Earlier this week, EU officials said in unusually staunch terms that they would not buy Arctic oil and gas.
Even if someone (Norway) decided to drill new oil or gas wells in the Barents Sea, which is well above the Arctic Circle, the EU would not purchase it.
The goal is to dissuade investors. It costs many billions of euros to develop gas or oil at scale in the harsh conditions of the far north.
If there is no offtake market in continental Europe, no-one is going to take the risk.
The thing is, EU buyers already buy gas (and oil) from the Arctic. A lot of it.
Most of the gas, some 12 million tonnes so far this year, comes from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant, which sits on the shore of the biggest estuary you have never heard of, the Gulf of Ob (Obskaya Guba in Russian).
But that will end 10 weeks from now, when the EU ban on Russian LNG kicks in.
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The European Parliament on Thursday (22 October) backed a three-year delay to the EU’s methane rules for oil and gas importers, two years more than the European Commission proposed last week.
MEPs also voted to extend the delay to European oil and gas producers, which goes beyond the commission’s plans.
The text now forms parliament’s position for negotiations with member states, whose ambassadors failed to agree on Wednesday.
Under the amendments, tabled by the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), importers would only have to prove that their oil and gas meets EU monitoring standards from 2031, instead of 2027 under the current law.
Reporting on methane intensity would also be delayed from 2028 to 2031.
A separate amendment from a cross-party group of 36 Romanian and Bulgarian MEPs, which also passed, delays reporting obligations for EU operators by three years, to 2030.
MEPs also approved an amendment, tabled by Dutch Socialist MEP Mohammed Chahim, that the extra time should not apply to oil, gas and coal from countries under EU sanctions, which in practice means Russia.
A far-right Patriots for Europe proposal to suspend the regulation altogether was rejected, as was a push by the conservative ECR group to delay parts of the rules even longer.
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Last week, Elsene became the fifth municipality to vote for an end to fossil-fuel advertising, joining Saint-Gilles, Jette, Schaerbeek and Molenbeek.
Four of those five votes came in the space of just four months, and together, these municipalities are home to roughly 370,000 people: one-third of the Brussels-Capital Region’s population.
All five are making the same demand: that the Brussels region bans fossil-fuel advertising across the entire city, from metro stations to regional roads. More motions are already being tabled, and by the end of the year, a majority of Brussels’ 19 municipalities could be on record calling for a ban.
While local politicians are taking the lead, the outlook a little higher up the chain looks less promising.
Europe’s ad town and the EU’s lobby town
Everyday tens of thousands of officials, MEPs, assistants and diplomats brave Brussels morning rush hour on their way to work on the laws that will decide whether Europe meets its climate targets.
Along the way they pass numerous temptations, bus shelters and metro walls selling them petrol cars, weekend flights and gas contracts, normalising the ongoing mass-consumption of these products.
Once they reach their offices, they meet the same industry again, this time in person. The seven biggest oil and gas companies alone have declared lobbying budgets of almost €64m.
Fossil Free Politics research shows EU Commissioners and their cabinets had nearly 900 meetings with fossil fuel lobbyists in the last term. That’s nearly once every working day, showing just how embedded the industry is in the daily rhythm of Brussels life.
Some files come under particularly heavy pressure, with one egregious example being how a secretive alliance of eleven large multinational enterprises worked to tear down the EU’s flagship human rights and climate law last year, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
Over 80 percent of all commission meetings with external interest representatives on this regulation involved fossil fuel lobbyists, and the European Parliament is no better. All 17 MEPs who called for the methane regulation to be reopened in an April 2026 letter to the commission had met with fossil fuel lobbyists in the preceding year.
And those are only the declared figures.
Lobbyists roaming the corridors
Safe to say, the real total is almost certainly higher. According to new research by Reclaim Finance, on two out of every three days, the fossil-fuel lobbyists present at the European Parliament had no meetings scheduled with MEPs. They roam the corridors and cafés in the building, aiming to bump into the MEPs they wish to influence.
The councillors behind these fossil ad ban motions are not pretending that a few billboards will single-handedly solve the climate crisis, but they refuse to continue letting public spaces be misused by the fossil, automotive and aviation industry to freely promote their propaganda; as for the latter, especially since the advertised destinations are often precisely those places that have been the victims of severe climate disruptions..
“The summer of 2026 was a painful awakening to the harsh reality of the consequences of the climate crisis,” said Mathias Gyselen, the Ecolo-Groen councillor who tabled Schaerbeek’s motion in September.
“Heatwaves, heat islands and heat deaths are unfortunately becoming the new normal in the city. Doing nothing is no longer an option.”
They are right. Advertising is how the fossil fuel industry keeps its social licence, presenting itself as part of the solution while expanding the very products driving the crisis.
Not just the five sub-municipalities of the Brussels capital acknowledge this, but over 70+ cities worldwide have taken steps to clear their streets from fossil fuel advertising, among them Amsterdam, Sydney, Stockholm and Edinburgh.
The problems with advertisements, and multi-million euro lobby strategies, are not just that they very much harm the planet, they are also fundamentally undemocratic.
