Green European Journal

Sa porastom broja putničkih vozila širom Evrope, gradovi se suočavaju sazagađenjem vazduha, saobraćajnim nezgodama i gubitkom javnog prostora. U Španiji, grad Pontevedra uspeo je da prebrodi ove izazove, nadmašivši nacionalne standarde kvaliteta vazduha i stvarajući bezbednije ulice. Prema rečima gradonačelnika ove galicijske opštine, ključ ovog uspeha leži u urbanističkom modelu koji daje prednost stanovnicima umesto automobilima, bez uvođenja potpune zabrane na privatna vozila.

Vedro je letnje veče u Pontevedru, galicijskom gradu na severozapadu Španije. Vazduh je ispunjen kontraaltom, praćenim živim džez orkestrom, koji dopire iz ugla velikog gradskog trga. Nekoliko metara odatle, četvoro tinejdžera igra fudbal narandžastom loptom, koju par mlađe dece neuspešno pokušava da dodirne. Jedna porodica pravi selfi, dok četiri starije žene vode živahan razgovor na obližnjoj klupi. Pauze između džez numera ispunjene su cvrkutom ptica, privučenih zelenilom oko fontane.

Gledajući fotografije Pontavedre iz devedesetih godina prošlog veka, fotografije prepune redova automobila koji se prostiru unedogled, bilo bi veoma teško predvideti ovakvu budućnost. Međutim, otkako je doktor Migel Anšo Fernandez Lores izabran za gradonačelnika 1999. godine, ovaj galicijski grad sprovodi politike koje daleko prevazilaze puko regulisanje saobraćaja naulicama. Prema rečima sedamdesetjednogodišnjeg gradonačelnika, cilj ovoga je povratak javnog prostora građanima.

„Kada povratimo javni prostor i zagarantujemo univerzalnu pristupačnost, ljudi stiču autonomiju”, kaže gradonačelnik. Kao političar Galicijske nacionalističke stranke (Bloque Nacionalista Galego, BNG), Lores trenutno obavlja svoj sedmi mandat i spreman je da se kandiduje i za osmi 2027. godine. Galicija je istorijski i većinski pod upravom desničarske Narodne partije i predstavlja rodno mesto više njenih nacionalnih lidera, što dugotrajnu vlast lokalnog levičarskog i nacionalističkog BNG-a u Pontevedri čini izuzetkom u regionu.

U decembru 2022. godine, španska vlada je usvojila kraljevski dekret kojim se nalaže da sve opštine sa više od 50.000 stanovnika moraju imati uspostavljenu zonu niskih emisija (Low Emission Zone, LEZ). Radi poboljšanja kvaliteta vazduha i smanjenja emisije ugljenika, dekret preporučuje mere poput ograničavanja pristupa vozilima koja više zagađuju, na osnovu njihovih ekoloških oznaka, kao i uvođenje zona sa ograničenim saobraćajem u kojima se naplaćuje ulaz.

Španija je ovu meru usvojila kako bi ispunila pravno obavezujuće zahteve Pariskog sporazuma, međunarodnog sporazuma o klimatskim promenama, više od šest godina nakon njegovog stupanja na snagu u novembru 2016. godine. Ipak, budući da je Pontevedra već u potpunosti ispunjavala parametre kvaliteta vazduha, predviđene nacionalnim zakonom 7/2021 o klimatskim promenama, gradsko veće je odlučilo da napravi znatno ambiciozniji korak: da čitavo urbano područje (oko 490 hektara) proglasi „zonom smanjenog saobraćaja”.

Bilo je doslovno skladište automobila, a ljudi, naročito oni sa invaliditetom I stariji, nisu mogli da šetaju ulicama jer su u potpunosti bile zauzete vozilima.

Tokom sunčanog i svežeg podneva krajem juna, u svojoj kancelariji u centru grada, Lores se priseća kako je Pontevedra izgledala kada je prvi put preuzeo dužnost: „Bilo je doslovno skladište automobila, a ljudi, naročito oni sa invaliditetom i stariji, nisu mogli da šetaju ulicama jer su u potpunosti bile zauzete vozilima”.

Tokom govora, gradonačelnik je pomenuo katalonskog inženjera iz 19. veka Ildefonsa Serdu i Sunjera (Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer), najpoznatijeg pourbanističkoj reformi centralne barselonske četvrti Ešample, sa njenim prepoznatljivim mrežastim rasporedom i simetričnom strukturom. Nalik Serdi, i on posmatra javni prostor kao produžetak doma.

Automobili: kontinentalni problem

Više od 75 procenata populacije Evropske unije živi u urbanim sredinama, a očekuje se da će ovaj broj porasti do približno 83 procenta do 2050. godine. S obzirom na to da se zagađenje vazduha široko prepoznaje kao najznačajniji zdravstveni rizik u Evropi, smanjenje emisija iz drumskog saobraćaja, koje su odgovorne za 37 procenata zagađenja azotnim oksidima, od ključnog je značaja.

Evropska unija je pokrenula niz inicijativa kako bi podstakla gradove da postanu čistiji i zdraviji. Jedna od najznačajnijih je Zeleni gradski sporazum (Green City Accord), koji poziva gradove sa više od 20.000 stanovnika da se obavežu na unapređenja u oblastima kao što su kvalitet vazduha i vode, smanjenje buke, očuvanje biodiverziteta i napredak ka cirkularnoj ekonomiji. Ova inicijativa, takođe, poziva gradove da se povežu sa širokom evropskom mrežom radi razmene znanja.

Još jedna inicijativa jeste Misija klimatsko-neutralnih i pametnih gradova EU (Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities EU Mission), koja pruža podršku za 100 gradova u Evropskoj uniji i još 12 u zemljama pridruženim programu Horizont Evropa. Cilj ove misije je razvoj pilot-projekta radi postizanja klimatske neutralnosti do 2030. godine. Rešenja i modeli testirani u ovim gradovima bi mogli poslužiti kao primer i pomoći svim evropskim gradovima da slede put do 2050. godine, kada se EU obavezala da dostigne neto nultu emisiju gasova sa efektom staklene bašte.

Postoje i neformalne inicijative poput Hodajućih gradova (Ciudades que caminan, Walking Cities) u Španiji, koja funkcioniše kao neprofitna organizacija otvorena za gradske uprave i druge javne institucije posvećene unapređenju pešačenja. Mreža gradovima učesnicima obezbeđuje obuke i forum za razmene informacija i iskustava. U njenom okviru postoji i onlajn škola javnog prostora, a odgovorna je i za upravljanje i promociju platforme Školska okruženja (Entornos escolares), najvažnijeg španskog sajta posvećenog podsticanju dečje samostalnosti i urbane mobilnosti.

STOPA MOTORIZACIJE 2024, broj putničkih automobila na hiljadu stanovnika

I dalje, uprkos inicijativama koje se primenjuju i „odozdo” i „odozgo”, broj automobila na našem kontinentu nastavlja da raste: broj vozila u Evropskoj uniji premašio je 259 miliona 2024. godine, što predstavlja povećanje od 5,9 procenata u odnosu na 2019. godinu. Zemlja sa najvišom stopom motorizacije, odnosno brojem automobila na 1.000 stanovnika, jeste Italija (701), zatim Luksembrug (670) i Finska (666 automobila). Sa stopom od 544 (uz napomenu da je reč o privremenim podacima), Španija se nalazi ispod proseka Evropske unije, koji iznosi 576.

SuprotstavljajućI se normi

U međuvremenu, u Pontevedri se poslednjih godina broj automobila konstantno smanjuje. Grad je, takođe, uveo propise kojima se ograničava svrha korišćenja automobila, kao i vremenski periodi u kojima im je dozvoljeno kretanje.

Na pitanje da navede jedan od najboljih primera uspeha svoje administracije u davanju prednosti pešacima u odnosu na vozila, gradonačelnik bez oklevanja pominje transformaciju jednog od glavnih gradskih trgova. Pored ruševina gotičkog ženskog manastira Santo Domingo iz 14. veka nalazi se prostrani Španski trg (Praza de España), koji se smatra „nultim kilometrom” grada; polaznom tačkom njegovih glavnih i prirodnih ruta. Danas ovo mesto funkcioniše kao živahno središte u kojem se, tokom bilo kog letnjeg dana, susreću šetači privučeni čestim kulturnim događajima i hodočasnici na Putu svetog Jakova (St. James’ Way, Camino de Santiago). Lores ističe da je krajem devedesetih godina ovim trgom svakodnevno prolazilo oko 26.000 automobila. Neverovatno je da su mnogi od tih automobila jednostavno pokušavali da napuste grad i upute se ka nekoj destinaciji van njega, poput plaža u Sanšenšu (Sanxenxo), turističkoj opštini udaljenoj oko 30 kilometara, ujedno i rodnom mestu gradonačelnika, pritom prolazeći kroz Španski trg. Danas, međutim, tranzitni saobraćaj i kruženje u potrazi za parkingom nisu dozvoljeni nigde u gradu, pa prema Loresovim rečima, svega oko 800 vozila dnevno stigne do gradskog trga. Kako objašnjava, odluka o zabrani prolaznog saobraćaja i njegovo preusmeravanje na obilaznice doveli su do smanjenja ukupnog saobraćaja u gradu za 40 procenata.

Ne postoji mesto u gradu do kojeg se ne može doćI automobilom, Ali samo za one kojima je to zaista potrebno, a ne za bilo koga ko to požel.

Jedino „neophodan saobraćaj” je dozvoljen u Pontevedri: vozila hitnih službi i javne bezbednosti, komunalne službe (uključujući vozila gradske čistoće, cisterne za vodu itd.), prevoz osoba sa smanjenom pokretljivošću, kao i pristup privatnim garažnim mestima imaju dozvolu kretanja 24 časa dnevno. Međutim, utovar i istovar komercijalne robe, kućne dostave, prevoz kabastih predmeta, selidbe i slične aktivnosti su dozvoljene samo u određenim terminima u toku dana. Besplatna mesta za parking su raspoređena širom grada kako bi građani mogli da se privremeno zaustave tokom obavljanja ovih aktivnosti. U slučaju prekršaja, policija može izreći kazne u iznosu od nekoliko stotina evra.

„Ne postoji mesto u gradu do kojeg se ne može doći automobilom, ali samo za one kojima je to zaista potrebno, a ne za bilo koga ko to poželi”,izjavio je Lores. Svojim prepoznatljivim, direktnim ali učtivim tonom dodaje:„Ideja da svoj privatni automobil parkirate na javnom prostoru je suluda: ako nemate mesta za svoj zamrzivač, da li ga ostavljate na trotoaru?”

U hijerarhiji prioriteta, sva vozila, uključujući električna, nalaze se na poslednjem mestu u Pontevedri:„Čitava piramida prioriteta je promenjena: prednost imaju pešaci, zatim bicikli, trotineti, javni prevoz i tek na samom kraju, privatni automobili”. Inspirisan knjigom autorke Džejn Džejkobs Smrt i život velikih američkih gradova (The Death and Life of Great American Cities), objavljenom 1961. godine, Lores je očuvanje „kompaktnog grada” postavio u središte urbanističkih politika svoje administracije: održavanje većine aktivnosti u centru grada, obeshrabrivanje izgradnje velikih tržnih centara na periferiji, podsticanje mešovitih kvartova umesto zona sa jednom namenom (poput izdvojene „pravosudne četvrti”), kao što je kompleks sudova u Barseloni, kao i unapređenje javnog prevoza. Cilj nije samo smanjenje nepotrebnog putovanja automobilom, već i oživljavanje naselja i jačanje društvene kohezije.

