By Alessandro Maradei and Lorenzo Giovannini
The New European Bauhaus project – part of the EU Green deal and so highly desired by Ursula von der Leyen – could have ended up being her Achilles’ heel. As right-wing anti-ecological discourse is successfully spreading across Europe, von der Leyen’s re-election has risked being seriously compromised by the recent approval of the “green homes” directive. Could this new directive become von der Leyen’s curse in disguise?
Environmental policies have been a hot topic for the last European elections. With the European Green Deal, the EU aims to be the first climate-neutral continent, showcasing how decarbonisation can go hand in hand with development. Despite criticisms, the Green Deal remains the most ambitious environmental policy package globally.
And “if the Green Deal has a soul, then it is the New European Bauhaus”, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. For the last two years, European countries have subsidised inflation in energy costs without acting on the long-term energy needs of households. Now, with the new Bauhaus project, von der Leyen has envisioned a disruptive change in our relationship with energy, just like the actual Bauhaus was in the art world. This new visionary project for the European Union will materialise in a revolutionary renovation wave across Europe in the name of sustainability. The legal bedrock of this is the revised EU Energy Performance in Buildings Directive (EPBD) – also called “green homes” directive – finally adopted just two months before the EU elections.
Nonetheless, during the two years of debate on the directive, a rather strong opposition front has emerged. The dispute has gained momentum as right-wing populist parties are promoting a very sceptical perception on climate science and policies throughout Europe, generating a very overheated debate and polarisation on the topic.
In light of the EU election results, we could all ask ourselves if the timing for the approval of the EPBD has been the most suitable for the Commission’s goals. To approve such a weaponisable directive just some weeks before the elections, isn’t it like playing with fire?
What is certain is that with their misleading populist rhetoric, far-right parties have been able to finish first in France, Italy and Austria and came second in Germany and the Netherlands.
In order to illustrate what has been said above, in this blog post we will consider all the actors involved: interest groups, public opinion and political parties. We will unveil the populist strategy of Eurosceptic groups around the EPBD and we will examine why the directive could prove to be a double-edged sword for Ursula von der Leyen’s prospective second term.
“Home green Home” hides a political conundrum
First, we should briefly explain what the “green homes” directive actually is.
It provides for the renovation (consisting of the heating system and thermal insulation) of inefficient public and private buildings. Moreover, a pathway to phasing out fossil fuels in heating by 2040 has been developed, allowing heat pumps to make inroads into the heating industry. Finally, from 2030 on, all new buildings should be climate-friendly. This way, at least a 20% reduction in residential buildings’ energy use should be achieved by 2035. The final goal is to achieve a zero-emission building stock by 2050.
“Buildings are the most energy-intensive sector in Europe” – says Professor Edoardo Croci (Bocconi University) – “they consume 40% of total energy and generate 36% of total greenhouse gas emissions”. Energy use in buildings is indeed the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in Europe.
Concretely, we are speaking of figures of final energy consumption for buildings ranging from around 80k ktoe for Germany to almost 50k ktoe for Italy. The gain in sustainability could be really significant! Anyone who studies or is interested in EU energy policy cannot ignore that. In fact, in light of the aforementioned data, the EU objective of a 20% reduction in emissions for the building sector by 2035 does not seem so unattainable.
However, as already mentioned, in spite of being voted by a large majority in the EP, the directive appears very controversial. To begin with, it was approved by the Council with a very narrow majority. Furthermore, controversies have also spread outside of the European institutions, namely involving interest groups. Climate NGOs and the urban group “Energy Cities” strongly favour the directive. On the other hand, the news of a phase-out of fossil- fuel-powered boilers has been perceived as a fate worse than death by the gas industry, which was however saved by a last-minute amendment that allows hybrid boilers. The modification has been added by the European People’s Party and, according to some, it was pushed in that direction thanks to the lobbying activity of “Liquid Gas Europe”, an association of EU LPG stakeholders.
So, at first glance it seems that compromise has been achieved at supranational level. That being said, where does the discontent with the new directive originate then? It must be sought at national level and not so much in lobbies, but in far-right parties.