Residents, community groups and civil society organisations cannot match the industry’s firepower. They do not have the budgets, the staff or the open doors that put them across the table from lawmakers week after week.
Europe has dealt with this before.
‘Godfathers of climate chaos’
Tobacco lobbyists no longer get privileged access to health ministers, nor can cigarette brands buy billboards. For many similar reasons the world wants to end fossil fuels, the EU banned tobacco advertising because promoting a deadly product was incompatible with public health.
UN secretary-general António Guterres made the same comparison in 2024 when he urged every country to ban fossil fuel advertising, naming fossil-fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos”
Municipal motions are not binding, so the decision now lies with the Brussels-Capital Region, which controls advertising in the metro, along regional roads and on its own infrastructure. A first obvious step is that it should listen to its municipalities and introduce a city-wide ban.
But the message is also addressed to the institutions on the other side of the Rue de la Loi.
If the streets of Europe’s capital are being cleared of fossil fuel promotion, the corridors of its institutions should be too. That means limiting the industry’s access to decision-makers, closing the revolving door, and rejecting fossil fuel sponsorship and partnerships, just as the EU did with tobacco.
The municipalities of Brussels have shown what local democracy looks like. Now it is up to the region and the EU institutions to show that Europe’s capital is not for sale; not on its billboards, and not in its corridors of power.
Berlin and Paris spent months negotiating over the future of Europe’s auto industry.
Germany wanted to keep selling new combustion-engine cars beyond 2035. In return, France wanted strict “Made in Europe” rules: public money spent on electric vehicle (EV) purchase incentives, subsidies and government contracts should benefit cars genuinely made in Europe, not simply assembled here.
One concession in exchange for the other. French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz have now sealed the deal.
Both can claim victory at home, and both say they want the same thing: to strengthen Europe’s auto industry against Chinese competition.
But the trade-off undermines that very goal. It rightly pushes for more European production, but pays for it with less ambition for electric vehicles.
For Europe’s automakers to compete, two things need to happen: More of the value generated by car manufacturing must stay in Europe, and the transition to electric vehicles must remain on track. Trading one for the other weakens both.
Value creation is already moving elsewhere
On one point, France is right: a growing EV market alone won’t protect European jobs. Many of the most important components in electric cars already come from China, especially batteries.
Meanwhile, Chinese automakers are building factories in Hungary and Spain, securing direct access to the European market.
The risk is clear: cars assembled in Europe from imported components qualify as European products, benefit from purchase incentives and win public contracts.
Final assembly stays in Europe, but much of the economic value is created elsewhere. European auto suppliers have already cut more than 100,000 jobs in two years, and the European Commission warns that up to 600,000 more could disappear over the next five to 10 years.
That’s where the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act comes in. It would link public spending on subsidies, purchase incentives and government procurement to production in Europe.
This isn’t just about shutting out foreign competition. It steers demand to where it strengthens Europe’s industrial base.
To work, the rules must target the components that will shape the industry’s future: battery cells, software, electric drivetrains and power electronics.
“Made in Europe” can’t simply mean attaching the wheels here.
That doesn’t mean every nut and bolt must come from the EU. The auto industry relies on global supply chains and trusted trading partners.
But a law riddled with exemptions would be little better than no law at all: It would create more red tape without bringing a single new factory to Europe.
Factories need customers
Even the best industrial policy will fail without buyers. A battery factory can only make money if it produces enough batteries. Yet Europe’s battery plants are running well below capacity because they don’t have enough orders. Every battery that goes unproduced drives up the cost of those that are made. Factories, machinery and workers still have to be paid for.
Since 2022, roughly a quarter of announced battery projects in the EU have been canceled or put on hold.
This is why Germany’s push to delay the phaseout of combustion-engine cars is so damaging. Every combustion-engine car sold instead of an EV means one fewer battery that could be made in Europe. The very factories meant to make “Made in Europe” a reality would lose potential customers.
The best way to boost demand for European batteries is to build more small, affordable EVs in Europe. That’s where the biggest sales volumes are. Yet German automakers in particular have been slow to embrace this market, despite significant demand potential in Germany itself. Delaying the combustion-engine phaseout would only give them another reason to hold back.
Slow down, lose out
For European automakers, the stakes go far beyond their home market. Sell fewer EVs at home, and manufacturers will launch fewer new models, produce fewer cars and face higher costs. That will make it harder to compete abroad, too. Giving combustion engines more time won’t close the gap with China. It could make it wider.
Political uncertainty only makes matters worse. Automakers plan new models, factories and supplier contracts years in advance. Every fresh debate over exemptions gives investors and consumers another reason to hesitate.
Companies investing billions in EVs and batteries – and consumers considering buying an electric car – need to know that policymakers won’t change direction tomorrow.
The Franco-German bargain ignores economic reality. The future of the car is electric, and China figured that out long ago.
Beijing is doing everything it can to build an unbeatable lead in EVs, including through unfair practices such as massive government subsidies.
And Europe? It’s haggling over more time for yesterday’s technology. At stake is nothing less than the auto industry – the backbone of Europe’s industrial economy and a major source of jobs.