Šetajući kroz centar grada bilo kog radnog dana, iznenađujuće je videti veliki broj raznovrsnih prodavnica, naročito za jedan provincijski grad. Lokalni butici, zlatare, cvećare i knjižare uspešno posluju jedne pored drugih.

Pored Pontevedra, i drugi evropski gradovi preduzimaju korake ka većoj održivosti. Frajburg je, na primer, dobro poznat po svojim održivim politikama, uključujući regulaciju automobilskog saobraćaja. U ovom živahnom univerzitetskom gradu na jugozapadu Nemačke, građani učestvuju u procesu urbanističkog planiranja, bicikli čine oko 30 procenata svih vozila, a jedan kvart, Vauban, gotovo je u potpunosti bez automobila. Štaviše, Oslo je 2019. godine postao prvi evropski grad koji je sasvim zabranio automobile u svojim centralnim zonama. Grad je proširio mrežu javnog prevoza i uklonio stotine mesta za parking, zamenivši ih klupama, zelenim površinama i biciklističkim stazama.

U Pontevedri pešaci imaju očiglednu prednost u centru grada, kao i na otprilike trećini ukupne gradske teritorije. Tamo su kolovozi i trotoari parktično neodvojivi. Onima koji to vide prvi put, zapanjujuće je posmatrati ljude kako šetaju sredinom ulice, potpuno bezbrižno, dok automobili polako čekaju iza njih da se oni spontano pomere i propuste ih. Niko ne trubi; ne postoje semafori koji bi regulisali kretanje. Takođe, parkiranje nije dozvoljeno u čitavoj zoni između 18 časova i osam ujutru.

U ostatku grada, ulice su jednosmerne sa širokim trotoarima. Automobili mogu da se zaustave tokom radnog vremena na ograničeno vreme (15 minuta za uslužne delatnosti i 30 minuta za utovar i istovar), dok je parkiranje dozvoljeno između 21 čas i devet ujutru. Semafori se nalaze samo na dvosmernim avenijama na spoljašnjem prstenu grada, gde pešački mostovi i kružni tokovi podsećaju vozače da uspore. Na svega deset minuta od centra nalazi se otvoreni parking koji predstavlja alternativu za oko 4.500 privatnih podzemnih parking mesta u gradu. Ukupno, Pontevedra raspolaže sa više od deset besplatnih javnih parkinga, udaljenih najviše 10-15 minuta hoda od centra grada. To je naročito korisno za ljude koji ne žive u gradu, ali svakodnevno dolaze na posao iz okolnih mesta.

Bezbednije, zdravije I pristupačnije

Godine 2010, Pontevedra je postala prvi španski grad koje je uveo ograničenje brzine od 30 km/h na svim saobraćajnicama unutar urbanih područja. Danas je ograničenje u najužem centru grada 10 km/h, „ali samo ako nema ljudi u blizini”, objašnjava Daniel Makenle, bivši policajac i sadašnji generalni direktor za zaštitu građana u gradskoj upravi. „Ako su pešaci prisutni, brzina se smanjuje na 6 km/h”. U ostatku gradskog centra, maksimalna brzina iznosi 20 km/h dok u drugim delovima grada vozila mogu da se kreću do 30 km/h.

Rezultat ovakve politike jeste da u poslednjih deset godina nije bilo smrtnih saobraćajnih nezgoda na gradskim ulicama. Danas, prema opštinskim podacima, 73 procenta dece ide u školu peške (od čega 44 procenta u pratnji, a 29 procenata samostalno). Studija sprovedena 2012. godine u Danskoj, koja je obuhvatila 20.000 dece i bila deo šireg istraživanja o vezi između koncentracije, ishrane i fizičke aktivnosti, pokazala je da deca koja pešače ili voze bicikl do škole, zadržavaju viši nivo koncentracije i do četiri sata kasnije.

U Pontevedri, kao i u drugim španskim gradovima, poput Barselone, već godinama se primenjuju „školske rute”. Reč je o posebno obeleženim zonama u okolini škola, koje učenicima omogućavaju da bezbedno dolaze i odlaze peške, samostalno ili u grupama.

Prednosti ovakvog pristupa osećaju svi stanovnici: sveukupno, broj ljudi koji biraju da se kreću peške ili biciklom u ovoj galicijskoj opštini, porastao je sa 66 procenata 2011. na 90 procenata 2021. godine. Štaviše, danas se oko70 procenata sveg kretanja unutar grada obavlja peške ili biciklom. Gradska uprava, takođe, procenjuje da su emisije CO₂ smanjene za oko 67 procenata od kraja devedesetih godina prošlog veka.

Kako bi, pored same udaljenosti koju prelaze peške, mogli da saznaju i broj koraka, kao i broj potrošenih kalorija do određene destinacije, stanovnici Pontevedre mogu koristiti aplikaciju Metrominuto. Ova sinoptička mapa sadrži i informacije o istorijskim lokalitetima grada, novosti (na primer, o međunarodnim studijama o mobilnosti), kao i servisne informacije poput nacionalnih subvencija za električne automobile.

Iako bi se moglo pretpostaviti da se za sprovođenje saobraćajnih pravila u Pontevedri intenzivno koriste kamere sa geo-lokacijom, kazne i uklanjanje nepropisno parkiranih vozila, većina ispitanika ističe da sistem funkcioniše jednostavno jer ga građani smatraju praktičnim.

Isto važi i za poslovnu zajednicu:„Grad koji je prijatan prema vama, poziva vas da ga istražite i uživate u njemu, a kada šetate, takođe i trošite”, rekao je Andres Martinez, četrdesetosmogodišnji vlasnik optičarske radnje u ulici Calle de la Oliva, jednoj od najkomercijalnijih u gradu. On živi u istoj zgradi u kojoj mu se nalazi radnja, a svoj privatni automobil parkira u zajedničkoj garaži.

Drugi stanovnik je pedesetsedmogodišnji Santi Kakadas, koji već 30 godina prodaje ribu na gradskoj pijaci. On ukazuje na još jednu prednost ovog modela:„Ljudi koji dolaze u kupovinu, dođu, završe i odu, što znači da se mesto za parking oslobađa za sledećeg kupca, i tako redom, što dovodi do većeg kretanja”.

Promena paradigme, odnosno odustajanje od grada zamišljenog za automobile I povratak gradu namenjenom ljudima.

Santi živi oko tri kilometra od posla i svakog jutra ostavlja automobil na besplatnom parkingu pored reke Lerez, a zatim prešači oko 500 metara do svoje tezge.

Ipak, treba napomenuti da dva od pet ispitanih vlasnika radnji, jedan koji vodi kiosk i drugi koji drži prodavnicu ekoloških proizvoda, navode da se njihovi kupci često žale na nedostatak mesta za parking.

Na pitanje zašto smatra da su politike u Pontevedri bile uspešne, gradonačelnik ukazuje na nekoliko faktora: jasnu komunikaciju i edukaciju o ciljevima grada, umrežavanje „sa najproaktivnijim i najdinamičnijim ljudima u gradu”, sprovođenje participativnih procesa i odluku da se automobili ne zabrane u potpunosti. Takođe, dodaje:„Sproveli smo brojne projekte proširenja trotoara i pešačkih zona; čim bi projekat bio završen, prostor bi se spontano ispunio aktivnostima. Osim toga, dozvolili smo ulazak vozilima kojima je to bilo neophodno, što je umirilo one koji su imali nedoumice”.

Preneti uspeh pontevedre

Tokom godina, ova severozapadna opština Španije, Pontevedra, dobila je brojne nagrade za uspeh svojih praksi, uključujući Međunarodnu nagradu za najbolje prakse u održivom razvoju, dodeljenu od strane UN-Habitata u Dubaiju 2014. godine, za svoj model grada usmeren ka ljudima, kao i Nagradu za bezbednost saobraćaja u urbanim sredinama (koju dodeljuje Evropska komisija) 2020. godine, za „impresivno postizanje nijednog smrtnog slučaja u saobraćaju između 2011. i 2018. godine”.

Na pitanje da li smatra da se uspeh Pontevedre može preneti drugde, Lores jasno odgovara da svaki grad mora pronaći sopstveni model i strategiju, te da se svaki spoljašnji primer mora prilagoditi lokalnom kontekstu. Na pitanje da li postoji bilo kakva pouka koja bi mogla poslužiti kao inspiracija drugim gradovima, i ako da, za kakav tip grada, bez oklevanja je odgovorio:„Promena paradigme, odnosno odustajanje od grada zamišljenog za automobile i povratak gradu namenjenom ljudima”.

Ovaj članak je nastao u ovkiru zajedničke prekogranične
novinarske inicijative PULSE (koju koordiniraju organizacije
n-ost i OBCT), u saradnji sa novinarkom Elis Faćini.
Prevod: Veljko Vulićević

Tras los Acuerdos de París de 2015, el movimiento climático cobró impulso cultural y político, culminando en el Pacto Verde Europeo. Pero la guerra, la inflación y el resurgimiento de una derecha afín a los combustibles fósiles han provocado una fuerte reacción en contra de la acción climática en todas sus formas. Para ganar esta batalla, según Florent Marcellesi, Europa debe considerar la soberanía energética y la justicia climática como dos caras de la misma moneda.

La economía es un suceso de ciclos. Ya sean cortos según Kitchin, medios según Juglar o largos según Kondratieff, se suceden periodos de recuperación o creación, auge y depresión o destrucción, y vuelta a empezar, en bucles infinitos aunque nunca parecidos. 

De igual manera, la transición ecológica y justa se enfrenta a sus peculiares ciclos históricos. Desde que surgió la conciencia ecologista en los años 1960-70, ha pasado de ser un outsider para minorías concienciadas a convertirse desde el Acuerdo climático de París del 2015 en el alfa y omega del mainstream socio-político. Sin embargo hoy, acosada sin piedad por los imperialismos renacientes cuyos intereses se mimetizan con los del capitalismo fósil, se enfrenta a una potente fase depresiva. Libra una lucha existencial contra el “imperio fósil”, buscando aire para que la depresión no se convierta en destrucción. 

Al revés, para que llegue pronto su recuperación, es fundamental (re)pensar y adaptar la visión estratégica de las fuerzas que luchan por la justicia social y ambiental. Para ello, en este artículo repasaremos primero lo ocurrido a partir del Acuerdo de París desde la hegemonización de la transición ecológica hasta su demonización por las corrientes reaccionarias y negacionistas. En base a este análisis de ciclos cortos-medios, pensaremos en las nuevas estrategias ecosociales para que la transición ecológica y justa pueda resistir al backlash ecológico y consolidarse en este nuevo (des)orden mundial. Más concretamente, ¿qué hilos directores, prioridades socio-políticas y alianzas tendría que adoptar la transición ecológica y justa para iniciar cuanto antes un nuevo ciclo virtuoso, sinónimo de sostenibilidad y prosperidad? Dicho de otra manera, ¿cómo puede la transición ecológica derrotar al imperio fósil? 

Érase una vez la hegemonía cultural climática 

2015 no es una fecha cualquiera en nuestra historia reciente. El 12 de diciembre de dicho año, se aprueba por unanimidad en la COP21 el Acuerdo climático de París. Si bien imperfecto en muchos aspectos, pero grabando en el mármol de un Tratado internacional la meta de 1.5ºC de calentamiento global que no debería superar la Humanidad, este Acuerdo marca un antes y un después en la acción climática. Impulsado por una amplia coalición de países alineados (islas del Pacífico, UE, Estados Unidos de Obama, etc.), de un Vaticano carburando al Laudato Sí del Papa Francisco y de una sociedad civil con deseo de pasar página de la fracasada cumbre de COP15 en Copenhague, representa el inicio de un nuevo ciclo donde el clima ya no es una coordenada subalterna y secundaria sino el centro de atención mediático, una prioridad política y social, y el nuevo motor de una economía emergente en torno a la transición ecológica y las renovables. Dicho de otra manera, marca el inicio de un periodo con una profunda capacidad de transformación estructural y de los imaginarios colectivos bajo el dominio de la idea climática en la opinión pública, las instituciones y el mundo empresarial: la hegemonía cultural climática. 

