Circular Economy and European Green Deal: Ursula Von der Leyen alone after the Cop25 failure in Madrid.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen , after the failure of the assembly of the main countries of the world, who met in Madrid to discuss the dramatic environmental situation , in the hope of accelerating the achievement of the Paris objectives, found herself definitely alone.

For various reasons, as described in the Portal NEWS pages a few days ago, the major polluters of our planet such as the United States, China, Brazil, India and Russia have not only given no availability to respect the established environmental limits previously but some of them even asked to exit the Paris agreement.

The sentiment shared by these countries is that of being free to produce and pollute at their convenience, without the need to submit to strict rules and controls, with the consequence of becoming more commercially competitive on the market than those countries that comply with environmental regulations.

It would seem it was a great disappointment, first of all political, on the part of the European Union, which finds itself carrying out this battle on safeguarding the planet by itself.

But despite the failures of Madrid, the president of the European commission has decided to continue his fight against climate change and pollution, launching the “European Green Deal” program which expresses the community’s desire to make Europe the first continent to zero impact by 2050.

Through new legislative proposals and substantial Community funding that the president wants to put into action, within two years, he wants to get to control emissions, to create a green market, also in the working field and to push innovation, a painful point compared to nations. like China and USA.

The new Community policy will affect several sectors: agriculture, industry, energy, technology, transport and chemistry.

There are still some EU countries that are opposed or skeptical of the new program, especially those in the east, linked by a double thread to coal for the production of electricity. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would like to postpone the start of the plan to have more time to convert their plants from coal to a cleaner energy source.

Certainly the plan is ambitious and demanding, as it involves not only the technological adaptation of obsolete and polluting energy production systems, such as coal, but also the finding of enormous economic resources, around 100 billion a year , to be invested to help Eastern European countries to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Resources that today are not easy to find among the countries of the European community.

But there is also an important aspect to keep in mind, which concerns the commercial disadvantage of products made within the European market , governed by stringent environmental standards, compared to countries that have the right to derogate from these commitments, thus becoming more competitive. from a commercial point of view.

To face this problem, a return on public investment in strategic sectors such as technology, industrial and energy is being considered. This could serve to decrease the differential between the cost of European production and that of other countries that produce energy from fossil sources.

However, public investment is not the only thought that Brussels has to help European companies to remain competitive in exports, but it is also thinking of a sort of “Carbon Tax”, a tax for polluters, aimed at goods from those countries. that produce and export their goods, using non-green energy, therefore less expensive and more polluting.

In chain, ideas could be aggregated about the blockade of the free trade agreement between Europe and Mercosur, affecting the Brazilian meat trade , as the president of Brazil, Bolsonaro , is held responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon , with all the related environmental consequences.

The intentions are good, but the process of completing the new green plan involves a lot of politics and a lot of money, two things to be taken with a grain of salt.

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Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.