This deal is not yet law. A better deal would be simple: Europe should pursue electric vehicles with the same determination as China while making sure the jobs, factories and economic benefits stay in Europe.
At international level, the EU also played a decisive role in the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was agreed in December 2022 at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The framework established a global roadmap to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
Next week (19-30 October), Yerevan will host COP17 of the Convention, where the first global review of progress since the adoption of the Framework will take place. It will be an important opportunity to determine whether the commitments made are being translated into concrete action and results on the ground.
As co-chair of the European Parliament delegation attending the conference, I will defend a united European position that is consistent with our historic leadership and responds to the urgency of the challenge.
The European Commission, which formally negotiates on behalf of the Union on the basis of the position agreed with the member states, must promote decisions that accelerate implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework during the remaining years to 2030.
Honest appraisal? A mixed picture
This global review must be accompanied by an honest assessment of our own performance. Europe should arrive in Yerevan acknowledging both the progress it has made and the work that remains.
The commission’s latest report on the implementation of the framework presents a mixed picture.
Of the 45 targets established for the EU, only two have been achieved and 16 are on track, while progress remains too slow on another 25 and two cannot yet be assessed.
There are positive signs in the EU. Protected areas have expanded, organic farming has increased and a greater proportion of fish stocks is being managed sustainably.
However, the overall situation of many habitats and species remains worrying, while farmland birds and grassland butterflies, among others, continue to decline.
The main problem is not a lack of legislation, as Europe already has many of the instruments it needs. The challenge is to implement them properly and turn them into visible improvements on the ground, which requires public authorities with sufficient capacity, reliable data, clear plans and stable funding.
The Nature Restoration Regulation is a good example.
Restoring wetlands, rivers, forests, soils and marine ecosystems will not only help biodiversity recover, but will also retain water, reduce flood damage, protect soils and make our territories more resilient to droughts, heatwaves and wildfires.
Missed deadlines
However, the regulation will only deliver results if member states meet their obligations.
The deadline for submitting draft national restoration plans was 1 September, yet only nine countries have done so.
This delay not only slows implementation, but also makes it harder to calculate the cost of restoring nature and the resources that will be required.
The commission was expected to present an assessment of restoration funding needs and gaps in August 2025, but we are still waiting for a complete analysis.
The commission argues that it needs the national plans to calculate these costs. Yet negotiations on the 2028-2034 financial framework are moving forward while many plans remain outstanding and we still lack a full estimate of the resources needed to implement one of our most important environmental laws.
This situation reflects one of the main challenges facing COP17.
Adopting targets is no longer enough. We must also agree on how they will be implemented, how progress will be measured and how action will be financed.
Five EU priorities in Yerevan
In this context, I believe that the European position should focus on five priorities. We must mobilise more resources for biodiversity, consolidate the Cali Fund, make progress in eliminating harmful subsidies, assess progress through concrete results and strengthen the role of nature in climate adaptation.
Finance will be one of the central issues in Yerevan, as the Global Biodiversity Framework calls for the mobilisation of at least $200bn [€178bn] a year from all sources by 2030. Public investment must remain the foundation of this effort, but private capital will also be needed.
With this aim, the commission presented its roadmap for nature credits in July 2025 and is now developing the methodologies, certification systems, oversight arrangements and pilot projects needed for their deployment.
These instruments could help finance conservation and restoration, but they will only be useful if they are governed by rigorous rules and deliver real, verifiable and additional benefits for biodiversity. They must never replace public funding or be used to justify damage to nature in one place in exchange for financing action elsewhere.
COP17 must also consolidate the Cali Fund, which was created so that companies benefiting from the use of digital information on genetic resources contribute to biodiversity conservation. The agreement reached at COP16 was an important step, but we now need real contributions and a fair distribution of resources, including for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
Another priority must be to eliminate incentives and subsidies that harm biodiversity. It makes no sense to call for new resources to protect nature while public budgets continue to support activities that destroy it.
The European Union should therefore examine its own policies honestly, particularly in areas such as agriculture, fisheries, energy and infrastructure, and establish a timetable for progressively phasing out and ultimately eliminating this harmful support.
The global review must also measure concrete results. Success cannot be assessed simply by counting strategies or setting targets. We need to know whether ecosystems are recovering, whether species are in better condition, whether protected areas are being managed effectively and whether funding is actually reaching action on the ground.
We must also strengthen the connection between biodiversity and climate adaptation. The droughts, floods, heatwaves and wildfires affecting Europe show that protecting and restoring nature is not a secondary concern. Healthy ecosystems are among our best defences against the effects of climate change and represent a direct investment in our security, agriculture and economy.
All these priorities lead us inevitably to the European budget, because political commitments are only credible when they are backed by sufficient resources.
The budget?
There is currently a clear contradiction between the leadership that the European Union wishes to maintain on biodiversity and the place given to it in the proposal for the 2028-2034 financial framework.
Although the commission proposes that 35 percent of the next budget should contribute jointly to climate and environmental objectives, it removes the specific 10 percent target for biodiversity included in the current budget and no longer presents LIFE as a standalone programme.
By placing biodiversity within much broader objectives and funds, its financing becomes less visible and risks being pushed aside by priorities such as security, defence and competitiveness.
