Far-right French MEPs sign resolution to ‘abolish’ Green Deal
By Paul Messad
Feb 8, 2024
At least six of the 18 MEPs in the EP far-right French RN party’s delegation have already signed or will sign on Thursday a resolution tabled by their Belgian Vlaams Belang colleague, Tom Vandendriessche, calling for the Green Deal to be “abolished”.
Earlier this week, MEPs of all political groups received an e-mail from their colleague Tom Vandendriessche of the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang (ID), proposing they sign his resolution.
Building on the anger expressed by farmers recently, the Flemish MP considers “the European Green Deal and its subsequent strategies negatively affecting the daily functioning and future outlook of the European agricultural sector”.
The Green Deal is a legislative package launched in 2019 aimed at making the EU carbon neutral by 2050. Some of the farmers who have been demonstrating across Europe say certain texts of the Green Deal, which have been adopted or are currently being examined, hinder their work.
The Green Deal would also put European industry and household purchasing power at risk. These risks are compounded by the continent’s geopolitical situation, the resolution said.
Therefore, “The goal is to signal that instead of expanding the Green Deal with even more regulation as proposed, [it] should be renegotiated to abolish the framework as it stands now“, Vandendriessche told Euractiv France.
In his resolution, the MEP therefore “Urges the Council, the Commission and the Parliament to engage in renegotiations to abolish the Green Deal”.
Support from the RN
This request is shared by some of his colleagues.
On the evening of Wednesday, Aurélia Beigneux, Catherine Griset, Gilles Lebreton, Eric Minardi, Jean-Paul Garraud and the group’s environment representative, Mathilde Androuët, had already signed or were about to sign the resolution, the RN chair in the EP confirmed to Euractiv France.
“I am signing this resolution because the objectives set out [in the Green Deal] are unrealistic because they are based on a logic of decline […], and it is becoming urgent to find a happy medium between radical ecologists and those who support the status quo,” Ms Androuët told Euractiv France.
“Other [RN MEPs] should normally co-sign it”, the presidency said, and “if they do not co-sign, this does not mean that they disagree, but that they may already have tabled a resolution within the month”.
In the latter case, the Treaties prohibit them from signing two “individual” resolutions, like this one, in one month.
What about Jordan Bardella?
The deadline for signing is 12h00 on Thursday, and it is not known whether MEP and RN President Jordan Bardella will sign the resolution.
However, his intentions against the Green Deal are clear: at the end of January, he said he expected the French government to “renounce” it.
For the co-president of the Left, Manon Aubry, this resolution simply confirms that “Jordan Bardella and his friends despise the environment and are sowing climate chaos”, Aubry wrote on X.
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