Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
FORGET ABOUT SAVING THE CLIMATE, LET’S JUST SAVE OURSELVES
Von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech this week confirmed what everyone knew already: Europe is giving up on stopping climate change and is now just trying to survive on a heating planet. The fires, floods and nuclear plant shutdowns we’ve seen this summer are now simply external factors to live with, or as climate czar Wopke Hoekstra said last month: “we’ve now had enough reality checks that adaptation spending is not a luxury”. Enter the new Climate Insurance Alliance. Not legislation, just a new club of financial market players to ensure that they pay for losses due to extreme weather, and not the taxpayer. Instead of stopping to build houses in flooding or forest fire areas, it would make sure citizens can get a new house when theirs burns down or slides into the sea. Nice try. But at its core, insurance is a way to pool risks you don’t know, like becoming involved in a traffic accident. But for climate change, the only uncertainty now is where and when – not if – the next coastal town floods. So yes, there is an insurance gap — some people and companies cannot get their real estate projects insured. Some of that needs to be fixed, but if we end up forcibly insuring the uninsurable, it’s basically a game of musical chairs until the money runs out.
SWEDEN MOVES LEFT, BUT HOW FAR?
Meanwhile in Sweden, the political tide is turning after four years of national politics dominated by Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right coalition, bankrolled by the extreme-right Sweden Democrats who had been promised ministerial posts should the right-wing bloc win the elections again. Perhaps thanks this potential outcome, voters instead ensured that the centre-left bloc led by Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats came first. The nail-biting election saw a three seat difference between the two blocs at national level and a record 10% result for the extreme-left Vänsterpartiet in the Stockholm region. The Sweden “Democrats”, architects of Europe’s strictest migration rules, meanwhile saw their national-level support slip to 17.6%, falling to third place behind the Moderates and losing sight of the finish line to get into government power. It’s a welcome sign of relief for Europe’s social-democrats, who have only three heads of government left in the European Council, but the centre-right still holds the keys.
EU BENDS ITS OWN RULES FOR GOOD MANNERS (AND RAW MATERIALS)
Mark Carney doesn’t want Canada to be the 51st US state, but he’s happy to be the 28th EU Member State, at least in spirit. In his Strasbourg speech this week, he insisted the transatlantic rapprochement should not lead to full EU membership or a third geopolitical bloc to rival great powers, “only with better manners”. No, the humble Canadian with Irish roots, who is better known in Brussels thanks to his passage at the Bank of England and the world-famous “tragedy of the horizon” speech on the financial stability impact of climate change, is essentially proposing a pick-and-choose menu. The kind Europe refused to the UK – yes to SAFE military cooperation, to joint research, raw materials, and Erasmus mobility, but no to outright freedom of movement. This week’s red carpet for Canada adds another cooperation model that complicates EU enlargement even further. Half a dozen hopefuls are still in the waiting room for EU membership, and some have lost perspective on ever joining the club. Promised “an autumn of enlargement“, Moldova and Ukraine are advancing while Montenegro and even Iceland — despite their recent vote not to continue talks — are leading the alignment charts. Whatever model is chosen, letting a dozen new members into the EU will require quite a bit of institutional reform. The Congress of Europe floated by von der Leyen seventy years after the Treaty of Rome might keep people busy for a while, but is not a substitute for the hard intergovernmental talk that is needed on how to run an EU that moves beyond national interests and is fit for the challenges of the new world order. O Europe!