Parliament must defend sufficient and clearly identifiable resources for biodiversity and for the activities currently financed through LIFE.
Simplification can make funding easier to access, but it must not reduce environmental ambition, transparency or democratic oversight.
This budget debate also affects our international credibility. Europe cannot ask other countries to increase their ambition and financial contributions while weakening budgetary support for biodiversity within the Union itself. Our leadership in Yerevan will depend not only on what we defend in the negotiations, but also on what we are able to implement and finance at home.
Europe has strong laws, valuable experience and the capacity to lead. We do not need to start again. We need to deliver what we have already agreed, provide the necessary resources and use COP17 to accelerate global action.
The global review cannot be limited to describing how far we remain from the 2030 targets. It must help us agree on how to close that gap during the four years that remain. I will travel to Yerevan with the European Parliament delegation determined to support that objective.
France and Germany want more detailed “Made in Europe” rules for electric cars, and want them split off from the rest of the EU’s flagship industrial law.
The Franco-German deal, agreed after months of haggling on the margins of the EU summit in Brussels late on Thursday (15 October), says both files should then be adopted “as fast as possible and simultaneously”.
That would split the most fought-over part from the rest of the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), which also sets “Made in EU” and low-carbon requirements for steel, cement, aluminium and clean-tech products such as batteries and solar panels.
Paris hopes the new car definition will serve as a benchmark for the rest of the IAA, which sets “Made in Europe” rules for steel, cement, aluminium and clean energy technologies.
But this still has to be negotiated with other member states, people familiar with the talks said.
“We are driven by a clear ambition: to successfully transform our automotive industry while upholding our climate goals and our production in Europe,” said French president Emmanuel Macron on social media, announcing the deal.
“This is an investment signal to industry,” said German chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Made in Europe
The paper comes as Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating six-month presidency, is wrapping up a third compromise text on the industrial plan, which Irish officials hope will reach final agreement by mid November.
Publicly, Paris and Berlin said on Friday that their car deal will not affect climate targets and that their course “remains unchanged”.
But the paper behind the deal shows the trade-off that’s been made. Berlin accepted France’s demand for stricter “Made in Europe” rules that apply to fewer countries, while Paris agreed to looser emission rules for carmakers, as Germany had wanted.
To count as “Made in Europe”, a car would have to clear thresholds that tighten over time, and only cars meeting these rules could be bought, leased or rented with public subsidies, or bought by public authorities.
From 2028, the car must be assembled in Europe, with at least 70 percent of total value creation in components – excluding the battery.
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“As we close the tap on Russian energy, we open the doors to a more diverse range of reliable suppliers,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen wrote in an op-ed for EUobserver this week.
“And these suppliers know that we are reliable buyers.”
One of those ‘reliable’ suppliers is the US, which provided 57 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) last year and is on course to supply two-thirds this year, according to IEEFA.
Four out of five overseas gas cargoes arriving in the EU will be American by 2028, the think tank estimates. These expensive cargoes have kept coming in. But how reliable is that supply likely to remain?
US officials have already shown their willingness to use their gas dominance for strategic gain. In March, US ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder threatened that Europe could lose its favourable access to American LNG if it tried to reopen the ‘Turnberry’ bilateral trade deal.
“In switching from Russia to the US, the EU has jumped from the frying pan into the fire,” Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, wrote in a comment under Jørgensen’s op-ed.
And recent developments prove his point.
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Centre-left MEPs are trying to convince the European Commission to withdraw its proposal to pause EU methane rules, if parliament or member states try to delay them for more than one year.
Last week, energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen announced that the commission would propose delaying the import rules, due to kick in on 1 January 2027, by a year, following months of pressure from member states, the White House, and oil and gas companies.
But in a letter sent on Monday (12 October) to commission president Ursula von der Leyen and three of her commissioners, five Socialists and Democrats (S&D) MEPs said any postponement must be “strictly limited to a single year.”
The letter, seen by EUobserver, was signed by S&D vice-president Mohammed Chahim, Tiemo Wölken, Jens Geier, Günther Sidl, and Thomas Pellerin-Carlin.
If parliament or member states try to push for a longer delay, the commission should “make full use of its right to withdraw the proposal,” they wrote, “as such changes would distort its purpose.”
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The European Commission has added 46 projects to its list of critical raw materials investments, but its own figures show little EU money has reached similar schemes it selected last year.
The new projects are to be spread across 16 EU countries and cover all but two of the EU’s list of 17 strategic raw materials, said the commission on Friday (9 October).
The priority is copper, used in power grids, which featured in 19 of the 46 new initiatives.
Battery materials also top the list: with 12 projects involving nickel, 10 cobalt, seven lithium, five manganese, and four graphite.
Only four of the new projects concern rare earths used in magnets, wind turbines, and electric motors, for which the EU relies almost entirely on imports, mainly from China.
The new projects suggest the commission sees recycling as a core pillar in its quest to reduce dependency on Chinese imports. Of the 46 new ones, 19 focus on recycling, 11 on processing and eight on extraction.
