Brussels (The Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Ex-Belgian environment minister and current MEP Bruno Tobback calls for more money and a strategy to ensure the Green Deal induces productivity growth.
Europe has lagged when it comes to clean and digital technologies because of a shortage of investment and a failure to plan to attain its targets, says newly elected Belgian MEP Bruno Tobback. While the US is devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to clean energy technologies through the Inflation Reduction Act, many EU nations would happily invest more but are restricted by strict budget deficit rules, Tobback stated. “We have not created a framework in which it is possible,” he stated.
What challenges does the EU face in achieving green deal targets?
“We have developed a market for electric vehicles with very strict initiatives towards 2035. We just seem to have neglected to produce a strategy and an investment roadmap to make those cars.” Tobback greeted the recent report on EU competitiveness from former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, which placed additional investment needs of €800 billion per year and encouraged Europe to focus its efforts on strategic sectors.
“In an ideal world, I’m 100% technology neutral,” Tobback stated. “But what we cannot do is be technology neutral in the logic that we give everybody all the money they might require to develop [every technology] because the money is just not there. We’ll need to make choices.”
“If Europe keeps thinking it’s ahead while it’s standing still, and the rest are running, there will come a point when we can no longer catch up,” he stated. “That point is coming very close, and so slowing down now is the worst thing we can do for our economic future as well as for the future of the planet.”
How does Tobback view Europe’s focus on preserving past industries?
Further, he said If the industrial deal is around doing as much as possible to save the Volkswagen Group, “I think we’re going in the wrong direction, as much as I hope the Volkswagen Group can save itself,” he stated. “It should be about looking where we can build the future […] Conserving the past is what museums are for, and I do wish that the European economy of the next decades will not resemble a museum.”
Moreover, he expects the verification hearings to provide MEPs with significant clarifications, including around concepts such as simplification and faster permitting. “Let’s facilitate biopesticides, for example, and make sure the permitting process is as efficient as possible,” he stated. But, “Let’s not confuse faster permitting with lax permitting.”
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