Far-right France risks paralyzing EU’s Green Deal

With no new wind turbines, that would leave France more reliant on expensive energy imports, the analyst added.

The policy would also heighten the risk of an electricity supply crisis, according to Leonardo Meeus, an energy expert and director of the European University Institute’s Florence School of Regulation — especially when France’s nuclear reactors face widespread outages as in 2022 due to corrosion issues. Nuclear currently generates two-thirds of France’s power.

“They need the European electricity market to export their excess power when the demand in France is low, and to import power when the nuclear plants are in trouble, like during the last energy crisis” in 2022, he said.

Taking ‘Paris’ out of Paris Agreement

At stake in the election is also France’s role in shaping the EU’s climate policy.

While most core planks in the EU’s mammoth Green Deal have already been agreed, the threat of a climate change-skeptic French government is sparking anxiety on decarbonization goals as ascendant hard-right parties in other EU countries push back. 

The RN threat also comes as scientists note that the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era is increasingly slipping out of reach. The target was agreed by countries worldwide at the 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris.

If France refuses to push vocally for green policies in Brussels or to follow through on legal reforms already in motion, “it could fragment [EU] member states into different tiers,” said the first EU diplomat cited in this story. It could also legitimize inaction by other climate change-skeptic countries, they added.

Canfin goes further yet: A far-right France would “risk paralyzing the Green Deal,” he said.

“If France switches [positions], the alliance of far-right governments is capable of organizing a blocking minority” on further legislation, the EU lawmaker said. Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic all currently have hard-right parties in government. 

That could “jeopardize” any future talks on the Commission’s target of slashing EU-wide emissions by 90 percent by 2040 against a 2019 baseline, the EU diplomat said — which still needs legislation to be completed.

Nevertheless, RN’s Androuët insists that overhauling green rules remains a party priority — regardless of possible confrontation.

“If we need to tell the Commission, ‘Listen, this particular chapter is impossible for us to complete, given that your solutions don’t meet our criteria’ — we’re not afraid of [taking] positions like that,” she said.

“The people of Europe are tired of measures taken in ivory towers in Brussels that disrupt their entire lives.”

Nicolas Camut reported from Paris.