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Key Elements of the “Green Homes” Directive:
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Wave after wave: “wave of Euroscepticism” vs. “renovation wave” at country level
From the point of view of public opinion, the EU green manifesto is generating a deep political divide. In times of energy crises, environmental policies are a topic for electoral gamble for far-right national political parties. And it is interesting to notice that the countries which are the main producers of CO2 in the building sector are also those which elect the highest number of MEPs (that is, more than 35% of the Strasbourg hemicycle). It is in these countries – Germany, France and Italy – that the debate on the EPBD is particularly heated.
Germany is a very interesting case as the country has recently experienced a “boiler war” on whether to ban new fossil gas boilers. Lately, with the EPBD, the EU has eventually stepped in on the boiler issue while it was at a standstill at the domestic level. The boiler ban has turned out to be one of the most criticised German laws of recent years. And voters used these European elections to express their dissatisfaction with their national governments, rewarding instead Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the populist champion of those who are against the ban. According to Bernhard Forchtner, an analyst from the University of Leicester, the key to the German far-right success is that it addressed the concerns of many people, who are fearing to be forced to undertake costly renovations for their homes. This, on the one hand, has enabled AfD to reap tangible electoral benefits from the situation and, on the other hand, it has jeopardised the popularity of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But besides that, the June elections showed that the groundswell of support for climate action is apparently waning, as evidenced by the poor performance of the German Green party.
Similar dynamics are currently in full swing in France. Recently, President Emmanuel Macron has devised a strategy which focuses on building a national heat pump manufacturing sector, thus going in the same direction as the new European Bauhaus. The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) poisonous narrative, though, has immediately put President Macron on trial over undertaking a “punitive ecology strategy” that harms the French economy. The populist attack managed to push the French President to rely on a more low-key “ecological sobriety“, in other words to drop into oblivion any ecology-related issue. A choice that – in the end – has not favoured Macron’s party, nor Les Écologistes – the French Green party.
A different case has to be made for Italy, since the far-right parties who host the most climate-change sceptics – Brothers of Italy and the Lega – are in government. In Italy, the debate around renovations has been intertwined with the ‘Superbonus’ scheme, which has been a real Pandora’s box for Italian public finances. All in all, the bonus was too generous: rich households could also get it, it could be used for renovations of second homes and, on top of that, it subsidised gas boilers.
Consequently, the far-right Italian government has ventured in trying to set up a linkage between green policies and economic harm. Most importantly, during the campaign for EU elections, the government’s main parties tried to weaponize the EPBD by coupling it to the Superbonus. However, all of this is largely deceitful: the EPBD does not have the same messy framework of the exceptionally prodigal “Superbonus”. For instance, homes used less than four months per year will be exempted from renovation.
Nonetheless, it is self-evident that the spillover of this “climate populism” partly affected the June elections.
Climate populism looms over the EU electoral debate
We have seen how the debate on the EPBD has expressed all its disruptive political potential at the national level. But it has had a no less detrimental impact inside EU institutions.
Up to a certain point, the EPBD voting did not bring with it major surprises: G/EFA were totally in favour – but to a lesser extent also S&D and The Left – and at the opposite end of the spectrum we had ECR and ID. Most of the political groups had shown great internal cohesion; all but two: the EPP and Renew Europe. If we delve deeper into this, we can observe that there has been an internal split in these groups, a split deriving from the nationality of their MEPs.
Although overall EPP and RenewEurope mostly approved the directive, Italian and German MEPs from these two groups actually voted against it.
Interestingly enough, the same arguments supported by the far-right domestically have made their way into the European Parliament. And with an equally aggressive rhetoric. Mr Angelo Ciocca – MEP of Lega/ID, no stranger to dramatic protests, even had to be escorted out of the Chamber for his unsophisticated behaviour. It is easy to see that the same incendiary political language seen at the national level has been brought inside the EP.
