Re-reading the European Green Deal (11.12.19) I am struck by the magnitude of what’s being tabled. It’s an agenda of a radical overhaul of today’s economy. It makes the 1930s New Deal or the 2008 Great Bail Out seem small scale rehearsals.
Yet, I am cautious of the real value of printing paper with grand agendas and loft laws if nothing happens. I have seen the EU pass a fish discards ban, and do nothing to implement it. Sadly, in 2019, we saw the collapse of cod stocks in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
You may think the chance of zero-carbon EU in 2050 is equal to zero. Maybe those of living in the Brussels Bubble have inhaled too much fairy dust, which takes you to very own Neverland.
On 29 January we will see the Commission’s first Work Programme. It’s going to set the agenda for the next 12 months and rest of the Commission.
On 4 March the Climate Law calling Europe to reach climate neutrality by 2050 is published. I have a gut feeling it’s going to surprise many.
But, it’s the initiatives that are hiding in plain sight that will have the biggest impact, and only smartest policy entrepreneurs will harness. Key is the ‘call for stakeholders to identify and remedy incoherent legislation that reduced the effectiveness of the Green Deal’. This opens up a pandora’s box. Smartly using the Better Regulation’s existing framework, the Commission’s given itself the perfect tool for meeting their ‘one-in-one-out’ agenda.
Over an evening tea, I’ve already scribbled down half a page of EU laws on the books that could be thrown out.
At least for the next five years, we live in uncertain and exciting times.