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The European “clean industrial deal” is expected to become one of the most defining legislative efforts of the new Commission College, even that the initial draft and its actual contents remain quite vague. The new law will “ramp up investments in clean technologies and energy-intensive sectors” to keep Europe’s economy looming “without losing sight of the bloc’s green objectives”. However, not all the member states are excited to support the project financially.
Green goals vs. tight purse strings
So far, there is only one instrument the main EU’s executive institution has explicitly called for: a European Competitiveness Fund. But its broad scope suggests the clean tech sector will have to compete against other capital-intensive sectors, such as AI and space, to get the money it desperately needs.
Making this more complicated, the Clean Industrial Deal will have several “masters”: e.g. top EU Commissioners (in the ranks of EVPs) -Teresa Ribera and Stéphane Séjourné who will oversee the master plan in general on one of its key components, dubbed the Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act.
Note. Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, EVP responsible for clean, just and competitive EU’s transition, which includes circular economy and decarbonization; the latter “drives” the European Green Deal, designed as a focal point in EU growth strategy and a central part of the new industrial policy. New approach to competition policy also include (together with actions in prosperity and industrial strategy, as well as that of climate, net zero and clean growth) the Clean Industrial Deal aimed at unlocking investment, create lead markets for clean tech and put in place conditions for companies to grow and compete. She will also guide the process of ensuring that taxation measures would support just transition and decarbonisation.
More in: https://commission.europa.eu/document/5b1aaee5-681f-470b-9fd5-aee14e106196_en
Note. Stéphane Séjourné, EVP for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy is expected to start a “new era of productivity, innovation and competitiveness”, including simplifying the Single Market to allow business and innovation to thrive by tackling fragmentation and remaining barriers. Besides, new regulatory initiatives include such priorities as, e.g. Clean Industrial Deal, Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act, European Competitiveness Fund, reviewing the Single Market Barriers Prevention Act, setting up a dedicated EU’s Critical Raw Materials Platform, Circular Economy Act, etc.
More in: https://commission.europa.eu/document/6ef52679-19b9-4a8d-b7b2-cb99eb384eca_en
Essentially, the expected legislative draft will be aimed also at “cleaning up the most carbon-belching sectors”; it will fall under the remit of European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who will also be busy trying to finalize talks to reform the Energy Taxation Directive, which governs tax rates for various energy forms.
On European industrial strategy in: https://www.integrin.dk/2024/11/04/european-industrial-strategy-new-incentives-for-decarbonized-future/
National interests vs. EU priorities
The European Commission’s proposals during the second part of 2024 concerning the next seven-year EU-27 budget will be the main official issues defining complicated and even fierce negotiations between the EU institutions and the member states’ governments, on one side, and among the national capitals, on another for the coming couple of years.
For example, most politically sensitive topics in the EU headquarters in the €1.2 trillion budget are those governing spending various issues, i.e. from the support to Ukraine to agro-subsidies and support for SMEs and competitiveness. Then, some hawkish Eastern European and Nordic countries including Poland and Sweden are keen to boost EU spending on defense, while Southern EU members (such as Italy and Greece) would like more cash to mitigate migrant flows and/or departures from Africa.
There are big diplomatic and political efforts for the states’ governance to explore the options of additional financial subsidies. On one side, the Commission would like the member states to follow the “common policies” and implement key EU-wide economic reforms in exchange for access to the EU budget; however, the countries – mainly in Central and Eastern Europe. Which are already receiving the bulk of the EU funding would like to stick to the national agendas.
During 2025-26, the EU countries will set their red lines for the negotiations; but as the history of negotiations shows, the national governance would lead a fierce fight and come to agreement only at the final stage…
Clean tech vs. toxic risk
Countries and companies are rushing to develop new technologies in an effort to halt catastrophic climate change — but many such solutions are manufactured with chemicals with unforeseen side effects that pose grave risks of their own. That includes “forever chemicals” or PFAS, the risks of which science is only beginning to understand. Concerns over PFAS have led to an EU effort to phase out the chemicals in a range of sectors the bloc is counting on for the green transition. The EU executive is also due to come up with a revision of the EU’s chemicals safety framework to better protect its citizens from harmful substances.
