They fumed as to why the EU executive was issuing the target now, of all moments, with anti-green rage simmering, the far right pouncing, the EU election looming, and farmers blockading the front gates of the legislature.
“Everyone was shooting at the 2040 target,” said one EPP official who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the internal meeting. “They’re all thinking, ‘what the hell is the Commission thinking?’ With farmers’ protests in France and Belgium and everywhere else? And now they’re just simply throwing a piece of red meat into the room and letting the dogs fight over it.”
The MEPs’ exasperation creates a major headache for von der Leyen — who is expected to announce she intends to run for a second five-year term as head of the Commission — and her climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, also from the EPP. Their conservative group has grown hostile to new climate regulation, arguing it puts a ruinous burden on business and rural communities and fuels the ascent of far-right parties across the Continent.
Yet under EU climate legislation passed in 2021, the Commission is legally obliged to propose a new 2040 climate goal within six months of a U.N. stocktake of international climate action, which began on December 2 and was finalized on December 13. Awkwardly, those dates oblige the executive to release the new goal either four days before or after the next EU election, which takes place June 6-9. The Commission would not say which of those dates it considered binding.
The disagreement between von der Leyen and MEPs in her political family is the culmination of a long campaign by the latter, led by group leader Manfred Weber, over the EU’s direction on the Green Deal, seen as von der Leyen’s legacy project. Weber’s lawmakers have been pressuring the EU executive to trim the green agenda and inject more pro-business realism into it, ever since he called for a “moratorium” on new green laws in 2022.
In some ways, the Commission’s approach to the 2040 plan appears to acknowledge those concerns. Instead of actually proposing new legislation — which some interpret the climate law as mandating — the EU executive will issue a weaker “communication” that lays out three options for an EU emissions-cut target and backs the 90 percent choice.
