EU and French lawmakers expressed fears of ‘brewing social unrest’ akin to that of the Yellow Vests movement after the Council further reduced Parliament’s ‘already watered down’ measures aimed at balancing the social impacts of the EU’s Fit for 55 package.

Read the original article in French.

In June 2021, Pascal Canfin, the Renew MEP and chair of the Parliament’s environment (ENVI) committee warned attendees at a EURACTIV event that lawmakers should “not make the mistake of extending the carbon market [the trade of greenhouse gas emissions] to heating and fuel.”

However, fast forward one year and EU lawmakers, including Canfin, voted to extend the carbon market on 22 June to reduce the risk of social unrest.

In the revised edition of the European Trade Emissions Scheme – known as ETS2 – the carbon market was extended to include emissions from the building and transport sectors, while emissions from private individuals remained exempt.

According to the text put forward by MEPs, households and small businesses are also slated to benefit from a so-called Social Climate Fund that aims to subsidise energy transition costs.

The text is “a strong political signal” with “real progress,” Camille Defard, an energy policy researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute and author of a report on why the European Green Deal must be ‘socially just’, told EURACTIV.

While she is pleased with the European Parliament’s approach, saying it “seized” the opportunity, she added that the social fund still remains “insufficient as it stands”.

Council lowers ambitions

However, a few days later, on 29 June, the Council further trimmed down the social measures the Parliament put forward.

Following the Council’s 18-hour-long negotiations, the EU carbon market will apply to households from 2027. As for the social fund, it will come into force in 2027 – rather than in 2024 as initially planned – and the financing from member states to the fund will also be lowered.

Many EU lawmakers, led by the Greens, are critical of the new text. Damien Carême, MEP and draftsman of the opinion on the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), told EURACTIV that the next text “basically” marks the return of “the carbon tax that put the Yellow Vests on the street.”

‘Small funds’

When asked whether the fund was sufficient to avoid popular revolt, Leila Chaibi, shadow rapporteur for the United Left (UEL) on the Social Climate Fund, said it would require “de-coupling the financing of the social fund from the ETS 2 and considerably increasing [its] size”.

Marie Toussaint, the vice-president of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, called the fund “too small” and said that no one believes the fund “will meet the social needs of the transition” on its own.

“Europe is finally seeking to address the injustices created by climate change and the policies that deny the ‘polluter pays’ principle,” she also acknowledged.

But according to the liberal Renew group’s shadow rapporteur for the fund, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, including household emissions in the carbon market is a “red line” that the Council clearly exceeded.

This was echoed by Francois-Xavier Bellamy, head of the Les Républicains (LR) list in the European People’s Party (EPP) group. “The exclusion of households from the ETS reform was absolutely essential,” he told EURACTIV at a press conference.

Meanwhile, Identity and Democracy MP Aurelia Beigneux of the French Rassemblement National party called the social fund “a form of fraud”.

She said the text “takes all power away from the member states, ” doubting “very much that the money will reach the poorest people and that the funds will be sufficient to compensate for the price increase”.

Risk of Yellow Vests ‘resurgence’

Beigneux also pointed to the new “punitive” measures posing a “very high” risk of a resurgence of the Yellow Vests movement that could spread across the continent. “If carbon taxation is not equal throughout Europe, then we will have to expect social dumping”, she added.

This view is not shared by Vedrenne, who criticised the Rassemblement National MEPs for having “voted against a European Fund that combines climate ambition and social justice.”

Toussaint of the Greens even went further by saying the Yellow Vests had transformed people’s consciousness.

According to Chaibi, however, “the memory of the Yellow Vests is clearly more prevalent in France than in other European countries” even if “the rejection of the elites and the impoverishment of the population is widespread”.

“Rather than fearing a legitimate popular revolt […], the public authorities should take radical measures, such as freezing prices,” she added.

Source: Euractiv.com