European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans’ first big obstacle to turning Europe green is coming from the ranks of his own party.
A group of Socialist parliamentarians, most of them from Spain, is gearing up to resist key parts of the Commission’s Green Deal in order to protect farmers and fishermen from policies aimed at saving the oceans, cutting back pollution and making the EU’s agricultural subsidies more environmentally friendly.
“I do not want us southerners to end up paying for the Green Deal,” said Clara Aguilera, a Spanish lawmaker from the European Parliament’s Socialists & Democrats group. The influential MEP abstained from endorsing the Commission’s proposal last week in order, she said, to send a signal.
“Just like the Germans, who are very careful about protecting their car industry, so … we should stand up for our agricultural and fishing sectors,” she said.
The largely symbolic vote by the European Parliament to endorse the Green Deal last week highlighted the fact that Timmermans will have to tread carefully to gain support for his ambitions.
“I don’t want us to end up in a situation where we’re driving away farmers” — Miriam Dalli, Maltese Socialist MEP
Timmermans, a veteran Dutch Socialist who campaigned to become Commission president, doubled the number of seats of the Dutch Socialists in last year’s European election to six in part by promising to put green policies on the Commission’s agenda.
But in the European Parliament, his party is small compared with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party’s 20-seat delegation, which is more conflicted on environmental issues. Spain has the largest national delegation within the S&D.
While Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has promised a “green agenda,” and declared a “climate emergency,” his party has strong ties to the country’s farmers and fishermen, many of whom oppose new restrictions on pesticides, overfishing and water use — a big issue in Spain because of creeping desertification.
Sánchez’s government also depends on support from regional parties from the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia — all of which have strong bases in the farming and fisheries sectors.
The Socialist party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is close to the country’s farmers and fishermen | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
The most immediate problem for Timmermans is indeed in fisheries, where national governments and the European Parliament are negotiating behind closed doors over how to use a budget of more than €6 billion over the next seven years.
Parliamentarians and Commission officials contacted by POLITICO said that Spain has hijacked those negotiations to push for the EU to subsidize the construction of new large fishing vessels, a move that would undermine Timmermans’ goal of making EU fisheries sustainable and saving the biodiversity of EU coastal waters.
Chris Davies, the chair of the Parliament’s fisheries committee, warned that the negotiations had been taken over by “a small clique” of Spanish, Italian and French parliamentarians, who were defending the interests of large-scale industrial fishermen. “Without the involvement of the Socialists & Democrats’ leadership,” Davies warned, the EU will “hand out subsidies to a fishing sector which is already making big profits.”
While the North-South fight on agriculture and the transition fund has only just started, when it comes to fisheries, Spain’s view is already dominant, said Davies, a British MEP from the centrist Renew Europe group.
“There isn’t a north element in the fisheries committee,” he said. “Where are the Scandinavians when you need them?”
Miriam Dalli, a Maltese Socialist MEP who led the Green Deal negotiations for the group, warned against putting too much pressure on the agriculture industry. “I don’t want us to end up in a situation where we’re driving away farmers,” she said, adding it’s crucial to provide support for greening the sector. “You can’t end up in a situation where you shame sectors, because ultimately we want all sectors to contribute.”
Aguilera has pushed for the EU to maintain the current level of agriculture and fishing subsidies, arguing that the Green Deal should not be carried out at the expense of Europe’s hinterland.
“Just like the miners, our farmers and fishermen should be compensated too” — Clara Aguilera, Spanish Socialist MEP
“Are you really going to tell me that we should blame the cows and not the big cruise ships on the Baltic?” she said.
Timmermans can expect to face further Spanish opposition when it comes to the Just Transition Fund, which aims to compensate European regions that will have to close down coal mines and polluting factories.
Spain’s new foreign minister, Arancha González, warned last Monday that the fund is unfair. “Spain supports very clearly and decisively the Just Transition Fund, but we are a little worried because at this moment we see it as very green but not very fair,” González said on her first visit to Brussels this week.
Aguilera supported that argument, saying the fund — as currently planned — was unfairly rewarding countries like Poland, at the expense of countries like Spain that had invested in green energy and moved away from polluting lignite
Clara Aguilera, Spanish Socialist MEP | Alexis Haulot/European Union
“Just like the miners, our farmers and fishermen should be compensated too,” Aguilera said.
Other Spanish MEPs have expressed similar sentiments. “Regions such as mine, where the transition of leaving coal has already been done, should be taken more into account in the fund,” said Nicolás González Casares, a Spanish Socialist MEP from Galicia. “Those of us who have already done their homework should be taken more into account.”
Commenting on the fight, Heidi Hautala, a Finnish MEP from the Greens, warned that the debate on fairness had only just started.
“The biggest risk to the Green Deal could be … the justice argument,” she said.
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