Tras años de depresión y austeridad social y económica, este cambio hegemónico impacta de forma intensa en varios frentes. Por un lado, las calles juegan un papel clave en la dinámica cultural y social internacional a favor del clima gracias a una presencia tanto cuantitativa como cualitativa de la juventud por el clima. Detrás de Greta Thunberg, figura central del movimiento, casi mesiánica y fuente de inspiración mundial para toda una generación, supone una visibilización sin precedentes de la causa climática en los medios y los debates de a pie de calle, situando el clima como un asunto existencial –para la juventud y cualquier colectivo o nación que sufre directamente sus impactos– y de máxima prioridad socio-política. Mientras centenares de miles de personas llenan las calles de Berlín, Bruselas, Melbourne, Nueva York, Vancouver y también Madrid, con una manifestación multitudinaria el 6 de diciembre del 2019, la idea climática percola por los meandros de la conciencia colectiva española, europea y global. 

En un bucle retroactivo constante e inscribiéndose en el camino abierto por París, este caldo de cultivo socio-climático tiene a su vez una fuerte repercusión en lo político e institucional. El 5 de diciembre de 2016 la ciudad de Darebin en Australia se convierte en la primera ciudad del mundo en declarar el “estado de emergencia climática”; el 1 de mayo de 2019 el Parlamento del Reino Unido es el primer parlamento nacional en hacerlo mientras que España se suma oficialmente tras acuerdo de su Consejo de Ministros el 21 de enero del 2020. A día de hoy casi 2400 jurisdicciones en 40 países, cubriendo una población de hasta mil millones de ciudadanos, han declarado una emergencia climática, convirtiendo, en los años posteriores a 2015, el clima en una de las mayores prioridades políticas. Con total lógica, esta visibilización social e institucional tiene también su corolario en las urnas. En las elecciones europeas del 2019, cabalgando y promoviendo al mismo tiempo la ola climática, los partidos verdes consiguen un resultado histórico con más de 80 eurodiputados/as, transformando su agenda ecosocial en fuerza motriz del Parlamento Europeo. 

Como si de un juego de dominós se tratara, esto desencadena a su vez otra consecuencia virtuosa. Bajo la presión combinada de las calles y de las urnas, y a pesar de que no formaba parte siquiera de las prioridades electorales del Partido Popular Europeo en aquel momento, la Comisión Europea recién designada bajo la primera presidencia de la conservadora Von Der Leyen, pone encima de la mesa su principal respuesta: el Green New Deal o Pacto Verde Europeo. El debate ya no gira en torno a la necesidad o no de tener una política climática sino al grado de ambición de ésta. Si bien por debajo de lo que pedían el movimiento ecologista y la ciencia pero muy por delante del resto de bloques geopolíticos, la UE se erige en líder climático, comprometiéndose a reducir sus emisiones en al menos un 50% para 2030, al tiempo que convierte en legalmente vinculante el objetivo de neutralidad de carbono para 2050.  

Si fuera poco, todas las políticas europeas, ya sean energéticas, industriales o agrícolas, tienen además que integrar o combinarse, al menos en el espíritu, con las preocupaciones climáticas. En este ambiente propicio a la ecología, la economía siente el soplo de la transición energética y de la sostenibilidad, piedra angular de los negocios post-París. Fin de la extracción de carbón en España y eliminación gradual en toda Europa, instalación acelerada de energías renovables, auge del coche eléctrico, descarbonización de la industria o reverdecimiento de la agricultura, la economía y el empleo verde viven su edad de oro, mientras que la transición justa se abre paso. París, la juventud por el clima y el electorado han hecho mella, la hegemonía cultural climática está en su cénit.  

Pero cualquier edad de oro tiene un fin y cualquier cénit, un declive. El primer golpe viene de la COVID. La crisis sanitaria, junto con sus confinamientos, para en seco a la “generación clima”: desde 2020, no ha vuelto a haber una manifestación pro-clima multitudinaria. A pesar de quitarle a uno de sus más potentes brazos sociales, no para al Pacto Verde Europeo como recién estrenada brújula europea. Es más, gracias al capital social y político acumulado durante los años previos, y a pesar de las incipientes oposiciones de las derechas radicales en Hungría, Polonia o de la presidencia anti-climática de Trump 1.0, la transición ecológica se consolida como uno de los pilares de los Fondos de recuperación NextGen. De los 275.000 millones de euros en inversiones de capital, se aprueba dedicar el 42% de los fondos a la acción climática, un verdadero maná para la gran transformación de un sistema fósil a otro renovable.  

Pero apenas superado este primer golpe, viene el segundo en 2022. Rusia invade Ucrania, no solo poniendo en evidencia el hambre imperialista de Putín y la dependencia europea al gas fósil ruso, sino engendrando también una inflación de los precios de la energía y el coste de la vida, creando a su vez un creciente malestar social. Las corrientes reaccionarias y negacionistas huelen sangre. El Pacto Verde Europeo sigue vivo pero por las heridas de la crisis sanitaria y ucraniana se cuela el relato anti-clima y contra la transición ecológica que se erige en un eje básico de la reacción fósil. 

El imperio fósil contraataca 

Ya sea a nivel político, cultural o económico, hemos entrado en un nuevo ciclo, el del backlash ecológico, es decir de los retrocesos en materia ambiental. Es la era de la cruzada y del ataque permanente contra la transición ecológica y justa, mientras se intenta reforzar por todos los medios el imperio de las energías sucias y su entramada político. Dicho de otra manera, el capitalismo fósil, en colaboración con la internacional reaccionaria y negacionista, ha declarado la guerra, casi santa, contra la ecología bajo todas sus formas. 

Mientras que las personas defensoras del medioambiente son tachadas de “terroristas” o “fanáticos climáticos” y el cambio climático no es ni más ni menos, según Trump, que “una estafa” o un “timo”, las políticas verdes están en la diana constante de las organizaciones climato-escépticas y de extrema derecha. Junto con la inmigración, estos convierten al Green New Deal en su enemigo a derrotar en España y Bruselas; pintan, en contra de toda evidencia, a las políticas ambientales como las responsables de las más de 200 muertes de la dana del 2025 en Valencia y atacan un día sí y otro también a las renovables, bien durante el apagón del 2025 en península ibérica, bien alimentando el rechazo territorial a las energías eólicas y solares.  

En este contexto de bulos y ofensiva continuos, donde la extrema derecha provoca y la derecha recoge los frutos (y parte de la izquierda flirtea con el retardismo), los retrocesos ecológicos son legiones en las instituciones. Por ejemplo, en Europa donde el cordón sanitario entre conservadores y neo-fascistas es cada vez más fino desde las elecciones europeas del 20241, se han rebajado los compromisos ambientales en la Política Agrícola Común, los requisitos de sostenibilidad ambiental para las grandes empresas, la ambición para terminar con los motores de coche fósiles, mientras que la desregulación ambiental, que permite más productos dañinos para la naturaleza y la salud pero económicamente competitivos y buenos para el bolso de las grandes multinacionales, tiene el viento en popa. Si fuera poco, en un movimiento orwelliano, el Gobierno de Estados Unidos, tras retirarse de nuevo del Acuerdo de París y de cualquier institución política o científica internacional que luche a favor de la acción climática, hasta prohibe los términos “cambio climático” y “emisiones” en agencias federales y documentos oficiales nacionales, incluyendo la revisión de programas educativos. Más allá de la política, la batalla cultural es total. 

Tras años de hegemonía climática, la reacción ha sido y sigue siendo inversamente proporcional a los avances de la transición ecológica en los últimos años. De hecho, al igual que la restauración monárquica fue una respuesta de restablecimiento de los intereses de la nobleza ante las ideas revolucionarias y republicanas en el siglo XIX, el backlash ecológico está siendo un intento de restauración fósil ante la revolución de las renovables del siglo XXI. Esto es una señal inequívoca de que la transición ecológica y justa ha tocado dónde duele. Para el capitalismo fósil, la transición ecológica era tolerable mientras era algo sectorial y socio-económicamente marginal. Pero hoy se ha convertido en un obstáculo de primer orden para sus negocios que, recordemos, pesan en la actualidad 97 billones de dólares, casi tanto como el Producto Interior Bruto mundial. Y de forma totalmente interrelacionada, representa también una amenaza contra parte de las élites y población mundial cuyos modo de vida y valores, basados en la energía fósil y la fantasía del crecimiento ilimitado de la producción y del consumo, sigue siendo no negociable.  

En este sentido, la Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad de Estados Unidos (ESN, noviembre del 2025) es, además de sibilina, paradigmática de cara a este intento de vuelta al orden mundial fósil. Además de volver a doctrinas ideológicas y geopolíticas imperialistas basadas en el poder duro y zonas de influencias, el autoritarismo y el supremacismo occidental, no anda con rodeos ni usa eufemismos. En contra de “las desastrosas ideologías del «cambio climático» y del «cero neto»”, su objetivo es “restaurar el dominio energético estadounidense (en petróleo, gas, carbón y energía nuclear)” y “ampliar el acceso de Estados Unidos a minerales y materiales críticos”. En este contexto, la operación militar a principios de 2026 en Venezuela, siendo el eslabón más débil del continente por la debilidad orgánica y la falta de legitimidad social e internacional del régimen chavista, ha sido el primer ensayo de control ideológico y de los recursos naturales por parte de EEUU en su hemisferio de influencia. Envalentonado por el aparente éxito de esta estrategia, el imperialismo trumpista ha pisado el acelerador, intentando someter también al régimen iraní, quién, de paso, controla el Estrecho de Ormuz donde transita el 20% del petróleo y gas del mundo.   

Pero este proceso de neo-colonización política, territorial y energética no se circunscribe únicamente a los enemigos históricos de EEUU. Europa está también en el menú del avasallamiento. Mientras la ESN reza que el “objetivo [de EEUU] debe ser ayudar a Europa a corregir su trayectoria actual” a través de los “partidos patrióticos”, hoy verdaderos caballos de Troya en la UE de este neo-imperialismo, asistimos en directo y sin tapujos a una injerencia externa en los asuntos internos europeos. En la visión ideológica de la internacional reaccionaria, y más allá del amago de controlar Groenlandia, el proyecto de la Unión Europea sobra. A pesar de las contradicciones y dobles varas de medir en conflictos internacionales por parte de la UE, a la derecha reaccionaria le sobran sus valores fundacionales basadas en el derecho internacional, el multilateralismo, la cooperación y la solidaridad continental. Y, mimetizando sus intereses con los del capital fósil, les sobra su apuesta por la transición energética. 

Ciertamente, dicha transición energética choca con el imperialismo fósil. Más allá de poner en duda los beneficios gigantescos del sector energético fósil, también rebate las cartas geopolíticas. Mientras EEUU, Rusia o los países del Golfo asientan gran parte de su poder en base a su liderazgo como primeros productores mundiales de crudo, la UE, pero sobre todo China, la nueva gran potencia del capitalismo verde, han acelerado el paso hacia las renovables. En esta “nueva guerra fría ecológica”, la encrucijada y el choque se hace cada vez más acuciante entre los viejos petro-estados que no quieren morir y los aspirantes a electro-estados que no acaban de nacer.  