While the European Commission pledged to reduce the bloc’s pollution to levels “no longer considered harmful” to human health and the environment by 2050 — that was back in 2021. Three years, two wars and an energy crisis later — and with a debt crisis potentially brewing — there are other priorities in play.
Over the next few years, EU lawmakers and countries will fight over how to make sure a tighter regulatory framework for chemicals doesn’t impede the clean energy transition while still (and, in theory, primarily) keeping the population and environment safe from toxic pollution.
PFAS issue
The efforts to ban PFAS spearheaded by Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark would target some 6,000 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at once, in what the countries described as “the most extensive and complex restriction to date.”
But the prospect of a widespread EU ban is worrying the chemicals industry, which insists it would cast too wide a net and target a clutch of chemicals that have not been proven to be harmful and for which there is not yet a viable alternative.
PFAS substances, which don’t break down naturally, have been shown to accumulate in the environment and cause a host of health conditions, including cancer, liver damage and decreased fertility. Data from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency also showed that their production releases potent greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
If the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) adopts the restriction proposal, manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers would be banned from using most PFAS, with the exception of some that are seen as essential.
Following the expiry of the call for evidence, the proposal is expected to be submitted in July 2022, after which the EU agency will perform both a social-economic and a risk assessment of the proposal. A final agreement by EU countries could come by 2025
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/policy-brussels-belgium-deportation-human-rights-european-commission/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=alert&utm_campaign=The%20biggest%20battles%20headed%20for%20Brussels/ January 1, 2025.
Industry’s resistance
Manufacturers and producers of PFAS are pushing back against the proposal for a broad ban.
In summer 2024, the European Chemical Industry Council launched its first PFAS-specific sector group –the Fluorinated Products and PFAS for Europe, FPP4EU – with a warning that it is “not clear how it will be possible to group PFAS adequately for restriction” and that “no alternatives exist yet” for substituting PFAS chemicals in some applications.
The sectoral “grouping paradigm” was aimed at avoiding any restrictions on all PFAS simply for being ‘part of the group’ if some of them do not pose any unacceptable risk; besides, “losing safe and valuable chemicals in useful applications should be avoided”.
Presently the FPP4EU, which represents such sector’s giants as, for example 3M, Bayer, Chemours, ExxonMobil Petroleum, Chemical BV, DuPont, etc. is calling for “a series of technical workshops and dialogues” between EU bodies and the industry to discuss the issue and come up with “a more effective strategy”.
Thus, the chemical company Chemours has argued that the restriction proposal “ignores the safety profile, critical uses and existing regulatory frameworks for particular substances” — a sentiment echoed recently by the Consumer Choice Center, an advocacy group that is backed by British American Tobacco, the Electric Hand dryer Association and Japan Tobacco International.
A Dutch association representing 400 refrigeration and air conditioning companies also warned that a blanket ban could target HFC and HFO fluorocarbons/refrigerants that it says “disintegrate relatively quickly into substances that also occur in nature” and are “much less persistent” than many other PFAS.
More on PFAS and “green deal” in: https://www.integrin.dk/2024/09/20/european-green-transformation-restricting-pfas/
Sectoral interests vs. “green deal”
The effort could even undermine the EU’s Green Deal goals, said Nicolas Robin, director of the Fluoro Polymers Product Group at industry lobby Plastics-Europe, as fluoropolymers are commonly used in the construction of electric vehicles, wind turbines and PV panels.
But assessing the various subgroups of PFAS one by one isn’t an option, NGOs and experts say.
It’s an approach that would be “extremely time-consuming or even impossible” noted representatives from the Norwegian Environment Agency.
It also risks creating too many loopholes, the Agency added: “Companies could end up simply substituting one PFAS that is regulated with a different PFAS with almost the same properties and the same harmful effects in the environment as well.”
Chemours, for example, has gone to court to argue that its so-called GenX chemicals — which it developed in the wake of a phase-out of another kind of PFAS chemical — should not be classified as a substance of very high concern, in defiance of an EU decision from 2019. The Court of Justice of the EU was analysing the controversy already in early 2022.
The consultation closing on Sunday will “help shape the restriction, including derogations,” said Anna Lennquist, senior toxicologist at ChemSec, warning that the restriction risks being “watered down with derogations and high limit values; the broad restriction is really what is needed”, she added.
Reference to: https://www.politico.eu/article/forever-chemicals-pfas-ban-restrictions/