commensurate with the plan, which further limits its implementation. 

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Although this Green Deal is far from perfect, it must be acknowledged that the EU's ambition and the progress made constitute an unprecedented mobilization on the climate issue at the scale of the European Union. To be continued...

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