En este sentido, quién apuesta por la transición energética apuesta de facto por reducir su dependencia del capitalismo fósil, sea empresarial o de estado, y por reforzar su soberanía en todas sus dimensiones ante el imperialismo, sea trumpista o putinista2. Por tanto en el caso de la UE, además de todas las razones éticas y climáticas heredadas del Acuerdo de París y tan de actualidad hoy como ayer, la transición ecológica tiene capacidad de eregirse también en el imaginario político y colectivo como una potente herramienta de soberanía frente al vasallaje fósil, sea ayer del gas ruso o hoy del gas estadounidense, así como del crudo árabe. Convertir a la UE en un electro-continente y sus Estados Miembros en electro-estados es una de las claves centrales de la geopolítica mundial de los próximos años.  

En el caso de la UE, la transición ecológica tiene capacidad de eregirse también en el imaginario político y colectivo como una potente herramienta de soberanía frente al vasallaje fósil

Estrategias ecosociales ante el nuevo (des)orden mundial 

En este contexto, y de cara a los próximos años, asistimos por tanto a un cambio profundo en la lógica subyacente a la transición ecológica y justa. A partir del Acuerdo de París, ésta era el brazo ejecutivo de la “hegemonía cultural climática”, impulsada sobre todo por motivos éticos y solidarios de cuidado del planeta, de las generaciones futuras o de las islas del pacífico. Sin embargo, a día de hoy la transición energética se hace principalmente en Europa por motivos geopolíticos de soberanía nacional y continental. A través de la electrificación de todo en todas partes, lo cual podríamos denominar la “hegemonía eléctrica”, todavía naciente, la transición energética se resignifica en un marco de “independencia vs imperio”. Sin renunciar a los avances de la década anterior, este nuevo panorama obliga a todos los actores a repensar su visión, estrategias y alianzas. 

Para ello, primero, es importante no caer en una trampa. Por mucho que la acción climática ya no sea un objetivo en sí sino una consecuencia indirecta y posible de la búsqueda de soberanía, esto no quita un ápice a la urgencia climática. Ésta sigue tan o más de actualidad ante el grave y continuo calentamiento del planeta que crea cada vez más estragos sociales, económicos, laborales y ambientales. Quitarle hierro, priorizar la competitividad ante la sostenibilidad, desregulando y desmantelando el Pacto Verde Europeo ante las presiones de ciertos sectores económicos, o tratar las cuestiones de soberanía y de clima de forma no transversal y complementaria serían profundos errores y goles en propia puerta3.

Hoy la transición energética es doblemente urgente. A la urgencia climática se añade la urgencia de construir soberanía a través de la transición ecológica; la segunda no sustituye a la primera, siendo ambas dimensiones tan relevantes la una como la otra y dos caras de la misma moneda. Cualquier retroceso en política climática será pan para hoy de cara a la competitividad y hambre para mañana de cara a la soberanía y la resiliencia.  

Por otro lado, puesto que nos enfrentamos a urgencias climáticas y geopolíticas, lo cual significa que los tiempos apremian, hay una necesidad de actuar en Europa, y por tanto en España, a favor de la transición energética de forma rápida, masiva y a gran escala. Si bien sigue siendo importante y nada descartable, ya no es momento de limitarse a los laboratorios de idea y al “small is beautiful” de los años 1970. A contracorriente de la ola negacionista y aún más cuando las guerras, ya sea en Ucrania o Irán, calientan el precio de la energía fósil de la que todavía tanto dependemos, la transición requiere de más impulso político, industrial y social, a través de grandes inversiones públicas y privadas, para reducir de forma prioritaria, significativa y estructural la demanda energética y, dentro de este marco de suficiencia, llevar a cabo proyectos capaces en poco tiempo de transformar un consumo de masas hoy todavía mayoritariamente fósil en otro principalmente renovable y eficiente. Como sugiere Gorka Laurnaga, “si el cambio climático [y, añado, la geopolítica] es un macro-problema, no se puede resolver con microrespuestas”. 

Para ello, es fundamental superar las contradicciones de la transición energética a nivel territorial donde alianzas de facto y sui géneris entre romanticismo paisajístico y agrícola, nimby, colapsismo y negacionismo climático obstaculizan proyectos de renovables necesarios para estos nuevos tiempos. Sin ninguna complacencia para multinacionales sin escrúpulos o la corrupción a nivel local, siempre protegiendo las salvaguardias participativas y ambientales necesarias en cualquier proyecto y apostando por el retorno socio-económico y laboral para las comunidades impactadas para que no haya tierras de sacrificio y la transición sea justa, es posible acelerar la transición energética. Aunque es bueno intentar que lo sea a nivel estético y cultural, lo grande y masivo no es necesariamente bello pero puede ser salvador ante los grandes retos climáticos y geopolíticos actuales y de las próximas décadas. 

Ahora bien, para que haya transición energética se necesitan también materias primas fundamentales. Que hablemos de litio, cobalto o las llamadas “tierras raras”4, todas estas materias se usan para baterías, eólicas, paneles solares o bombas de calor y son por tanto imprescindibles a la electrificación y descarbonización del continente y de España. Sin embargo, según el Tribunal de Cuentas de la UE (2026), 10 de 26 materias primas fundamentales se importan íntegramente desde fuera de la UE y ninguna de las tierras raras utilizadas en la UE se procesan internamente. Dicho de otra manera, la UE es altamente dependiente de países terceros, empezando por China, para el acceso o la transformación de materias críticas fundamentales para su transición energética. Y sin recursos estratégicos directamente explotados y controlados a lo largo de toda la cadena de valor por la UE, la autonomía estratégica es un eslogan vacío y la transición energética como vector de soberanía una quimera.  

Por tanto, además de una reorientación estructural y a largo plazo de la producción y consumo en términos post-crecentistas así como una apuesta industrial decidida por el reciclaje de materias primas, esto supone también una cierta e inevitable relocalización de la extracción en territorio europeo. Siendo honestos, y también solidarios desde una visión Norte Global-Sur Global, no podemos pretender mantener altos niveles de bienestar y servicios públicos, y activar una transición ecológica exitosa sin relocalizar cerca de casa parte de los impactos negativos de nuestro modo de vida, hoy externalizados a países con menos protección social, laboral y ambiental. Siempre y cuando se haga con reglas democráticas, estrictos límites y condicionalidades sociales, climáticas, de protección de la biodiversidad y laborales, así como beneficios para las poblaciones locales implicadas, no habrá soberanía sin un mínimo de extracción en suelo europeo. 

Hoy la transición energética es doblemente urgente. A la urgencia climática se añade la urgencia de construir soberanía a través de la transición ecológica.

Soberanía a través de la alianza

Al mismo tiempo, la soberanía nunca es absoluta. Por mucho que la globalización pase por turbulencias fuertes, existen y existirán en las próximas décadas todavía muchas interdependencias económicas, sociales y ecológicas en un mundo altamente interconectado. Para evitar caer en un vasallaje energético bajo la tutela colonial estadounidense, rusa o árabe, Europa debe apostar por diversificar aún más sus alianzas estratégicas. Ante la vuelta de hemisferios de influencia por parte de grandes potencias, la diversificación debería pasar por la defensa a ultranza del multilateralismo y la capacidad de sellar con diferentes países acuerdos de diferentes índoles, con un lugar central para la energía y las materias primas, con el fin de suplir lo que no se produce y se no puede reciclar en casa, sin nunca depender de unas pocas fuentes en exceso. Que el gas ruso o la poca fiabilidad política de Estados Unidos sirvan de lección. Eso sí, con una condición: que los acuerdos bilaterales se construyan bajo el paraguas del Acuerdo de París y el Marco Mundial de Biodiversidad de Kunming-Montreal, de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo y de la Agenda 2030, y claras cláusulas espejo en materia laboral y ambiental.  

Más allá, es necesario una profunda reflexión en torno a nuestra compleja relación con China. Por un lado, el gigante asiático, quién controla gran parte de las tierras raras necesarias para las energías renovables, se ha convertido en un motor de la transición verde y de la electrificación a marcha forzada de su economía e industria hacia convertirse, potencialmente, en un electro-Estado. Es por tanto un actor central de la transición ecológica y un socio imprescindible de cara a contrarrestar el imperio fósil. Guste o no, en las cumbres climáticas y más allá, la coalición mundial por el clima pasa por China. Al mismo tiempo, además de ser un Estado profundamente autoritario y represivo, China es también un competidor feroz con la capacidad de hundir grandes partes de la transición ecológica europea al inundar los mercados de su sobreproducción, ya sean hace una década con los paneles solares y ahora con los coches o baterías eléctricas. In fine, con China se trata de buscar un equilibrio dinámico entre una firme defensa de la soberanía económica europea, de su transición ecológica “Made in Europe” y de los valores democráticos, mientras al mismo tiempo se abren y refuerzan canales de colaboración geopolítica y comercial para el sostén y el empuje de la lucha climática a nivel mundial. 

Sin recursos estratégicos directamente explotados y controlados a lo largo de toda la cadena de valor por la UE, la autonomía estratégica es un eslogan vacío y la transición energética como vector de soberanía una quimera.  

Pero la cuestión de las alianzas no solo se plantea a nivel internacional sino también a nivel doméstico. Al considerar la transición ecológica ya no solo como un asunto ético-climático sino también como un asunto de orden geopolítico y de soberanía, esto invita a ampliar las posibles alianzas para alcanzarla. A los usual suspects progresistas y ecologistas, en sus diferentes formatos (partidos, sindicatos, asociaciones, ONGs, empresas, etc.), se suman corrientes liberales, con un fuerte ideario pro-europeo y de soberanía supraestatal, como otras conservadoras y/o (sinceramente) patrióticas, con un fuerte acento estatal y muy celosos de la defensa de su patria. De hecho, la perspectiva de colonización e injerencia externa representa una seria brecha ideológica para algunas corrientes nacional-negacionistas europeas, hasta convertir su cosmovisión, según Emilio Santiago, en un “patriotismo confuso”. Al oponerse con vehemencia al Green New Deal y, de facto, defender política y económicamente al imperio fósil, cava en su interior una profunda contradicción: difícilmente puede uno defender su patria si al mismo tiempo la vende a potencias y fondos extranjeros y se convierten en meros vasallos suyos. Mientras ponemos con claridad el dedo en la llaga nacional-negacionista, toca reforzar alianzas clásicas –en torno al eje ético-climático– y añadir otras más incómodas –en torno al eje soberanía energética.  

No son tiempos para quedarse ensimismados. Más allá de defender lo alcanzado en la última década, son tiempos de adaptación al nuevo contexto y reubicación estratégica para retomar la iniciativa. Para mayor sostenibilidad y soberanía, la transición ecológica y justa puede y debe ganar la batalla cultural y política al imperio fósil. 

Este artículo ha sido publicado originalmente en la Revista Gaceta Sindical. Reflexión y Debate de CCOO, número 42, mayo del 2026.

