Von der Leyen slammed for ‘huge’ climate mistakes

Teresa Ribera wants to be the EU’s next Green Deal chief — and she thinks the woman who might be her boss is making a colossal and damaging mistake. 

In an interview with POLITICO, Spain's deputy prime minister said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s willingness to work with the far right and ease off the green agenda revealed “an attitude of resignation that is enormously pernicious” and “enormously harmful to European interests.”

It's the sharpest attack yet on von der Leyen by a prospective commissioner as she campaigns for a likely second term after June's elections. During the interview, Ribera unsparingly went after both von der Leyen and her center-right European People’s Party.

“They are saying, 'Let's take a break, let's just slow down the [green] agenda,'" Ribera said. "And very honestly, I think this is a great mistake: There is no time to waste."

Ribera is in line to be Madrid's next EU commissioner — part of the 27-member cabinet that proposes EU policy — after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez tapped her as the Spanish socialist party's lead EU election candidate.

And given Ribera's green credentials — she has decades of policy experience and spent six years managing Spain's green transformation — the Spanish official is seen as a qualified successor to run the EU's Green Deal from Brussels.

The EU Green Deal chief oversees the EU's economy-changing package of laws to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and restore nature. In von der Leyen's first term, it was one of the most powerful jobs. In the next term, it will entail ensuring national governments adopt these laws while forging ahead on green regulation and strategic investments.

"We still need to do much more," said Ribera, saying she would “be more than happy to keep on fighting for this agenda in Brussels.”

But her experience and green activism threaten to clash with von der Leyen, who is favored to retain her role and is leading the campaign for the EPP, which has noticeably cooled on the Green Deal.

“She’d be perfect for taking the Green Deal to its next phase,” said one European diplomat who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the sensitive topic. “I’m not sure however if von der Leyen dares to put someone like Ribera in a position of strength. ... That is something Sánchez will have to fight for.”

'Europe could implode'

Polling suggests far-right parties, many with hard-line anti-green policies, will have a larger presence in the next European Parliament. Last month, von der Leyen said she was open to working with some of these groups to pass legislation. 

Ribera said this “rapprochement is a terrible strategy that only emboldens the most extreme factions.” Speaking via video call on Europe Day, the Spaniard said the stakes could not be higher: “Europe could implode in the next five years.”

She expressed hope that von der Leyen would “take the time to reflect and reverse her position. I don’t like it, I don’t share it, and I think it’s a huge political and economic mistake.”

Von der Leyen’s campaign team believes splitting the far right’s moderate and extreme wings may be a way to stop it from gaining too much power. 

“I understand that she is trying to project herself as someone who is capable of uniting very different factions. But I think this approach is wrong,” said Ribera. “The unacceptable cannot be accepted.” 

Ultimately, von der Leyen — whose team declined to respond to Ribera’s comments — will decide who gets which job in the Commission. But Ribera was uncompromising in both her critique of the president and her own ambitions to be a Brussels powerbroker.

"I'm not going to accept being a part of the décor," Ribera said, insisting that she had no interest in serving within the College of Commissioners if she did not have "teeth or real strength in political and economic terms."

Far from slowing down, she wants the Green Deal to be woven into every decision. And she backed the creation of a super commissioner position encompassing climate, energy and environment.

Ribera said the bloc needed EU-led approaches to energy, water and green investment. Far too little attention had been paid to overhauling Europe’s infrastructure to cope with extreme heat, drought, floods, fires and sea level rise, she said. Similarly, she argued that not enough had been done to cushion the economic effects of the transition.

Current Commission officials who work on climate policy are privately enthused about the prospect of working for Ribera, who is currently minister for the ecological transition and recently landed a series of green legislation deals during Spain’s EU presidency. 

For green advocates, she is the dream candidate — policy savvy, politically hardened, socially aware and an environmentalist at heart.

“She has this deep understanding of the substance, which I think is not always the case when you see the different commissioners that take a portfolio. So the competence element is really, really, in my view, invaluable,” said the CEO of the European Climate Foundation Laurence Tubiana, who has known Ribera for a quarter of a century. “Certainly Teresa will not go for a small job because she's overqualified for a small job.”

Tubiana added that Ribera was a “tough negotiator” — noting her stand against other EU countries to force through concessions for Spain and Portugal to shape their own energy prices during the Russian gas crisis.

'They know they are lying'

In Ribera, von der Leyen would have a Green Deal chief pushing for the most ambitious climate policy — which would strain relations with von der Leyen's conservative political family.

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In one of the first jobs facing the new Commission, Ribera said she would tweak the EU executive's recently proposed goal to cut 90 percent of its emissions by 2040 to "at least" 90 percent.

In Spain, Ribera has racked up a series of green transition wins. That includes brokering a deal with unions to shut down Spain’s coal mines. In contrast with von der Leyen’s business-led approach to the green transition, Ribera said companies should not be compensated for halting polluting operations. Rather, they should be the ones to cough up.

“The companies that have extracted resources have a clear responsibility to the areas in which they were present,” she said. “They understand how important it is to preserve their reputations.”

Agriculture also looms as a flashpoint. In Spain, she has gone head-to-head with the center-right regional government in Andalusia to forge a broadly popular deal that pays farmers to switch to cultivating less water-hungry crops.

The Spaniard expressed anger over the EPP’s attempts — following farmer protests — to derail a nature-protecting bill at the last minute. And she was irritated that von der Leyen's Commission had made concessions to farming interests to slash green requirements under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy program.

“Saying that farmers’ problem is the green agenda is absurd when what farmers are actually struggling with is the loss of soil fertility, drought, water pollution, the loss of pollinators, the degradation of their ecosystems,” said Ribera. “The people who blame the Green Deal are lying, and I think they know that they are lying.”

She said the CAP had pushed farmers to produce more and more food, which made it “no surprise that they’ve resorted to a greater use of fertilizers,” despite their damaging environmental impacts. “These issues will have to be revisited.”

Policy differences within the Commission are not unusual. Von der Leyen's first Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans was, like Ribera, an uncompromising socialist. If von der Leyen wins a second term, at least Ribera’s red lines are clear.

“How can I possibly defend positions that will delay action against climate change, contribute to the implosion of Europe, to greater suffering, damage our GDP, erode our relationships with our neighbors?” she said.