Von der Leyen's centrist majority is at risk of collapse over her climate backtracking

The EU president has just scrapped yet another of her own first term climate laws after pressure from her centre-right EPP group. In response, the centre-left is threatening to topple her majority.

In June of last year, Europeans went to the polls and, whether they intended to or not, they sent a message that they no longer care about climate change. Politicians who had championed climate action were punished, politicians who had campaigned against it were rewarded. The Green Party was decimated, especially in France and Germany. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s centre-right EPP, had spent the campaign railing against their candidate’s EU Green Deal (the most prolific package of climate legislation ever passed anywhere in history). They blamed the climate action on her Dutch centre-left vi e president Frans Timmermans, suggesting she was not to blame for the legislative overreach.

Climate action was not a passion project for President von der Leyen. She had never shown much interest in the subject before becoming EU president. But the Fridays for Future movement, and the 2019 EU election which saw a big surge for Green parties across the bloc and saw voters cite climate change as one of their top concerns, gave an impetus for action. Elections have consequences. The consequence of 2019 was unprecedented action to fight climate change. The consequence of 2024, in which voters did not cite climate change as one of their top concerns, is an unprecedented legislative rollback.

And so, since the start of her second term in December, President von der Leyen has started a bonfire of the climate laws. It started with the “Competitiveness Compass” in January which outlined ways to roll back climate legislation in the name of cutting red tape. Then in February came the Omnibus Proposal for deregulation, which among other things scraps sustainability reporting for companies. EU national governments approved that plan today.

The centre-left contingent in von der Leyen’s informal governing majority in the European Parliament have grown more and more furious about what’s happening but have felt they do not have the political capital or public support to oppose it. However last week, Von der Leyen’s decision to withdraw a major piece of consumer legislation which would have made it illegal in the EU to make misleading green claims (“greenwashing”) seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. The decision, which was opposed by her centre-left vice president Teresa Ribera, has sparked an outcry from the other two groups in the governing coalition in the EU Parliament - the centre-left S&D group of Pedro Sanchez and the liberal Renew Europe group of Emmanuel Macron. Now there is even talk that they could withdraw their support for her. These two groups are furious that von der Leyen’s EPP keeps teaming up with the hard-right ECR group of Giorgia Meloni and the far-right PfE group of Viktor Orban. That’s what happened here, with a joint call by the center and far right to trash the anti-greenwashing bill because they said forcing companies to prove their green claims would constitute too much of an administrative burden.