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France’s Yellow Jackets uprising sent a hi-viz chill through climate policymakers. In the mind of Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans, the explosive reaction to a 2018 fuel tax hike points to the foremost threat to Europe’s decarbonization efforts: public backlash. But the European Commission’s executive vice president rejects the idea (promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump) that the protests were an expression of mass skepticism toward greenhouse gas targets. Rather it was political clumsiness that allowed an energy policy to set off outrage at social inequality.
“What triggered the gilets jaunes was indeed a lack of understanding in Paris that some people in rural France cannot take the metro to go to work, depend on their small car to get to their jobs, and cannot afford higher energy prices,” Timmermans told German media last month. “It is not the movement towards a sustainable society that is being challenged, it’s the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’” he said. “Am I going to be part of this or is this just a plaything for the elites?”
Climate politics in the EU is often crudely (and wrongly) bisected into countries that have coal and countries that don’t. But ending the coal industry is only the beginning of the Green Deal’s ambitions. As all carbon pollution becomes increasingly penalized, the EU will have to avoid the creation of two Europe’s: a hyper-connected, inner-city, low emissions beau monde and an isolated, rural high-carbon underclass. “Efforts must be allocated fairly,” said François Boulo, a lawyer, author and spokesperson for the Yellow Jackets in Rouen, Normandy. “Asking little of those who have little, and a lot of those who have a lot.”
The Commission is well aware of the dangers of an EU-wide, Yellow Jackets-esque eruption; the coming years will see EU-led state intervention into everyday life on a huge scale as governments hunt down emissions, and Brussels is an easy target for any resulting popular anger. The Commission’s own analysis finds Green Deal costs will be borne most by household budgets as the cost of regulation is passed on to consumers.
Europeans who can afford to shift to a more energy-efficient life will adapt and prosper. Those who cannot risk energy poverty. Absent policies to cushion these people, the Green Deal will widen inequality. To avoid that, the Commission has proposed handouts from revenue raised by carbon pricing, means-tested support for energy investments and progressive energy taxes. The EU’s Just Transition Mechanism is an array of finance and other tools designed to redistribute the impact of climate policy.
And yet, even if the real economic impact can be reduced, the Green Deal faces a more essential fight for acceptance. A Paris School of Economics study found French respondents overwhelmingly rejected putting a tax on carbon emissions. They disliked the idea even if sweetened with a cash dividend, and overestimated how much it would impact their budgets. Their views persisted even in the face of evidence to the contrary, leading researchers to conclude that the fundamental problem was a breakdown of trust in government.
That’s a potential problem for Brussels. As it embarks on its great climate project, confidence in the EU is patchy. It’s high in Scandinavia, where tough climate targets are an article of political faith. Low in France, Italy and Spain. In the East, populist governments clash with Brussels, but their people are strongly pro-EU. It’s a problem Timmermans is desperate to fix. “He feels this very strongly,” a European Commission official said. His first scheduled trip abroad after the lockdown was to an economic congress in Silesia, Poland’s coal-mining heartland. The virus ended up halting the trip, but he sent a video message there to sell an optimistic vision of an “inspirational” Poland showing Europe the way to transform.
Boulo, the Yellow Jackets spokesperson, isn’t buying it. “The rules of the European Union in no way allow the establishment of an equitable distribution of riches — despite this being a prerequisite for any policy seeking to address the climate threat,” he said. If the Green Deal is to work, Timmermans acknowledges, people like Boulo will have to be proven wrong. “If we leave citizens or regions behind,” the Green deal chief told the coalminers of Silesia, “the transition will not happen.”
