European Commission stumbles in rush to the right: “We will withdraw the law against greenwashing.” But then buys time

Brussels – The warnings were already there, in the name of European competitiveness to be relaunched, regulatory simplification packages, and the postponement of important green transition files. Today (20 June), an incontrovertible political signal from the most right-wing European Commission ever: two days after the joint request of the Popular and Conservatives, Brussels is considering withdrawing the legislation proposal on environmental declarations, which aims to combat the phenomenon of greenwashing by companies.

Little does it matter that the directive, proposed in March 2023 by the first von der Leyen commission, has reached the trialogues months ago (the interinstitutional negotiations, the last step before the final go-ahead). The third trialogue is scheduled in a few days, on 23 June. And it will probably take place anyway. The case broke out and was closed within 48 hours: on 18 June the shadow rapporteurs of the European People’s Party for the measure sent a letter to the EU Commissioner for the Environment, Jessica Roswall (also part of the EPP), in which they explicitly asked to withdraw the legislation. Two days later, EU executive spokesman Maciej Berestecki admitted: “I can say that in the current context, the European Commission does indeed intend to withdraw the proposal for a new law on environmental declarations.”

That’s it. No official accompanying explanation and a good deal of embarrassment in the room where Brussels spokesmen hold daily briefings with the European press. To such an extent that shortly afterwards, European Commission sources partly deny the announcement. “No final decision has yet been taken,” explains a senior official, “but only the intention to ‘inform the co-legislators that we might consider withdrawal,’ give them advance notice.” Brussels tries to pick up the pieces, and justifies the surprise move precisely because on the eve of the potentially final meeting to adopt the law. “We have reached a point where the Council has distorted the objectives of the proposal,” a source remonstrates, “there is no complete agreement yet, but for now, the assessment is that it is going completely in the wrong direction.

The directive aimed to ensure that consumers receive reliable, comparable, and verifiable environmental information on products and required companies to substantiate the accuracy of their labels. Constraints that “risk unduly hindering communication on sustainability through overly complex, administratively burdensome, and costly procedures,” reads the letter received by Roswall, in which the EPP borrows for convenience—a practice now established also for other political groups—the theses of the Draghi report and the need for the EU to strengthen its global competitiveness.

Commission sources confirm that, in fact, the problem would be that “the Council’s position still includes micro-enterprises in the scope” of the directive, whereas Brussels would like to grant them important exemptions. The risk is that “30 million micro-enterprises, or 96 per cent of all enterprises,” which already invest in sustainability claims, “will no longer do so because it will be too complicated” and this “would be contrary to the objective of the proposal.”

The latest stunt, with microphones turned off, to try to remedy the “on the record” gaffe concerns pressure from right-wing and far-right parties to abandon the directive. “A simple change of majority, whatever it may be, is not a valid reason for the Commission to withdraw a proposal,” a source denies. In short, the European Commission does not respond to a new majority consisting of the People’s Party and far-right parties, completely different from the one that supported its election. Meanwhile, however, the ECR conservatives are crowing: “The work and determination of the ECR group and the delegation of Fratelli d’Italia in the European Parliament have made it possible to block the Green Claims directive by the European Commission,” exult Carlo Fidanza and Nicola Procaccini. For the two Melonians, it is “another piece of the ideological Green Deal signed Timmermans,” against which the ECR “has been fighting strongly since the last European legislature and which finally seems to meet with the good sense of the EU Commission and other political forces.”

In reality, the rancour of the EPP towards the Green Deal began long ago, at the end of the last legislature, which inaugurated the great green transition plan. But now, on the strength of the new balance in the EU Parliament, decidedly more to the right—in the Council of the EU as well as in the college of commissioners—the leader of the popular Manfred Weber has turned a sneaky opposition into a crusade against the entire legislative architecture built by his own party just five years ago.

Just yesterday, the latest emblematic case: together with the extreme right-wing groups, the Christian Democrats have launched a real witch-hunt by approving the establishment of an internal working group within the EU Parliament to sift through possible infringements in the European funding distributed to environmental NGOs. The question is: how much longer will the European Commission indulge the dismantling impetus of the EPP in the name of regulatory simplification? Following the directive on ‘green claims’, legislation on forest and soil monitoring, the proposal for which has been stalled for some time in both the European Parliament and the EU Council, would be at risk. The same spokesman assured that the withdrawal would only affect the directive on environmental claims. “If indeed Ursula von der Leyen were to give in to this pressure, we would be faced not only with a very serious breach of the independence of the College of Commissioners, but with a blatant renunciation of the Commission’s institutional duties,” bitterly commented Sandro Gozi, MEP for Renew and rapporteur of the measure for the EU Parliament.