1. Por ejemplo, el Partido Popular Europeo ha resquebrajado por primera vez en 2025 en el Parlamento Europeo el cordón sanitario en torno a la sostenibilidad ambiental de las grandes empresas. Véase: https://elpais.com/internacional/2025-11-23/el-acercamiento-de-la-derecha-a-los-ultras-tensa-la-cuerda-en-bruselas.html ︎
2. Las similitudes entre Putín y Trump, y más allá de las corrientes políticas que representan, son cada vez más evidentes. A nivel ideológico, son defensores de los “valores tradicionales”, basados en un mundo cristiano y blanco, que hay que salvar del declive, con una obsesión contra el colectivo LGBT y el feminismo, mientras que en la práctica política manejan de forma sistémica la mentira así como el desprecio a la democracia liberal y parlamentaria. ︎
3.  No confundamos simplificación y desregulación. Mientras siempre es posible mejorar la eficiencia administrativa simplificando procesos y leyes (por ejemplo para las PYMES), no es lo mismo que la desregulación cuyo objetivo es debilitar el marco legal, en general a favor del gran capital. Véase: https://www.elespanol.com/enclave-ods/opinion/20260218/desregulacion-ue-amenaza-salud-seguridad-alimentaria-naturaleza/1003744133846_13.html ︎
4. Estos 17 elementos químicos son en realidad óxidos metálicos no solubles en agua, siendo en el siglo XVIII el término “tierra” usado para referirse a los óxidos. Además, muchos no son elementos escasos (incluso pueden ser más abundantes que el plomo o el cobre) pero se las califica de “raras” debido a que es muy poco común encontrarlos en una forma pura. ︎

Following the 2015 Paris Accords, the climate movement rode a wave of cultural and political momentum, culminating in the European Green Deal. But war, inflation, and a resurgent fossil fuel-aligned Right have triggered a fierce backlash against climate action in all its forms. To win this fight, Florent Marcellesi argues, Europe must treat energy sovereignty and climate justice as two sides of the same battle.

The economy works in a series of cycles. Be they short (according to Joseph Kitchin), medium (as per Clément Juglar), or long (as Nikolai Kondratieff declared), periods of recovery, of creation, of boom and bust, or of destruction follow one another. The cycle begins anew, in infinite loops that are never quite the same.

Similarly, the just and green transition faces its own distinct historical cycles. Since environmental awareness emerged as a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s, it has gone from being an outsiderissuefor socially conscious minorities to becoming – following the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the focal point of the socio-political mainstream. Today, however, mercilessly besieged by resurgent imperialisms whose interests align with those of fossil fuel capitalism, the transition faces an enormous backlash. It is waging an fierce struggle against the “fossil fuel empire”, gasping for air so that the existential threat that it currently faces does not turn into destruction. But how can the just transition withstand this backlash and consolidate itself within the new world (dis)order? And, how can it defeat the fossil fuel empire?

The birth of a new hegemony

2015 was no ordinary year in our recent history. On 12 December of that year, the Paris Agreement was unanimously adopted at COP21. Although it was by no means a perfect climate accord, by enshrining in an international treaty the 1.5°C global warming limit that humanity must not exceed, this agreement marked a turning point in climate action. The Paris Accords were driven by a broad coalition of aligned nations (the Pacific Islands, the EU, Obama’s United States, etc.), a Vatican motivated by Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, and a civil society keen to turn the page on the failed COP15 summit in Copenhagen.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue but the centre of media attention, a political and social priority, and the new driving force behind an emerging economy centred on the transition and on renewables. Put another way, the year marks the start of a period with a profound capacity for structural transformation and for reshaping collective principles, guided by the climate narrative in public opinion, institutions, and the business world: climate cultural hegemony.

After years of recession and social and economic austerity, this shift in hegemony had a tremendous impact on several fronts. On the one hand, activism played a key role in the cultural and social dynamics in favour of climate action, thanks to the quantitative and qualitative presence of the youth climate movement. Behind Greta Thunberg, the central figure of the climate movement – someone with an almost messianic quality and a source of global inspiration for an entire generation – lay an unprecedented visibility of the climate cause in the media and on the streets. This movement positioned the climate as an existential issue – for young people and any group or nation directly suffering its impacts – and a matter of the highest socio-political priority. As hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Berlin, Brussels, Melbourne, New York, Vancouver, and Madrid in 2019, the climate cause seeped into the recesses of European and global collective consciousness.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue.

Following the path opened by Paris, activism began to reflect on in politics and institutions. On 5 December, 2016, the Darebin in Australia became the first city in the world to declare a “climate emergency”. In May 2019, the UK Parliament became the first national parliament to do so, while Spain officially followed suit following a cabinet decision in January 2020. To date, nearly 2,400 local authorities across 40 countries, covering a population of up to one billion citizens, have declared a climate emergency, making climate change one of the top political priorities in the years following 2015. Inevitably, this social and institutional visibility also had its impact at the ballot box: in the 2019 European elections, riding and simultaneously pushing the climate wave, Green parties achieved a historic result, securing more than 80 seats and transforming their eco-social agenda into a driving force within the European Parliament.

This, in turn, triggered greater environmental momentum. Under the combined pressure of activists on the street and of voters, and despite the fact that it was not even part of the European People’s Party’s electoral priorities at the time, the newly appointed European Commission under the first presidency of the conservative Ursula Von der Leyen, put its main response on the table: the Green New Deal,or the European Green Deal. The debate no longer revolved around whether or not we needed a climate policy, but rather the level of ambition it should have. Although the deal fell short of what the environmental movement and scientific community were calling for, it was far ahead of anything proposed by other geopolitical blocs. The EU established itself as a climate leader, committing to reducing its emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030, whilst making the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 legally binding.

What is more, all European policies – whether in energy, industry, or agriculture – were required to integrate or align, at least in spirit, with climate priorities. In this climate-friendly environment, the economy felt the winds of change from the energy transition and sustainability, the cornerstones of post-Paris business. The end of coal mining in Spain and its phasing out across Europe, the accelerated roll-out of renewable energy, the boom in electric cars, the decarbonisation of industry, and the greening of agriculture: the green economy and green jobs experienced a golden age, whilst the just transition was gaining ground. Paris, the youth climate movement, and the electorate made their mark; climate cultural hegemony was at its zenith.

But every golden age comes to an end, and every high-water mark is followed by a decline. The first blow came from Covid-19. The health crisis, along with its lockdowns, brought the “climate generation” to a screeching halt, and since 2020, there has not been another mass climate demonstration. Despite depriving it of one of its most powerful means of expressing itself, the pandemic did not stop the European Green Deal from becoming the EU’s guiding light. On top of that, thanks to the social and political capital accumulated in previous years, and despite the emerging opposition from the radical right in Hungary and Poland or the anti-climate presidency of Trump’s first administration, the green transition was established as one of the pillars of the NextGenerationEU Recovery Funds. Of the 275 billion euros in capital investment, 42 per cent of the funds were to be allocated to tackling the climate crisis. This represented a tangible investment in the great transformation from a fossil fuel system to a renewable one.

But soon after the first blow of the pandemic came a second one in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Apart from exposing Putin’s imperialist ambitions and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, the war also triggered a surge in energy prices and the cost of living, in turn fuelling social unrest. Reactionary and denialist forces smelt blood. The European Green Deal was still alive, but through the wounds of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, the anti-climate and anti-ecological transition narrative was seeping in, establishing itself as a key pillar of the fossil fuel backlash.

The empire strikes back

Whether at the political, cultural or economic level, we have entered a new cycle: that of the ecological backlash, countering progress on environmental issues. It is the era of the crusade against and relentless attack on a just transition, as the empire of dirty energy and its political network make every possible attempt to reinforce their foothold. In other words, fossil fuel capitalism, in collaboration with a reactionary and denialist international movement, has declared a war –  an almost holy war – against ecological progress in all its forms.

While environmental activists are branded as “terrorists” or “climate fanatics” and climate change is, according to Trump, nothing more than “a hoax”, green policies are constantly under fire from climate-sceptic and far-right organisations. Alongside immigration, they have made the Green New Dealtheir enemy to be defeated in Spain, Brussels, and internationally. They portray, against all evidence, environmental policies as responsible for the more than 200 deaths caused by the 2025 storm in Valencia. They also attack renewables every day, whether during the 2025 blackout on the Iberian Peninsula or by fuelling local opposition to wind and solar energy.

In this context of constant disinformation and attacks, where the far right provokes and the Right reaps the rewards (and part of the Left flirts with reactionary attitudes towards it), ecological setbacks are rife within institutions. For example, in Europe, where the dividing line between conservatives and neo-fascists has been growing increasingly thin since the 2024 European elections,1 environmental commitments have been scaled back. This includes sustainability requirements in the Common Agricultural Policy, as well as environmental restrictions for large companies and the ambition to phase out fossil-fuelled cars.

At the same time, environmental deregulation – which allows for more products that are harmful to nature and health but economically competitive and good for the coffers of large multinationals – is gaining momentum. What is more, in an Orwellian move, the US Government, having once again withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and from any international political or scientific institution fighting for climate action, has even banned the terms “climate change” and “emissions” in federal agencies and official national documents. This includes revising educational programmes. Beyond politics, the cultural battle is all-out.

The ecological backlash is proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution.

After years of climate hegemony, the backlash has been and continues to be inversely proportional to the progress of the ecological transition in recent years. Indeed, just as the restoration of the monarchy was a response to re-establish the interests of the nobility in the face of revolutionary and republican ideas in the 19th century, the ecological backlashis proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution. This is an unmistakable sign that the just ecological transition has hit a nerve. For fossil fuel capitalism, the ecological transition was tolerable as long as it remained sectoral and socio-economically marginal. But today it has become a major obstacle to its businesses, which are currently worth 97 trillion dollars – almost as much as global Gross Domestic Product. It also represents a threat to part of the global elite and population whose way of life and values, based on fossil fuels and the fantasy of unlimited growth in production and consumption, remain non-negotiable.

In this regard, the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) is emblematic of the attempt to return to the fossil fuel-based world order. As well as reverting to imperialist ideological and geopolitical doctrines based on hard power and spheres of influence, authoritarianism, and Western supremacism, the document does not beat about the bush or use euphemisms. In opposition to “the disastrous ideologies of ‘climate change’ and ‘net zero’”, its aim is to “restore US energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal and nuclear power)” and “expand US access to critical minerals and materials”. In this context, the military operation in early 2026 in Venezuela has been the US’s first test of ideological hegemony and control over natural resources within its sphere of influence. Emboldened by the apparent success of this strategy, Trumpist imperialism has stepped up the pace, attempting to subdue the Iranian regime as well, which, incidentally, controls the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas passes.

But this process of political, territorial, and energy neo-colonisation is not confined solely to the US’s historical enemies; Europe is also in its crosshairs. As the NSS argues that the “US objective must be to help Europe correct its current course” through “patriotic parties” – now veritable Trojan horses of this neo-imperialism within the EU – we are witnessing, live and in plain sight, external interference in European internal affairs. In the ideological vision of the reactionary international, the European Union project is superfluous. Despite the EU’s contradictions and double standards in international conflicts, the reactionary right has no need for its founding values based on international law, multilateralism, cooperation and continental solidarity. And, aligning their interests with those of fossil fuel capital, they have no need for the EU’s commitment to the energy transition.

Inevitably, the energy transition clashes with fossil fuel imperialism. Beyond calling into question the enormous profits of the fossil fuel sector, it also reshuffles the geopolitical deck. Whilst the US, Russia and the Gulf states base much of their power on their position as the world’s leading oil producers, the EU – but above all China, the new great power of green capitalism – has accelerated the shift towards renewables. In this new “ecological Cold War”, the marked differences are becoming increasingly acute between the old petro-states that do not want to die and the aspiring electro-states that have not yet been born.

In this sense, those who commit to the energy transition are, in effect, committing to reducing their dependence on fossil-fuel capitalism – whether corporate or state-led – and to strengthening their sovereignty in all its dimensions in the face of imperialism, whether Trumpist or Putinist.2 For Europe, therefore, in addition to all the ethical and climate-related reasons inherited from the Paris Agreement, which are as relevant today as they were in 2015, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage. Turning Europe into an electro-continent and its member states into electro-states is one of the central pillars of global geopolitics in the coming years.

For Europe, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage.

