Olaf Scholz, German chancellor and social democratic candidate to repeat the position after the federal elections in February, clearly joins those who demand that Brussels make the environmental demands of the European green agenda more flexible, reduce administrative burdens—some linked to this climate regulation— and provide more facilities for States to help the private sector in this green transition. The argument, defended by business sectors and the European PP, is the need to ensure that German industry, and that of all of Europe, is competitive in world markets. But a good part of their European co-religionists and environmental organizations see these arguments as an excuse to put a spanner in the works of the green agenda. Scholz makes these requests in a letter dated this Thursday to the president of the European Commission, also German Ursula von der Leyen, from the Christian Democrat family.
The letter comes less than two months before the elections in Germany, which will be held on February 23. And he does so at a time when Scholz and his party, the Social Democrats of the SPD, are not doing well in the polls. The Christian Democrats of the CDU, with Friedrich Merz as their candidate, and the deeply Eurosceptic far-right of the AfD surpass them in the polls. As if this were not enough, the German economy has been in decline for more than a year due to the serious adaptation problems that the industry, its main productive sector, is having, disconnected from the digital revolution, and the problems it is having to keep up with the pace set. United States and, mainly, China in the energy transition.
To the internal context of Germany itself, we must add that of the European Union. The new political time has just begun, the renewed European Commission chaired by Von der Leyen is taking its first steps, and the debate on whether to lower the ambition of the European green agenda so as not to hinder the EU’s competitiveness is open.
Over seven pages, Scholz demands from the President of the Commission some measures that represent an amendment to part of the laws approved in Brussels since he arrived at the Chancellery in Berlin in 2021. Among them are regulations such as the sustainability directive for companies, the border carbon adjustment mechanism (which plans to balance in customs products manufactured outside Europe with lower environmental standards and, therefore, at a lower price ) or elements of the electricity market reform.
Linked to the latter and, above all, to state aid, Scholz comes to ask for broad support to give subsidies to industries that are intensive in electricity consumption. “It should be maintained at least until 2030, the ideal would be beyond,” claims Scholz, pointing to a front that usually generates deep divisions in the EU as a whole due to the inequality that it can create in the single market that countries with more fiscal capacity —due to their own size, like Germany or France, or due to their low debt, again Germany— shower their companies with aid, placing them in a market position.
Another of those changes that he demands is that vehicle manufacturers who sell cars that emit more than an average of 93.6 grams of CO₂ per kilometer traveled should not be fined, a sanction to stimulate the sale of zero-emission cars that comes into force. this year, but it may still be delayed. “It should not happen that companies that are investing massively in clean propulsion technologies are weakened by penalties during the transformation,” he suggests in a sneaky way, giving one of both lime and sand, after having written that Germany is “ committed” to the objectives of the regulation [que prohíbe la venta de coches que emiten CO₂ a partir de 2025] or that “electromobility infrastructure” (charging points) should be promoted throughout Europe.
The chancellor adds his voice to the European automobile sector, which estimates the cost that the definitive entry into force of these fines may entail at 15 billion a year. “They will be resources that will be deducted from investments,” the continental employers’ association recently pointed out. Car manufacturers are a very powerful voice in Germany due to the great weight that this sector has in their production model, which is in a critical situation as it falls behind the Chinese competition.
In the letter, Scholz repeatedly uses the plans outlined by Von der Leyen to congratulate him for doing so and, later, to indicate the path he believes he should follow. One of the times she does so, she looks towards the reduction of bureaucratic procedures, an objective announced by the president of the European Commission herself, a task that she has entrusted to one of her trusted men, the Latvian commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. At this point, the German Chancellor is calling for a two-year moratorium on the corporate sustainability directive, which calls on the private sector to ensure that its value chain respects environmental standards.
