The way forward for Europe’s Green Transition: In protected arms? | EUROtoday

Issued on: 17/05/2024 – 16:36

Ursula von der Leyen made the Green Transition one of many landmark measures of her time period as president of the European Commission, vowing that the EU will likely be carbon impartial by 2050. To obtain that purpose, virtually each facet of Europeans’ lifestyle must be revolutionised, from properties to jobs, food-production and farming to heavy trade and transport, the Europe that Brussels needs within the coming many years will face main upheaval.

To make that doable, the EU’s resolution is the Green Deal: the baton of stricter laws accompanied by the carrot of monetary compensation. One key pillar, for instance, is the Just Transition Fund which is able to mobilise €55 billion to help areas which have till now been reliant on coal for jobs and power.

Despite these efforts, the Green Transition stays deeply controversial, with farmers’ protests in latest months highlighting the difficulties the sector feels it faces with the compelled march in direction of greener practices – however they don’t seem to be the one ones: the automobile trade additionally has issues that imposing the top of the petrol/diesel motors by 2035 will handicap the sector – which employs 13 million folks within the EU – confronted with competitors from the United States and China.

In this particular report, our reporters Johan Bodin and Luke Brown travelled throughout Europe to seek out out simply how the Green Transition is affecting Europeans’ lives: from Tallinn in Estonia, Green capital 2023, which is renovating its Soviet-era housing inventory, to a French start-up which hopes to get thousands and thousands of Earthworms to assist farmers use much less chemical fertiliser, in addition to the areas of Poland the place the closures of lignite mines imply hundreds of miners want new jobs to keep away from an financial disaster. A tour of Europe present process the Green Transition – regardless of the difficulties.

Editor in chief: Caroline de Camaret.

Reporters : Luke Brown et Johan Bodin

Video enhancing: Aurélien Porcher and Fabrice Briault.

_{Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are nonetheless these of the writer(s) solely and don’t essentially mirror these of the European Union or the DG Regional and Urban Policy. Neither the European Union nor the DG Regional and Urban Policy might be held accountable for them.}