‘Very tangible‘
“The results are very tangible,” EU industry commissioner Stéphane Séjourné told reporters in Brussels on Friday, pointing to the impact of the first list of strategic investments, selected in March 2025.
He mentioned Keliber in Finland, which he said is now extracting and processing lithium, and the French company Carester’s plant in Lacq, which recycles magnets and separates heavy rare earths.
He said Carester could eventually account for around 15 percent of global production of dysprosium and terbium oxides, used in the powerful magnets in electric car motors and wind turbines, and that Greek company Metlen is already producing gallium, important for semiconductors and defence equipment.
He didn’t mention that all three projects were already well advanced before they received strategic status in March 2025.
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Last week, EU member states reached a common position on the European Commission Omnibus X ‘Food and Feed’ proposal, in a bid to simplify regulation of pesticides. In reality, however, it will weaken protection against pesticides’ negative effects in Europe. The proposal pleases the chemical industry but goes against the wishes of a vast majority of citizens and many scientists who value people’s health, clean drinking water and biodiversity.
A hearing in the European Parliament on 3 September highlighted the real problem. Under the guise of a ‘discussion with experts’ in the field of health and environment, the parliament handed the megaphone to lobbyists representing a broken, toxic agricultural model.
Representatives of industrial agriculture – sugar beet, apple and cereal growers – parroted industry arguments, justifying their demands to stop banning pesticides that are toxic to public health, the environment and pollute our water resources.
Despite Europe witnessing massive droughts, extreme heatwaves leading to countless deaths, wildfires destroying biodiversity, and devastating crop losses, it seems that a significant share of MEPs are ready and willing to accelerate the degradation of European’s wellbeing and natural resources.
Listening to them raises a fundamental question: Do farmers truly want to rely on a cocktail of toxic chemicals to maximise yields at low market prices, destroying their own health and local ecosystems in the process? Or do they wish to make an honest living, producing quality food in balance with nature for a fair income?
CAP subsidies
To better grasp this contradiction, we must look at what is actually at stake here.
Agrochemical corporations seek their share of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) cake – a colossal €58bn budget, accounting for one third of the EU’s total budget.
Their own survival is reliant on keeping as many farmers as possible dependent on pesticides, fertilisers and industrial seeds. By diverting public CAP funds through farmers into the pockets of their shareholders, these companies ensure their long-term profitability.
Many farmers’ unions also represent agri-cooperatives that profit significantly from selling pesticides, which raises questions about whether they truly represent farmers’ long-term interests, or those of the pesticide industry.
Since the European Commission published its ‘simplification’ proposal in December 2025, proponents of pesticide-intensive farming have presented a series of flawed arguments that in fact reveal the dead-end to which intensive agriculture has led us.
Firstly, farmers’ organisations complain about a “lack of pesticide substances” on the market.
Currently around 450 different pesticide active substances are approved in the EU, from insecticides to fungicides, and herbicides. If 450 different options are insufficient, does this not signal an unhealthy addiction rather than a shortage?
Lobbyist groups, furthermore, claim that pest resistance to synthetic pesticides would inevitably lead to dramatic yield losses and hunger, arguing for even more pesticides with diverse modes of action.
And yet, according to scientific research, the multiple chemical strategy that has been applied for more than 40 years is the very cause of the appearance of resistance. This problem cannot be solved with the mindset that caused it. The only scientific solution is, therefore, not more chemistry but prevention, and the use of alternative methods.
Thousands of farmers across the EU and the rest of the world are already proving this by switching towards Integrated Pest Management (a strategy for low-pesticide-input pest management) or organic practices to reduce pesticide inputs.
Who bares the cost
The call to keep all pesticides on the market – and potentially even use some of the banned ones – serves only the short-term interests of the pesticide industry, not of the farmers.
Destroying soil life – the basis of soil fertility – with chemicals, and killing insect populations that naturally control pests and pollinate crops, jeopardises the very basis of farming and long-term food security.
The societal costs of this pesticide-dependent model are staggering. Citizens are the ones who bear the healthcare costs for chronic diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s, which impact not only farmers but also residents of agricultural areas.
We face water pollution that has become nearly impossible to remediate. Fewer pollinators means fewer healthy fruit and vegetables. These ‘externalities’ far outweigh any short-term benefits.
This is the reason why the Paris and Munich water companies financially support farmers in protecting the groundwater, because doing so is up to 45 times cheaper than depollution.
In the meantime, the agrochemical industry enjoys huge profits from pesticide sales, largely supported by CAP subsidies, while society foots the bill for the damage. It is indeed a perfect business model…for them.
Lobbyist circus
The spectacle witnessed in the alleged House of European Democracy is testament to the state of our political world; one that is dominated by corporate interests over citizens and farmers’ wellbeing.
We witnessed the desperate battle of a toxic agricultural model that struggles to survive, and resists being replaced by sustainable farming methods.
The lobbyist speakers in the European Parliament hearing more or less gave the diagnosis to the current pesticide-intensive agricultural system: it is simply broken.
Citizens have repeatedly expressed their concern on the impact of pesticides on their health and biodiversity. They have also expressed the need that public support for agriculture serves the common good.
