{"id":418080,"date":"2025-02-06T11:18:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T10:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/02\/06\/socialisti-contro-ppe-green-deal\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T11:59:47","slug":"socialists-vs-von-der-leyen-the-green-deal-was-her-and-the-epps-growth-plan-no-backtracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/06\/socialists-vs-von-der-leyen-the-green-deal-was-her-and-the-epps-growth-plan-no-backtracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Socialists vs von der Leyen: “The Green Deal was her and the EPP’s growth plan; no backtracking”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels –\u00a0“The Green Deal was our growth plan. Ursula von der Leyen presented it with Timmermans, and now she hides<\/strong>” behind the figure of the former Socialist commissioner. Mohammed Chahim, vice president of the Socialist Group (S&D) and a member of the Environment Committee, vents\u00a0his anger and lashes out against\u00a0the president of the European Commission along with the European People’s Party (EPP). There no longer seems to be the conditions for continued political coexistence, and the primary center-left group in the European Parliament\u00a0is beginning to take stock.<\/p>\n

Some calculations\u00a0have already been made. The Competitiveness Agenda presented by von der Leyen not more than 10 days ago<\/a> is itself a litmus test. The EPP is making an unwelcome backtrack, violating a pact that began five years ago. On July 16, 2019, the\u00a0then-candidate for the leadership of the Commission, von der Leyen,\u00a0announced the Green Deal — an innovative economic-industrial strategy that became the platform for a political alliance with the groups in Parliament, which, based on\u00a0that program,\u00a0gave her their trust and the mandate to work for five years. Five years later, a reversal is not well received.<\/p>\n

“The Green Deal is and remains a priority for us<\/strong>,” said\u00a0Alex Agius Saliba, <\/b>vice president of the group responsible for communication and member of the Internal Market Committee. “We will not accept deregulation and limitation of our ambitions in the name of competitiveness,” he said, criticizing the simplification contained in the EU Commission’s competitiveness agenda, a simplification seen as excessive and dangerous. He especially dislikes the fact that “the far right is pushing the narrative that to be more competitive, we need deregulation and\u00a0dismantle the Green Deal.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Mohammed Chahim, Dutche MEP of the Socialists group\u00a0(S&D)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Socialists do not like the backtracking on sustainability — nor even more so\u00a0the flirtation with\u00a0the ECR<\/strong> conservatives. “The EPP’s attempts to unite with the far right are\u00a0not new but\u00a0are becoming more apparent now,” Saliba continued. “The Compass for Competitiveness cannot undo\u00a0what has been achieved in recent years,” <\/strong>he\u00a0<\/strong>and his group argue. The new European legislature started\u00a0poorly and is getting even worse. Europe’s\u00a0resilience is\u00a0at risk, with the Socialists grappling with an existential choice: stay\u00a0with this EPP or exit\u00a0the coalition and go to\u00a0the opposition.<\/p>\n

A ‘third way’ seems to be gaining traction —\u00a0greater cooperation with other pro-European forces within the House to pressure the Populars, implying a socialist-liberal-greens alliance within the theoretical popular-socialist-liberal alliance.<\/strong> The point is that S&D (136 seats), Renew\u00a0(77), and Greens (53) together do not reach the 361 seats needed for a majority (they stop at 266,\u00a0falling 95 seats short\u00a0of\u00a0forming an alternative coalition). However, the goal is to exert pressure, primarily through\u00a0an alliance between socialists and liberals, due to numerical considerations. Even if the EPP wanted to team up with the ECR conservatives, they\u00a0would not have\u00a0a majority in the House (266 seats out of the required 361).<\/p>\n

The issue\u00a0of cooperation between the EPP and the ECR has been present since the beginning of the legislature, and the Socialists have been raising\u00a0it forcefully. The group called for and obtained a House debate, scheduled\u00a0for Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 1 p.m.<\/a>, precisely on cooperation between the Populars and the Conservatives and the risks to EU competitiveness<\/strong>. The European legislature is increasingly creaking, with the Green Deal being the object of discord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S&D group denounces backtracking on the sustainability agenda: ‘It is and remains the priority. Von der Leyen hides behind Timmermans.’ Working with the Liberals and Greens to exert pressure on Populars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":418073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25727,25681],"tags":[25881,26324,25747,27741,27744,26942,30344,25905,29674,25886],"class_list":["post-418080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-spotlight","category-politics","tag-alleanze-en","tag-epp-en","tag-legislature-en","tag-party-socialist-en","tag-green-deal-en","tag-majority-en","tag-sustainability-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418096,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418080\/revisions\/418096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}