(Reuters) – Europe faces growing pushback against policies to address climate change and protect the environment, causing its green agenda to start to fray as severe heatwaves and wildfires rage.
Here are some countries where the “greenlash” is greatest:
ITALY
Italy’s right-wing government, which took office late last year, is pushing back on an array of European Union initiatives aimed at greening the economy, arguing that local business can ill-afford previously agreed transition goals.
Since then, Italy has demanded that the EU water down a directive aimed at improving the energy efficiency of buildings, re-write plans to phase out combustion engine cars and questioned a drive to slash industrial emissions.
Under current policies Italy is behind schedule in hitting the decarbonisation goals for 2030 set by the EU, an energy ministry document said last month.
At the same time, the government continues with other aspects of the green agenda. Earlier this month, for example, it said it wanted to use EU money for an investment programme worth around 19 billion euros to strengthen power and gas grids and make its economy greener, as part of its efforts to revamp plans to spend EU post-COVID funds.
BRITAIN
Britain has lost its position as a global leader on climate action and is not doing enough to meet its mid-century net-zero target, the country’s climate advisers said in June.
Last year’s announcements on new fossil fuel projects have also tarnished Britain’s reputation, an annual progress report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) said.
A separate government-commissioned review also found businesses complained of weaknesses in Britain’s investment environment, including inconsistent policy commitment.
Progress in onshore and offshore wind has been hampered by rule changes, prompting some developers to warn they will struggle to invest in Britain without better incentives.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last month warned of climate policies that “unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs”, days after his ailing Conservatives unexpectedly clinched a local election after opposing charges for the most polluting vehicles.
Responding to criticism of his government’s environmental stance, Sunak has said Britain’s record on cutting carbon emissions is better than other major countries.
NETHERLANDS
The BBB or BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement) party, founded in 2019 in opposition to the government’s plans to drastically cut nitrogen pollution on farms, has experienced a meteoric rise to second place in polls.
Riding a wave of protests against the government’s environmental policies, it unexpectedly beat the conservative VVD party in regional elections in March.
The latest weekly poll by market researcher Ipsos ahead of a November parliamentary election put the BBB in second place at nearly 15% of the vote, just 3 percentage points behind the VVD, which will contest the vote without Prime Minister Mark Rutte for the first time in more than a decade.
The BBB’s rise was a major blow to the latest coalition government, which collapsed in July.
If the BBB makes significant gains in national elections, it could set Dutch policy on nitrogen curbs on a collision course with the EU, which has supported action.
POLAND
Poland’s government, long conservative on environmental policies at home and facing elections in October, has gone a step further by suing Brussels.
So far it says it has filed complaints with the Court of Justice on the EU’s 2035 ban on combustion vehicles, the increase in the bloc’s emissions reductions target, the reduction of free Co2 permits, and what it called interference in national forest management.
Facing pressure from mining unions, Poland has also deferred a plan to cut its reliance on coal by downgrading the status of its upcoming energy policy update to simply a “consultation”.
GERMANY
Angst over a law to phase out oil and gas heating brought Germany’s ruling coalition close to breaking point this spring. After weeks of wrangling, it agreed to changes which watered down the original bill.
The row has helped propel the far-right Alternative for Germany to second place in the polls. The party disputes that human activity is a cause of climate change.
Anger at initiatives to reduce the number of cars on the roads in the city-states of Berlin and Bremen also hit support for the Greens in state elections this year, say pollsters.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels, Sarah Marsh in Berlin, Gloria Dickie in London, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Angelo Amante in Rome, Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw, Susanna Twidale and William James in London)