Eco-socialism in the new world (dis)order

Looking ahead, we are witnessing a profound shift in the underlying logic of the just transition. Since the Paris Agreement, this was the executive arm of “climate cultural hegemony”, driven above all by ethical and solidarity-based motives of caring for the planet, future generations, or the Pacific islands. Today, however, the energy transition is taking place mainly in Europe for geopolitical reasons of national and continental sovereignty. Through the electrification of everything everywhere – the still-emerging “electric hegemony” – the energy transition is being reframed within an “independence versus empire” context. Without abandoning the progress of the previous decade, this new landscape compels all actors to rethink their vision, strategies, and alliances.

Yet there is a trap that we must avoid. It is true that climate action is no longer an end in itself, but rather a possible consequence of the quest for sovereignty, yet this does not detract in the slightest from the climate emergency. The environmental reasons for a transition remain as relevant as ever, if not more so, in the face of the serious and ongoing global warming that is causing ever-increasing social, economic, labour, and environmental devastation. Downplaying it, prioritising competitiveness over sustainability, deregulating and dismantling the European Green Deal under pressure from certain economic sectors, or treating issues of sovereignty and climate in a non-complementary manner would be grave errors and own goals.3

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition. The latter does not replace the former; both are equally relevant and are two sides of the same coin. Any backtracking on climate policy represents a short-term gain for competitiveness and a long-term loss for sovereignty and resilience.

Furthermore, given that we face both climate and geopolitical emergencies there is a need for Europe, to push towards the energy transition swiftly and at a large scale. Whilst they remain important, the time has passed for confining ourselves to think tanks and the “small is beautiful” ethosof the 1970s. Fighting the tide of climate denial and – as wars in Ukraine and Iran drive up the price of the fossil fuels on which we still so heavily depend – speeding up the energy transition requires greater political, industrial, and social impetus. This should come through major public and private investment, reducing energy demand, and rapidly transforming mass consumption to make it renewable and sustainable. As activist and reporter Gorka Laurnaga suggests, “If climate change [and, I would add, geopolitics] is a macro-problem, it cannot be solved with micro-responses.”

To this end, it is essential to overcome the contradictions of the energy transition at a local level, where alliances between a romanticised view of the countryside and agriculture, nimbyism, doomsday thinking, and climate denialism are hindering the renewable energy projects needed for these new times. There is no room for leniency towards unscrupulous multinationals or local corruption, and participatory and environmental safeguards should be vehemently upheld. Such an effort should include committing to socio-economic and employment benefits for affected communities, so that no land is sacrificed and the transition is fair. Although it is good to strive for aesthetic and cultural harmony, and the large-scale and massive is not necessarily beautiful, large projects like these will save lives in the face of the major climate and geopolitical challenges of today and the coming decades.

However, for the energy transition to take place, essential raw materials are also needed. Whether we are talking about lithium, cobalt, or rare earth minerals,4 all these materials are used in batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, or heat pumps and are essential for Europe’s electrification and decarbonisation. However, 10 out of 26 critical raw materials are entirely imported from outside the EU, and none of the rare earths used in the EU are processed internally. In other words, the bloc is highly dependent on third countries – especially China – for access to or the processing of critical raw materials essential to its energy transition. Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled throughout the entire value chain by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

In addition to a structural and long-term reorientation of production and consumption in post-growth terms as well as a firm industrial commitment to the recycling of raw materials, this also entails an inevitable relocation of extraction to European territory. On the road towards decarbonisation, we cannot expect to maintain high levels of welfare and public services and bring about a successful ecological transition unless we relocate closer to home some of the negative impacts of our way of life. These impacts are currently outsourced to countries with lighter social, labour and environmental protections. There can be no sovereignty without a minimum level of extraction on European soil. What matters is that this is done in accordance with democratic rules, strict limits, social, climate, and biodiversity protections, and humane labour conditions. It must also bring benefits for the local populations involved.

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition.

Sovereignty through alliance

At the same time, sovereignty is never absolute. Even though globalisation is undergoing severe turbulence, there are and will continue to be many economic, social, and ecological interdependencies in the coming decades in a highly interconnected world. To avoid falling into energy vassalage under the US, Russia, or the Gulf states, Europe must commit to further diversifying its strategic alliances. As spheres of influence return, diversification should involve the staunch defence of multilateralism and the ability to strike agreements of various kinds with different countries, with a central focus on energy and raw materials.

When production or recycling is not possible in Europe, the EU should never be reliant on a single source. Let Russian gas or the political unreliability of the United States serve as a lesson. One condition should always be clear: bilateral agreements should be built under the umbrella of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the International Labour Organization, and the 2030 Agenda, and necessitate the same labour and environmental standards in the country of production as in Europe.

Beyond that, we need to reflect deeply on our complex relationship with China. The Asian giant, which controls much of the rare earths needed for renewable energy, has become a driving force behind the green transition. The rapid electrification of its economy and industry potentially puts it on a path to becoming an “electro-state”. It is a central player in the ecological transition and an indispensable partner in countering the fossil fuel empire. Like it or not, at climate summits and beyond, the global climate coalition must go through China. At the same time, as well as being a deeply authoritarian and repressive state, China is a fierce competitor with the capacity to undermine large parts of Europe’s ecological transition by flooding the markets with its overproduction. This applied a decade ago with solar panels, and it applies now with electric cars or batteries.

Ultimately, with China, the aim is to strike a dynamic balance between a firm defence of European economic sovereignty – our “Made inEurope” green transition – and our democratic values, whilst at the same time opening up and strengthening channels of geopolitical and commercial collaboration to support and drive the global fight against climate change.

Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

But the question of alliances also arises at a domestic level. Considering the green transition not merely as an ethical-climate issue but also as a matter of geopolitics and sovereignty can help us broaden the range of political alliances to achieve it. Alongside the usual progressive and environmentalist partners (parties, trade unions, NGOs, businesses, etc.), there are liberal currents with a strong pro-European and supranationalist ideology, as well as other conservative and patriotic currents, with a strong emphasis on the state and fierce protection of their homeland. In fact, the prospect of colonisation and external interference represents a serious ideological rift for some European nationalist-denialist currents, turning their worldview into a “confused patriotism”. By vehemently opposing the Green New Dealand, in doing so, defending the fossil fuel empire politically and economically, they create a profound internal contradiction: one can hardly defend one’s homeland whilst simultaneously selling it to foreign powers and becoming mere vassals to them. Whilst we clearly need to put our finger on the nationalist-denialist sore spot, it is time to strengthen traditional alliances centred on the ethical-climate axis and forge more uncomfortable ones, this time centred on the energy sovereignty axis.

This is not the time to remain self-absorbed. Beyond defending what has been achieved over the last decade, we must now adapt to the new context and strategically reposition ourselves to regain the initiative. For the sake of sustainability and sovereignty, the just transition can and must win the cultural and political battle against the fossil fuel empire.

This article was originally published in Spanish in the magazine Gaceta Sindical. Reflexión y Debate (CCOO), Issue 42, May 2026. It is republished here with permission.

Translated by Albie Mills |Voxeurop

1. For example, in 2025, the European People’s Party broke through the cordon sanitaire surrounding the environmental sustainability of large corporations in the European Parliament for the first time. See: https://elpais.com/internacional/2025-11-23/el-acercamiento-de-la-derecha-a-los-ultras-tensa-la-cuerda-en-bruselas.html ︎
2. The similarities between Putin and Trump, beyond the political currents they represent, are becoming increasingly evident. Ideologically, they are defenders of “traditional values”, rooted in a Christian and white world that must be saved from decline, with an obsession against the LGBT community and feminism, whilst in political practice they systematically employ lies and contempt for liberal and parliamentary democracy. ︎
3. Let us not confuse simplification with deregulation. Whilst it is always possible to improve administrative efficiency by simplifying processes and laws (for example, for SMEs), this is not the same as deregulation, the aim of which is to weaken legal safeguards, almost always in favour of big business. ︎
4. These 17 chemical elements are in fact metal oxides that are insoluble in water; in the 18th century, the term “earth” was used to refer to oxides. Many are not in fact “rare” elements (they may even be more abundant than lead or copper) but are classified as “rare” because it is very uncommon to find them in a pure form. ︎

Environmental fallout is becoming a tangible reality for a growing number of Europeans amidst unabated climate change. While much of this harm is hard to attribute to a single cause or set of policies, there are cases where a few actors bear clear responsibility for the damage. This dynamic is visible in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, where voters have expressed their frustration through the ballot box.

The ground in the Dutch province of Groningen shakes more often than one might expect. More than 1,600 kilometres from the nearest active volcano, and far from any major natural fault lines, the earthquakes that trouble this region are entirely man-made.

For decades, the Netherlands extracted vast quantities of natural gas from beneath Groningen’s soil, powering homes, fuelling industry, and filling state coffers, all while quietly destabilising the earth below. What began as an economic triumph has since left a complicated legacy: thousands of small earthquakes have damaged homes, unsettled communities, and eroded public trust. Today, residents live not only with cracks in their walls, but with fractures in their confidence in the institutions that once championed the project. From compensation claims and legal battles to the ballot box, this distrust is increasingly visible today.

Gas in Groningen

Up until 1959, the North Sea area was assumed to be mostly devoid of oil and natural gas. This changed when exploratory drilling by the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM), jointly owned by Shell and Esso, discovered a gas field in the municipality of Slochteren, in the province of Groningen. While little was known about its size at first, further drilling revealed a site large enough to be of commercial interest. After the Dutch government granted a concession in 1963, extraction began under a consortium of the state-owned mining company, NAM, Esso, and Shell.

The ensuing gas rush was further amplified by expectations that gas would lose its relevance over the following decades with the anticipated rise of nuclear energy. Consequently, there was a strong push to scale up production and sell Groningen’s gas quickly, and early concerns – particularly about possible ground subsidence – were brushed aside. Extraction ultimately peaked in 1976, at 88 billion cubic metres, roughly equivalent to Germany’s entire current annual gas consumption. Only after the oil crisis of the 1970s and growing social resistance to nuclear energy had shown that gas was here to stay did the government begin treating the Groningen field as more of a long-term reserve, slightly reducing extraction and diversifying towards smaller fields, particularly in the North Sea.

A Turning Point

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the Groningen field seemed nothing short of a miracle. Gas profits flowed generously into shareholders’ pockets as well as into the treasury. The Dutch government received up to 85 per cent of gas revenues, which at times accounted for as much as a fifth of total government spending. For a small country still rebuilding after World War II, this was transformative. Roads, schools, hospitals, and social programmes were funded in no small part by the resource extracted from beneath Groningen.

Yet the benefits to the province itself proved limited. The gas sector created around 9,200 jobs – meaningful but modest for a region with a labour force of approximately 286,000. As a Dutch parliamentary inquiry concluded in 2023, only about 1 per cent of the total revenues from the gas field flowed back to Groningen. Most of the economic value flowed upwards to The Hague, to be redistributed at the national level, far from the villages that hosted the extraction sites.

National policy choices only deepened this imbalance. Unlike Norway, which established a sovereign wealth fund on its oil revenues, the Netherlands folded gas income directly into the state budget. This allowed for the rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state, but at the cost of longer-term planning. The gas windfall also brought what The Economist would coin the “Dutch Disease” in 1977: as revenues strengthened the guilder, Dutch manufacturing lost its international competitiveness, and unemployment more than quadrupled between 1970 and 1977, rising from 1.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent. In short, the gas boom filled the treasury while hollowing out industry.