Furthermore, if we delve into the analysis of the speeches given before and after voting sessions, we can see how the same arguments that the parties proposed at a national level have emerged in the debate on the EPBD held in the EP.
On the one hand, those who are in favour of the directive have shown some recurring theses. Such as, that the EPBD will have positive repercussions on several fields, including energy, environment, employment, and security. In addition to fighting energy poverty, the EPBD will promote employment in the green sector. The International Energy Agency predicts about 18,000 jobs per billion euros invested.
The EPBD will also help speed up Europe’s energy independence, in line with the REPowerEU aim of becoming independent from Russian fossil fuels. Thus, this directive also has positive repercussions linked with security, as highlighted by Kadri Simson ( European Commissioner for Energy).
On the other hand, those opposing the directive argue that it would have a modest role in the fight against global warming. Well, if it is true that as for industrial energy consumption China is the real deal, when it comes to buildings’ energy consumption the situation is radically different. If we put together the consumption of just the three major economies of our continent – Germany, France and Italy – we can get to a figure similar to the Indian buildings’ energy consumption.
The other key objection made to this directive by the naysayers is that its financing would fall on the taxpayers. This is the same argument that the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Mr Giancarlo Giorgetti (Lega), endorsed.
Regarding the economic counterargument, Irish MEP Ciarán Cuffe (Greens), the rapporteur on the EPBD, stated that: “Help is there, not just from the Recovery and Resilience Fund, but from many other sources [including] the multiannual financial framework”.
More precisely, the following infographic (commissioned by the Renovate Europe Campaign) shows the abundance of available resources.
All in all, it is safe to say that there has been a lot of debate on the issue. Maybe too much debate, as it generated confusion even in some less-informed MEPs of ID.
What is certain is that the key arguments against the policy do not stand up to scrutiny. Nonetheless, this does not seem to stop the electoral progress of the Eurosceptic right.
The EPBD and EU elections
In times of energy poverty and inflation, the far right is firmly opposing green policies, notably the EPBD. Its Eurosceptic framing, depicting the EU as imposing costly renovations to its citizens, has already spread in countries like Italy, France and Germany. This is how a banal piece of home heating systems, the heat pump, has become the latest horseman of right-wing extremism in Brussels.
The result of the EU elections in several countries has also depended on the extent to which the far-right succeeded in creating a political storm around the EPBD, owing to its timing and to the anti-ecological framing that arose around it. Therefore, the EPBD has contributed not only to building loyalty in the already large national electorate of far-right parties, but above all it has encouraged its active participation in the European elections.
Meanwhile, disinformation on the EPBD propagates swiftly at transnational level, involving even some of the most prestigious newspapers. In the words of Claude Turmes, former MEP for almost 20 years, the “green homes” directive can be a lightning rod for “a cultural civil war” in Europe.
Now more voters than ever are likely to back Eurosceptic parties. So the new EP could act as a platform for the Eurosceptic right to make its anti-ecological ideas resonate even more. This could eventually pose a threat to the Union’s pioneering green manifesto itself.
What should the EU do then? For sure, the EU cannot go unarmed to this war. The Commission must take an even stronger initiative to combat disinformation with quality information that gets to the people. And the media should assist in this fight. It would be foolish to fight alone against the windmills of disinformation. Especially when some political groups inside the EP are more able than others to plunge their hands into Eurosceptic populism.
In hindsight, President von der Leyen should have known better than to so flagrantly expose her Achilles’ heel: that is, giving the impression of an elitist Commission with no feeling for ordinary problems. The key takeaway from all this is that energy transition can no longer be something that is negotiated at distant climate conferences or in political circles. It is a topic with implications in everyday life, and it should be dealt with as such.
The green homes policy has been a von der Leyen hazard, being launched on such a short notice before the elections. It could be a new European Bauhaus or a double-edged sword for her. One thing is sure after the results of elections: it has been, as suspected, a helpful addition to right wing parties that have successfully gained significant votes in countries like France and Italy. Despite that, the energy transition still needs to be discussed and not at formal climate conferences, but concretely and on a daily basis.