The pesticide Omnibus X proposal is merely an attempt to maintain a detrimental status quo that favours the pesticides industry.
What is needed now is a new blueprint for a system which financially supports farmers to implement practices that improve soil and plant health, favour beneficial insects, accelerate the availability of alternatives to pesticides such as biocontrol products, and rapidly phase out toxic synthetic pesticides to protect our health, water resources and biodiversity.
Only then can we ensure a sustainable future for European agriculture and our children. Only then, will a greater share of the CAP remain in the hands of farmers who feed us and protect our nature.
Germany’s most promising industries are also among the most tightly connected to Chinese supply chains, found a new study published on Thursday (8 October).
The paper, Industry with a Future, by the Cologne-based ZOE Institute for Future-fit Economies, ranks 62 German industries according to their prospects for future value, links to green technologies, and contribution to the wider German economy.
Small electrical industries come out particularly well, including clean tech sectors, such as battery producers and manufacturers of electric motors, switchboards, and computer equipment.
These areas combine the kind of specialised know-how that is difficult to copy, which can protect high-wage economies, such as Germany, from cheap foreign competition into the future.
But many of those industries still depend on China for components, and in some cases also rely on Chinese buyers to sell their products to.
“China matters to these industries not only as a competitor, but also as a supplier and a buyer,” the ZOE Institute study’s co-author, Marla Schiefeling, told journalists at a briefing on Wednesday.
That leaves Germany with a difficult industrial policy problem: It needs to scale these sectors up while cutting its dependence on China, but the fastest way to scale is with cheap Chinese components.
To solve this predicament, the authors argue for diversifying suppliers and creating more demand in Germany and the EU.
Old giants, new tricks?
The driver of the troubles is that the German economic model itself isn’t working anymore.
Around 420,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between 2019 and 2025, and German exports to China fell 29 percent from their 2021 peak to 2025, the study notes.
“Production and employment in German industry have been falling for years. This is definitely not a cyclical dip. It is a structural problem,” said co-author Lukas Bertram.
Reliant as it is on exports, Germany’s big export industries, such as car makers or industrial machines, are losing competitiveness, mostly to China, while facing US tariffs abroad and high energy prices at home.
Yet the study argues these industries are also the country’s best hope, and are better placed to create new value than their current troubles suggest.
German carmakers, such as BMW, Mercedes, and Volkswagen, which are in the direct line of fire of China’s EV dominance, already have many of the industrial capabilities to make much of what is needed to build batteries, wind turbines or power grids, from electronics to specialised metal parts.
“From these capabilities, new leading roles can emerge, for instance in electric mobility,” the report’s authors note.
While still associated with fuel and combustion engines, carmaking ranks among the top three industries for eight of the 10 green supply chains the authors examined.
Machinery, metal products and parts of the chemicals industry also do well, which the authors initially found surprising.
“We briefly wondered whether something was off with the methodology. But once we dug deeper, we realised it makes complete sense,” said Schiefeling.
“There’s still a lot of potential and a huge amount of technological know-how there,” she added.
“The task is to translate that into sustainable production structures from which new value can emerge,” she said.
Other sectors, such as coal power, coke ovens, oil refining, and fertiliser production, by contrast, have little future in Germany, the study finds.
But rather than letting them collapse, the authors argue they should be wound down gradually, which they call “strategic de-scaling.”
‘Made in EU’
Meanwhile in Brussels, the debate about the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act is heating up.
The first version of the plan was circulated by the commission in March, but it is still being redrafted, with a new version presented on Wednesday.
At the heart of the plan is the ‘Made in EU’ clause. This would require governments to favour European-made (low-carbon) goods, starting with steel, cement, aluminium, cars, and clean technologies.
In a joint non-paper sent to the commission on Monday, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French president Emmanuel Macron similarly called for a “European preference” in strategic sectors and to “derisk” from Chinese supply chains, notably in batteries and clean energy equipment.
But the ZOE Institute’s Bertram said that while ‘made in Europe’ criteria could help create demand for EU and Germany fledgeling industries, this might not help all sectors concerned.
For a German battery or switchboard maker that can only source its parts from China, such rules might “initially raise prices rather than genuinely create local production capacity,” he said.
The EU has decided to delay its methane regulation, and the reason is simple enough.
Europe imports almost 90 percent of its gas, which makes it one of the most exposed buyers in the world. And the US-Israeli war with Iran has choked gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Making matters more complicated is the fact that Europe is still phasing out Russian gas, with a total ban on Russian overseas liquified gas due to be implemented next year.
So few were surprised when energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen told ministers in Dublin this week that he will propose delaying the import part of the regulation by a year to 2028, although member states and parliament still have to formally agree.
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The EU and its G7 partners agreed on Friday (2 October) to a coordinated release of 100 million barrels of diesel and crude through the International Energy Agency (IEA) over four months.
The release includes “a frontloaded substantial diesel release within the first 20 days,” a press brief released after a Friday afternoon call read.
The call was initiated by French president Emmanuel Macron who holds the rotating G7 presidency on Friday, after he spoke to US president Donald Trump on Thursday.
“Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly afterwards.