Things get shaky

For the first two decades of gas extraction, the ground beneath Groningen remained deceptively calm. Despite early concerns about subsidence, no seismic activity was officially recorded, reinforcing the belief that the risks were manageable. This confidence began to erode on Christmas Day in 1986, when a magnitude-2.8 earthquake struck near Assen. In 1991, the Dutch meteorological institute recorded the first officially recognised induced earthquake directly linked to the Groningen field, with a magnitude of 2.4. From there, seismic activity accelerated: four earthquakes in 1991, six in 1992, and 16 in 1993.

Induced earthquakes occur when human activity, most commonly hydrocarbon extraction, alters pressure levels in underground rock formations. As gas is removed, pressure drops, the surrounding rock compacts, and stress builds along geological faults until it finds sudden release. In Groningen, this process unfolded gradually but relentlessly.

By the early 2010s, the situation had escalated sharply. In 2013 alone, 133 earthquakes were confirmed across the Netherlands, 121 of them in Groningen, averaging roughly one every three days. The turning point came on 16 August 2012, with the Huizinge earthquake, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, the strongest ever recorded above the Groningen field.

Though most of these tremors were classified as light by seismological standards, their impact on buildings and residents was anything but negligible. Homes cracked, foundations shifted, and entire neighbourhoods began to deteriorate.

Still, the political response lagged despite the mounting evidence. In January 2013, the Minister of Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp, decided against an immediate reduction in gas extraction, against the urgent recommendation by the State Supervision of Mines, instead commissioning 14 separate investigations into the maximum credible earthquake magnitude, seismic hazard, effects on housing and infrastructure, security of supply, and the fiscal cost of a production cut. This decision came at a time when the Netherlands was in a period of fiscal austerity, and gas revenues were not easy to forgo.

The prevailing assumption was that the risks could be managed financially. A compensation scheme for earthquake damage was expanded, based on the belief that revenues could offset material losses and political fallout. Extraction would continue; damages would be paid.

It was not until 2014 that production was capped – at 42.5 billion cubic metres – for the first time explicitly due to the earthquakes. Further reductions followed, though always cautiously. Plans to phase out extraction entirely were announced, revised, and at one point delayed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which briefly revived Groningen’s strategic importance. Gas extraction from the field ultimately ceased in October 2023. By then, roughly 2.3 trillion cubic metres of gas had been extracted from one of the largest gas fields ever exploited.

But even with extraction halted, the harm persists. Over 3,300 buildings were demolished in Groningen due to earthquake damage between 2012 and 2023. Furthermore, following the Huizinge quake, hundreds of thousands of damage reports have been filed. The Dutch state has paid over 1.2 billion euros in compensation, yet many residents describe the process as slow, opaque, and adversarial. Studies by researchers at the University of Groningen also link sustained exposure to the risk of earthquakes to deteriorating mental and physical health outcomes, and even to increased mortality. Entire communities lived for years in a state of permanent vigilance, unsure whether their homes were safe or whether promised repairs would ever materialise.

Shaking Up the Vote

What makes Groningen particularly distinctive is not just the scale of the damage, but its origin. The harm that people there have faced for decades is immediate, local, and unmistakably man-made. And that has had significant political consequences.

Jordan McAllister and Afiq bin Oslan tackle this topic in a recent paper titled “Shaking up the Vote: The Electoral Impact of Induced Earthquakes”. Placing the Groningen earthquakes at the centre of a broader inquiry, the authors examine how first-hand experience of the direct consequences of environmental harm has translated into changed voting behaviour.

Groningen is an unusually well-suited setting for this kind of study. Unlike pollution or an oil spill, where the distribution of harm is ultimately shaped by human decisions, induced earthquakes strike in nearby areas depending on geological factors that no one controls. They are caused by human activity (unambiguously so in Groningen, where earthquakes were virtually non-existent before drilling began), but where exactly they strike is essentially random. As a result, the researchers can reasonably associate differences in voting behaviour across polling stations with earthquake exposure rather than some pre-existing political difference between areas.

Using data on 891 earthquakes linked to the Groningen field alongside highly granular polling-station-level data across Groningen and its two neighbouring provinces, Friesland and Drenthe, McAllister and bin Oslan ask whether voter exposure to induced earthquakes increases electoral support for GroenLinks, the Dutch green party. The answer, in short, is yes. Across three elections and multiple model specifications, areas with greater earthquake exposure consistently show higher GroenLinks vote shares in subsequent elections.

The paper also finds that earthquakes are associated with a significant fall in support for the PvdA, the Dutch Labour party, consistent with the idea that earthquake exposure is prompting vote-switching towards the Greens from other parties on the left, rather than simply raising overall turnout.

Crucially, the relationship between earthquake exposure and green voting is not linear. It peaks at moderate levels of exposure and weakens at the very highest levels of impact. The authors suggest that those most severely affected may come to prioritise immediate material concerns such as compensation, repairs, and economic security over electoral environmental preferences. At the same time, those experiencing meaningful but less overwhelming exposure are most likely to translate that experience into a green vote. Environmental shocks then do not automatically and uniformly push electorates in a greener direction. How exposed they are, and what else that exposure demands of them, matter as well.

Beyond Groningen

The Groningen case is, in several respects, unusual. Induced seismicity directly linked to gas extraction in a densely populated region, with clear institutional responsibility and a single identifiable operator, is not a combination that recurs frequently elsewhere. But the broader mechanism it illustrates – locally experienced and clearly attributable environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour – is hardly confined to the Netherlands.

In the Val d’Agri valley in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, the energy giant ENI’s oil extraction operations present a comparable picture. The region hosts the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe, yet its population has seen negligible economic benefit from decades of extraction while bearing environmental costs, including contaminated water sources and elevated rates of cancer and respiratory illness.

The political response has been real: ENI executives have faced joint legal action from the regional government, municipalities, and environmental agencies. Moreover, grassroots organisations such as COVA Contro have built sustained platforms for accountability. Anti-extraction sentiment has surfaced electorally too: in the 2019 regional election, a left-wing candidate running explicitly on an anti-oil platform received 4.3 per cent of the vote, though this has remained a niche position rather than a decisive force.

Two factors may help explain the gap between Italy and the Netherlands. Firstly, economic anxiety in the Val d’Agri valley, one of Italy’s poorest regions, tends to compete with environmental grievance as a political driver. Secondly, unlike the Netherlands, Italy has no well-established Green party capable of channelling anti-extraction sentiment into parliamentary weight. While the Groningen parallel seems to hold in terms of the underlying injury and political mobilisation, the similarities are less clear when it comes to votes.

The German lignite regions offer another striking parallel. In the Rhineland and Lausitz, local communities have borne the costs of extraction in ways that are, if anything, more visible than in Groningen: more than 50 villages or parts of villages have been demolished in North Rhine-Westphalia alone to make way for expanding open-cast mines, with entire communities uprooted and resettled. The public has opposed these projects fiercely: the planned demolition of the village of Lützerath to expand RWE’s Garzweiler II mine drew thousands of protesters over years of sustained resistance; in 2023 the eventual five-day police clearance of an activist occupation of the village became a national flashpoint. But was there also a wider political response?

The vote share data from North Rhine-Westphalia is at least suggestive: the Greens rose from 6.4 per cent to 18.2 per cent in state elections between 2017 and 2022, in contrast to their more modest gains at the federal level, from 8.9 per cent in 2017 to 14.8 per cent in the 2021 Bundestag election. That rise, though, predates the party’s own turn: In October 2022, when they were in government federally and in the state, the Greens agreed to the deal with RWE that cleared Lützerath for demolition. This turn was viewed by many as a change in sides. Whether this will cost them electorally is difficult to determine.

The confounders here are too numerous to read much into either shift directly, but the broader point stands: these cases offer at least plausible instances of locally experienced environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour, in different institutional and partisan contexts. What they also reveal, by contrast, is why Groningen is such a rare analytical opportunity. Elsewhere, the harm is real enough, but the causal pathway remains tangled, and the harm harder to isolate.

The Limits of Attribution

The cases considered so far share a key feature: the source of harm is local, visible, and traceable to a specific operator or set of decisions. Where the previous section showed variation – Groningen producing a measurable electoral response, Basilicata and the lignite regions less so – the explanation lay not in attribution, but in what came after it: whether a credible electoral channel existed to convert grievance into votes. The mobilisation, in all three cases, seems real enough. But not all environmental harms afford even that starting point.

When flooding devastates a region or drought destroys harvests, the causal chain is longer and more contested. Climate change may have made the event more severe, but the link between many natural disasters and specific policy choices is harder to draw, and therefore harder to convert into electoral accountability. The devastating floods that struck Valencia in October 2024, killing over 230 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Spain’s recent history, illustrate this well. Scientists broadly agreed that climate change had intensified the rainfall, but the political response was far from unified. Multiple levels of government faced – and traded – blame simultaneously: regional president Carlos Mazón faced mass protests over the dismantling of an emergency unit his administration had shut down just the year before, while the national government faced accusations of insufficient coordination. Rather than producing more support for environmental protection, the debate became highly polarised, with disinformation campaigns seeking to redirect blame onto environmentalists themselves for having allegedly restricted flood-control infrastructure.

Groningen and the cases it can usefully be set alongside illustrate that the political salience of environmental harm is shaped not only by its severity, but by its legibility, by how clearly it can be traced to identifiable decisions, and how directly it is felt. As the consequences of both energy policy and climate change continue to accumulate across Europe, that kind of clarity is likely to become rarer.

In the face of the intersecting crises of demography, technology and economic insecurity, finding solidarity in the care we give each other offers a path to a more optimistic future. But working towards this requires us to challenge the foundational assumptions of the economy that surrounds us, one that devalues rather than celebrates the care we give each other.

The language of crisis defines our collective experience of the 21st century. As our attention is pulled from one emergency to another, we risk overlooking the mindsets that enable these shocks – not only the pursuit of extraction, growth, and profit, but also our collective relationship with care.  

Care shows up in all our lives – in parenting, foster care and paid care work; in receiving care, or being part of communities. At some point, we all need to care for others and be cared for ourselves. Yet care has been systematically undervalued and under-resourced as a result of those dominant mindsets.  

This isn’t a new issue. Unpaid care labour – particularly the assumption that it is labour carried out by women – is a foundational premise of our modern economy. While more women than ever taking up paid labour is a positive outcome of changing social norms, little has been done to reckon with the implications this has for unpaid care. Particularly as people live longer and Europe’s population shifts, the need for change becomes ever more pressing.  

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention.

But doing so is at odds with an economy that only rewards profit and productivity as, statistically speaking, so much of the care we give to each other counts as neither. Social security systems and wider public services that sustain care have seen weakened investment and wealth extraction through privatisation.  

In England and Wales, research shows that those with a closer relationship to care – whether they receive or give, caring services more than the average person – are more at risk of experiencing poverty: children (31 per cent versus 21 per cent for the rest of the population), larger families (44 per cent of children in large families) disabled people (28 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for able-bodied people) and unpaid carers (23 per cent).  

Where the language of crisis sets off panic, solutions are presented in the form of quick fixes like further investment in AI and technology. From managing workflow to increasing accessibility and translations, predicting future need and remotely monitoring vital signs, there are clear uses for technological innovations across social care settings. But additional research shows that both the public and workers are wary of the impact of less human connection in care and healthcare settings. Whilst inserting new technology for the sake of productivity may in fact achieve the opposite – open up more time for human-led care – there is also a risk that this motivation reinforces existing attempts to minimise investment in human care and ignores the role of unpaid care in our lives. 

Rather than seeing care as another crisis to tackle at surface level, it should be seen as the driver of a shift for our economic model. Facing up to this reality will require us to reckon with the importance of care in our lives and to acknowledge  different experiences of care as separate as having more in common than divides them.  

How did we get here? 

