Denmark: Siltanews – News Desk
Denmark says cutting emissions will help the EU defend itself and compete with China and the US. However, keeping the EU’s beleaguered green deal alive amid a climate policy backlash won’t be easy.
The streets of Denmark’s second city Aarhus are full of clues that this is a climate-conscious country. Bottle recycling machines greet pedestrians at regular intervals; bike paths are teeming with cyclists in rain or shine — often with kids or cargo in tow; and out in the bay where the Kattegat connects the Baltic and North Seas, turbines help generate more wind power per person than almost any other country in the world.
It was here that the Nordic nation chose to launch its six-month stint heading up the EU Council, the body representing the bloc’s 27 national governments.
And a word that’s fallen out of vogue in European policy-making circles made the cut in Denmark’s stated priorities: “Green.”
“There’s a lot at stake,” Climate and Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told DW as Denmark’s EU presidency kicked off.
The days when climate policies dominated the European Union’s agenda; when school climate strikers demonstrating in towns and cities across the bloc prompted policymakers to come up with the so-called Green Deal, dubbed Europe’s “man on the moon moment” by the EU Commission back in 2018.
Since then, the realities of radically shifting geopolitics have swung like a wrecking ball onto Europe’s political consciousness — from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy and inflation crisis, to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and mounting existential fears in European industries from car-making to chemicals.
Green parties lost out in most countries in last year’s European elections after what many analysts dubbed a backlash against green policies.
The EU’s big promises to slash emissions have already been enshrined in law, allowing the bloc to keep up its claim of climate leadership on the global stage — especially with Washington pulling out of the Paris climate deal.
But bit-by-bit, lower-profile elements of Europe’s green legislation are coming under fire in debates on how to ease burdens on businesses to help the EU compete with the likes of China and the US.
“We support a climate policy driven by innovation, investment, and responsibility — not by radical bans or ideology,” leaders of the EU’s biggest political grouping, the center-right European People’s Party, said in a statement late last month. “We are ambitious, yet pragmatic,” they wrote.
While those leaders praised a series of red-tape-cutting plans laid out by the EU’s executive, climate campaigners have rejected the moves. Recently, Brussels also sparked their ire by shelving draft anti-greenwashing rules.