Trump had pressured EU leaders to agree to the release all week.
On Thursday, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent urged Europe to “immediately” tap its reserves.
And EU leaders had received a proposal from the White Housethe same day for 120 million barrels of diesel over 180 days.
Washington had already approached France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the UK individually, warning they could face US diesel export bans if they did not comply.
US diesel prices hit a record $6.53 per gallon last week, which is a liability for Trump’s Republicans ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.
Europe’s reward is a single line in the G7 statement, which reaffirms a commitment “to refrain from export restrictions on energy and energy products” between G7 countries.
The EU also on Friday had insisted that any further release come with a US pledge to avoid a unilateral diesel ban, and rejected the suggestion that they buckled to US pressure.
“We fully reject a [US] ban on diesel. A ban would not be beneficial to anyone. It would undermine our trust in the US as a reliable partner,” said Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, the commission’s energy spokesperson.
She declined to comment on the leader’s call ahead of time.
Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho said the coordination had “nothing to do with” recent threats.
She noted that gas prices had risen by 140 percent and diesel prices had doubled since February, and that a release agreed in March was still being implemented.
The G7 text presented Friday’s decision to release the 100 million barrels as continuing those commitments.
But the commission’s own oil coordination group concluded this week that there was “no immediate security supply issue” in the EU, Itkonen said.
Emergency stocks exist to deal with supply disruptions, not prices.
But the IEA route gives European capitals political cover, allowing them to present the release as collective action rather than a concession to Washington.
And it may not be the last one. “We will convene in the context of the IEA in the coming days to discuss the possibility of additional diesel releases as necessary,” the G7 statement said.
The European Union once prided itself on leading the world in protecting children. Today, policymakers backed by big polluters are betraying that promise in the name of “competitiveness”.
In June 2026, Florence, Franck, and Isabelle packed their bags and headed to Brussels. Why? Because their children have all suffered serious harm from pesticides.
These children have endured physical pain and heavy medical procedures, including repeated chemotherapy treatments. And their families have shouldered both the financial and emotional burdens alongside them.
As Isabelle puts it: “It destroys a family.” Her own daughter has been fighting leukaemia for the last seven years.
And they are not alone. In 2024, almost one in 20 children in the EU were exposed to dangerous levels of pesticides; that’s 380,000 kids. Now these parents have a clear message for policymakers: prioritise public health and stop dismantling the rules that protect children against harmful substances.
In 2024, around 316,000 tonnes of toxic pesticides were sold in the EU to be sprayed across our countryside, risking not only the health of farmers but also polluting our soil, air and water.
The European Environment Agency in Copenhagen has reported environmentally unsafe levels of pesticides in about a quarter of Europe’s rivers. In groundwater – which supplies 65 percent of the water we drink in Europe – unsafe levels were detected in 11-18 percent of water bodies.
In the same year, trifluoroacetic acid, a harmful “forever chemical” that forms when ‘PFAS’ pesticides and F-gases break down, showed up in 94 percent of drinking water samples tested across 11 EU countries.
We are surrounded by pesticide pollution. It’s even in our homes.
Source: US Geological Survey/Wikimedia
But what’s happening in Brussels?
In December 2025, the European Commission proposed a legislative package that would remove fundamental environmental and health protections against pesticides in the EU.
Among other changes, the proposal – ironically labelled the ‘Food and Feed Safety’ Omnibus – suggests extending pesticide approvals indefinitely and relaxing the rules to allow pesticides already identified as hazardous to remain on the EU market.
Let that sink in, no pun intended.
These proposals are a political choice to prioritise short-term profits for Big Polluters over children’s lives, people’s health, and the nature and ecosystems we need to survive.
Human health is at stake, and children are at particular risk – as they absorb substances more easily and are less able to excrete them.
Pesticide exposure is linked to the development of childhood cancers, hormone disruption, neurodevelopmental impairments and birth defects. And prenatal and early childhood exposure can permanently alter development, with consequences that can be irreversible – and deadly.
Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the UN-declared human right to a healthy environment, all EU countries must commit to protecting children from environmental harm and ensure the highest attainable standard of health.
These principles must guide the work of EU institutions.
Yet, instead of strengthening protections, the EU is moving backwards at a worrying speed. This is largely due to intense (and repeated) lobbying from multi-billion euro corporations, which includes the pesticides industry. Corporate chemical giants now spend €46m a year just to lobby the EU; that’s over 60 percent more than in 2020.
Make it make sense
The incoherence of current EU policy is troubling. On the one hand, the EU Commission is celebrating its new Intergenerational Fairness Strategy – a framework that is meant to ensure today’s policies do not disadvantage future generations. On the other, the same institution is actively seeking to relax controls of harmful substances.
Ripping up rules that protect people and the planet only benefits Big Polluters, industries that already make billions in profits at the expense of children’s health.
What’s more, an independent assessment found that the measures the EU institutions propose “will not accelerate innovations and authorisations”. In short, these proposals would actually make Europe less competitive.
Children’s rights and youth organisations have warned that deregulation exposes children to serious (and preventable) health risks. And the international scientific community recently stressed that robust environmental risk assessments cannot be optional.
