For years, those four groups have worked together in Parliament to pass legislation that strikes a political middle ground, shunning collaboration with the far right. The sometimes uneasy alliance has ensured consistent, bipartisan support for the ETS, Europe’s most powerful tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But now, a reform of the landmark cap-and-trade scheme, unveiled by the EU executive in July, looks set to become a bellwether in an era when, increasingly, the center no longer holds.
The EPP is steering Parliament’s work on the proposed ETS revision through veteran German lawmaker Peter Liese, who wants to find a deal that satisfies everyone.
“I don’t want the Venezuelan majority. It’s against my convictions, but it is also not possible because nobody would see [Marine] Le Pen, the Austrian far-right FPÖ or the German extreme-far-right AfD voting for any ETS proposal,” he told POLITICO in September, using the informal term for a controversial alliance of center-right and far-right groups.
Instead, Liese, who maintains close ties with Dutch S&D lawmaker Mohammed Chahim, said he wanted “the broadest possible coalition,” including the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists as well as “the Greens, The Left, if they want.”
But new amendments filed last week by the S&D, the second-largest group in Parliament, as well as the Greens and Renew, point to major schisms over key aspects of the ETS reform. The biggest divide concerns the so-called linear reduction factor, the mechanism that determines how quickly the supply of pollution permits shrinks each year.