Ultimately, Europe should widen and accelerate its access to pesticide-free alternatives. It must also support farmers in their efforts to transition away from pesticides, towards a more sustainable and resilient model.
So, what can be done? First, the EU must close the tap on pesticide use and production, and support farmers transitioning to safer alternatives. Second, it’s time for leaders to hold Big Polluters accountable for the damage they cause – not force the bill onto regular taxpayers and families harmed by these toxic substances.
Florence, Franck, and Isabelle’s children are among the hundreds of thousands already affected by pesticides. And they show that victims of pesticides are not just a statistic.
The ‘Food and Feed Safety Omnibus’ raises fundamental questions. Who exactly is the EU’s food policy supposed to protect? How many more children need to be harmed for politicians to act? And what kind of future do EU institutions want to build?
Should pesticide protections be treated as obstacles to short-term profits, or should children be able to grow up safely?
Politicians should reject this devastating Omnibus proposal and work instead to support the EU’s transition to safe, sustainable, and resilient farming.
Nearly 100 US civil society groups have urged EU governments not to cave to pressure from oil and gas lobbyists and the White House as the European Commission moves to delay parts of its methane rules by a year.
“The US has done absolutely everything possible to actively deprive Europe of secure, reliable and diversified energy supplies,” said the group in a letter to EU energy ministers dated 29 September and circulated on Wednesday (30 September).
“The Trump administration is using its ‘energy dominance’ agenda to openly blackmail the Union into lowering its climate and human rights standards, including on methane,” they also said.
All operational US export terminals, many supplying Europe, have violated air pollution limits, and the EUs methane rules are “the last opportunity” to impose standards on US gas, the letter says.
“Let’s work together on both sides of the Atlantic,” they say.
The letter writers include global NGOs such as Greenpeace US and Friends of the Earth US but also smaller groups that live next to US gas export terminals such as the environmental organisation, For a Better Bayou.
The decision to postpone
In July, a group of US lawmakers also wrote to EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen, urging her to hold the line.
Democratic congressman Sean Casten, one of the letter’s authors, later visited Strasbourg and told EUobserver that the EU policymakers he met were “almost unanimously supportive of us pushing harder” to help them save the rules.
But over the summer, a majority of member states, including Germany, Europe’s largest gas market, became convinced that delay is necessary fearing gas exporters might reroute their supplies to easier markets.
During that time energy ministers from the US, Qatar, Nigeria and Algeria all warned EU regulation could disrupt fuel and gas supplies
On Tuesday, EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen signalled at an informal meeting of energy ministers in Dublin that he will propose delaying the regulation.
“I’ve already stated that on the methane regulation, a very important regulation for Europe, we stick to the objectives, we stick to our ambitions,” he said.
But, he continued, “after having listened to many, many member states, a big majority of member states in the union,” he decided “to look into possibilities of postponing the parts that are connected to imports by one year”.
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The MEPs steering the EU’s key industrial law want “Made in Europe” to mean that goods are actually produced in the EU.
Their draft report on the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), presented to three parliament committees on Monday (28 September), would reserve the label, and the subsidies and public contracts that come with it, for goods produced in the 27 member states.
Partner countries such as Japan or Korea could be added later, but only if they meet set criteria.
This is a break with the EU commission’s proposal, which would apply to virtually every country with a free-trade or procurement deal with the EU.
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Tens of thousands of autoworkers in Germany protested last week against the car giant’s drastic cuts – spanning job losses and plant closures – even as Volkswagen benefited from some €1.48bn in state subsidies to entice people to buy their brand of electric cars.
The figure, released to EUobserver via a parliamentary demand tabled by German Green MP Julian Joswig, revealed that the German state has doled out €10.1bn in environmental bonuses between 2020 to 2026 to lure people into purchasing electric cars.
As an individual named brand, Volkswagen received the most, followed by Tesla with €889m ahead of other brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Renault, Hyundai, Opel, SEAT and Kia.
“When more than €10bn in public funding is involved, it must be possible to trace where the money goes and what economic impact it generates,” said Joswig, in a statement.
German domestic interest in electric cars has shown a steady increase over the years. Last month, over 30-percent of all new cars registered in Germany were electric. That is a new record, according to Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority.
Even so, the German car industry, including Volkswagen, are shedding workers amid plans to cut plants after being caught off guard by US tariffs and China, whose own industry is now pushing into the European market.
On Monday (21 September), Volkswagen was removed from the Euro Stoxx 50 index given its shrinking market valuation.
Volkswagen, which is a state-owned company, recently announced plans to repurpose its Osnabrück factory in north-west Germany in order to manufacture weapons for Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
The irony is not lost given that Volkswagen was founded by Hitler largely on the back of Jewish slave labour, which is now set to produce arms for an Israel accused of having itself committed a genocide.
“I haven’t seen that being discussed here. Certainly not in the media. People do discuss it, but it’s not anywhere out in the public debate,” said Holger Görg, a professor of International Economics at the University of Kiel.
The car company also announced plans to close its plants in Emden, Hanover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm amid discussions of massive layoffs, potentially affecting some 100,000 people as well as job losses among numerous suppliers.
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