Although European countries invest in care to differing degrees, the Europe-wide approach  is rooted in a shared ideology that sees care as either a burden or a deficit. Feminist economics shows that this ideology is inseparable from the logics of neoliberalism. As writer and academic Emma Dowling articulates, “care… is a cost to capital”, and it follows that this cost must be minimised. When economic success is measured according to GDP growth, any such cost is at odds with ideas of economic progress. Feminist economist Emma Holten lays bare the extent to which measures of economic progress and care are in conflict with one another: “[In] the eyes of GDP, taking care of a flock of kids and taking a nap are equivalent. Either way you are unproductive.” 

Whilst some argue we should factor care into GDP calculations in order to appreciate its value, this would merely align care with capitalism rather than engage with the bigger question of whether capitalism will enhance or degrade the quality of care. With a growing number of economists identifying GDP’s dominance over the economy as detrimental to wellbeing, greater ambition over the scale of change needed is essential. 

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention. This gendered divide endures: women, for example, take on at least two and a half times more housework and care work than men globally – despite this being a socially created and maintained inequality. 

Overcoming these gendered and capitalist mindsets will require action across multiple fronts. Our research with grassroots activists whose work spans different relationships with care identified a range of opportunities to act in solidarity towards a more caring economy: in our communities, in the ways we work, and through the welfare state. 

Communities: Care by design 

In our communities, resisting capitalist framings requires us to work together to create a culture that celebrates care and enables it by design. How we design the places we live is one element of this. Conventionally, care is compartmentalised into specific policy spaces; often this means it is squeezed into the remit of health and social care systems. But for many people, care intersects with their lives in a much more comprehensive way.  

In Barcelona, care blocks offer an alternative way of thinking about how the places in which  we live influence our care for one another. The city has applied to care the principles of the commons (the idea that resources are shared and co-governed by their user community), and emboldened them with material resources and participatory local democratic processes in a municipalist approach. 

These care blocks sprang from Barcelona en Comu (BComu), a political platform that centred feminist economic thinking, reframing care as a public responsibility as opposed to a private issue. They started from a place whereby care is foundational and where those who are the providers of care are centred in policy decisions. Bringing together the many policy threads that impact those who undertake care labour at a local level moved the approach to care – crucially, by foregrounding its place in the city’s economy. 

BComu approached care holistically rather than in a compartmentalised way. Despite bureaucratic barriers, they supported care workers to set up cooperatives and worked to create the abovementioned care blocks whose goal was to enable small teams of workers to support a defined number of people in a fixed geographic location. Workers use a self-managing team model; they also have full-time contracts (as opposed to the more common zero-hours contracts, thereby mitigating economic insecurity), and a space to meet and plan their work. The intention is to improve labour conditions (including travel time between clients), improve the experience of beneficiaries of care, and create a more integrated service with wider health and social services. 

In addition, BComu is creating Centres of Care in these neighbourhoods bringing together a range of services for care workers and those undertaking unpaid care in a range of forms. It expanded its municipal children’s services to enable more women from low income families to undertake paid work. 

Whilst many of Barcelona’s individual initiatives may be familiar to other countries, their political philosophy of bringing different groups together, placing resources in one place, and using a local approach sets BComu’s work apart. By centring inequality and the recognition that “care work is everyone’s responsibility”, they have taken steps to address the devaluing of care in all its forms. 

Work: Rebalancing time 

How we spend our time also significantly impacts our ability to take on different caring relationships. The norms governing paid labour contain fertile ground for change. Across Europe, paid work is failing people with a relationship to care, from disabled people to unpaid carers and parents. The EU’s disability employment gap sat at 24 per cent in 2024, whilst in the UK it’s at around 30 per cent. Meanwhile, some 600 unpaid carers leave paid work every day in the UK alone. Our recent research into unpaid carers’ experiences of poverty exemplifies this, with one unpaid carer telling us, “I was a teacher, but [care] was taking all my evenings… so I’ve got a new job but it’s paying a lot less.” 

Discussions around paid work tend to converge on a vague commitment to flexible working or access to unpaid or low-paid leave for specific groups. Yet such targeted reforms do little to engage with the systems that have led to the norms we have today. Here, solidarity across caring experiences has the potential to embolden campaigns to drive care’s recognition as a collective experience that are currently compartmentalised. Take paid leave. In the UK, different campaigners are working to increase paid sick leave, statutory paternity leave, and paid carers leave. Each of these is an act of rebalancing our paid labour with our wider lives, and any such campaign must speak to the underlying mindsets that devalue care for ourselves and each other.  

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics, that we must recognise the role unpaid care plays in our economy and the need to shift our paid labour model to value and enable care. A more systemic rebalancing of time is needed. 

This year will mark a century since the five-day work week was adopted by the Ford Motor Company, a significant win after a long campaign by unions. A decade prior to this, the average work week was between 50 and 60 hours. Since 1926, average working hours have plateaued, currently standing at 37.5 for women and 39 for men. 

There is growing interest and evidence for a move to a four-day work week, with pilots undertaken globally. Rebalancing the amount of time we spend in paid labour, without loss of pay, is a crucial way to centre care in our lives. In Poland, the government announced a pilot for a shorter working week in 2025 to address some of the longest working hours in Europe. Employers can voluntarily test a flexible approach to shorter working hours, either by reducing daily working hours, increasing the weekend by one day, or providing more annual leave, all whilst maintaining salaries. The pilot received four times the anticipated sign-ups from employers, with over 2000 companies currently undertaking a trial. 

In Germany, 45 organisations were recruited for a two-year pilot to trial a four-day work week, whilst in the UK, a further 61 trialled the same over six months. Across different contexts, results show that productivity improves (an obvious priority for employers), opening space for a better relationship with care. Improvements in wellbeing are also significant, with sick days declining and employees reporting a reduction in stress. 

Social security: Towards universalism 

The social security system is another essential pillar for a more flexible approach to paid work. For those whose caring role means that paid work is not possible, or is limited, the system should provide enough support to live well without having to minimise that care. 

In Europe, improvements in living conditions, shifting attitudes to illness and disability, and innovations in healthcare have meant more of us live longer. Countries have responded to this in different ways, with different degrees of investment in social security and social care. However, the vast majority of care is still provided by family and friends, much of it unpaid. 

In the 1970s, the UK introduced the Invalid Care Allowance (now Carer’s Allowance) for single people caring for a disabled family member. The allowance is now available to all people over 18 who are not in full-time education and are providing care for 35 hours or more a week. There are challenges with the UK model, not least its low payment level, but we can look to it as a starting point for considering how we value and enable those providing unpaid care.  

The idea that our social security systems are there to support our different relationships with care opens up the possibility of more universal provision too. Whilst payments for unpaid carers – and for disabled people who face extra costs – are essential to ensure everyone is able to live well, there is also a case to be made for a universal basic income (UBI) that overcomes the need for boundaries and thresholds around what counts as care. Any model would need to account for the additional costs faced by disabled people in an ableist society, but a foundation of UBI could go some way to enabling care in all our lives. 

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics…

A long road ahead 

Whilst UBI is a longer road, we are seeing early shifts across Europe towards a rebalancing of paid and unpaid labour, towards places designed around care that could enable us all to live well. As a care-experienced collaborator told us of a caring future, it “is imbued with the principles of love, care and freedom for all…we have an obligation to keep that alive and flourishing, to demand a multitude of futures that aren’t eschatological and annihilistic.” Embracing that care is a collective experience, and using that knowledge to act together, in solidarity, to change the mindsets that shape our economy is a source of hope. 

En la seva ambició de convertir el futbol en un esport veritablement global, la FIFA s’acosta cada vegada més als autòcrates i els avala obertament. Tanmateix, no són només els règims els que estan remodelant el futbol. El neoliberalisme també està transformant el joc i la relació entre els aficionats i els seus clubs. Hem parlat amb el politòleg i autodeclarat nostàlgic del futbol Cas Mudde.

Alessio Giussani: El 2025, poc abans que Trump comencés a bombardejar l’Iran, la FIFA li va concedir el seu premi de la pau. El president de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino, també va aparèixer a l’anomenada “junta de la pau” amb una gorra de Trump. Mentrestant, els aficionats normals són expulsats pels preus. Continua sent aquest el joc del poble?

Cas Mudde: El futbol mundial està cada vegada més capturat pels diners i per persones i règims dubtosos. La FIFA no és una excepció, sinó un cas extrem.

El Mundial de 2018 a Rússia va ser un torneig problemàtic, però no va generar gaire publicitat negativa. El 2022, a Qatar, era impossible ignorar la connexió entre futbol i  política. Tot i això, el règim qatarià va acabar obtenint una imatge pública força positiva: la gent es va oblidar de les vulneracions dels drets humans i de la quantitat desmesurada de diners gastada en estadis que pràcticament no tindrien utilitat després del torneig, i es va quedar amb la idea que havia estat un gran Mundial. Això és el que ha passat, pràcticament, amb tots els règims, democràtics o no, que han organitzat una Copa del Món. Aquest any, sospito, serà la primera vegada que els països amfitrions rebran més publicitat negativa que positiva.

Això no importa gaire a un país tan gran i poderós com els Estats Units, i encara menys a Trump, la base electoral del qual ni tan sols té interès pel futbol. Deixarà de preocupar-se pel torneig tan bon punt deixi de ser-li útil. Però això sí que perjudicarà la manera com la gent percep el futbol mundial.

Almenys sobre el paper, aquest no és el “Mundial MAGA”. L’organitzen tres nacions —els EUA, el Canadà i Mèxic— que representen tres espais diferents de la política mundial: els defensors dels combustibles fòssils, el liberalisme ultracentrista i el socialisme del Sud global. Quin significat li atribueixes a això?

Mark Carney també és defensor dels combustibles fòssils. El que és interessant és que aquest Mundial es coneixia inicialment com «la candidatura unificada», però en qüestió de mesos es va convertir, de fet, en el Mundial MAGA: tot gira al voltant dels Estats Units i de Trump. Això representava un repte, però també una gran oportunitat per al Canadà i Mèxic. El Canadà hauria pogut demostrar que és el bon noi de l’Amèrica del Nord; Mèxic hauria pogut demostrar que és el veritable país del futbol. El llistó és tan baix que fer el que tothom sol fer ja et fa quedar bé.

“La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que aposta per totes les coses dolentes que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista.

En canvi, Canadà i Mèxic no han dit res sobre el premi de la pau, del tracte a l’equip iranià i Omar Artan, i sobre l’àrbitre somali a qui es va denegar el visat. L’únic que fan és facilitar les coses a Trump i intentar suavitzar la situació quan fa alguna cosa dolenta, per això crec que també afrontaran crítiques. En general, no tinc la sensació que cap dels països amfitrions estigui particularment entusiasmat amb aquest Mundial. Claudia Sheinbaum ha impulsat algunes iniciatives realment bones a Mèxic, com ara construir centenars de camps comunitaris, però no hi veig un impuls real.

L’edició del Mundial de 2022 va ser una de les edicions més globals fins a la data, amb Qatar com a amfitrió i el Marroc arribant a les semifinals. L’edició d’enguany s’ha ampliat per incloure 48 equips en lloc de 32. Hi ha algun mèrit decolonial en l’ambició d’Infantino de fer que el futbol mundial sigui veritablement global?

El projecte d’Infantino és aconseguir la seva reelecció. Com més associacions nacionals de futbol estiguin representades al Mundial, més satisfetes estaran amb el seu lideratge. Si realment volgués decolonitzar el futbol, podria haver canviat la representació proporcional entre continents. En canvi, només va ampliar el nombre de participants sense canviar els criteris subjacents. Això vol dir tenir encara més països d’Europa, perquè són rics, i això és el que volen els patrocinadors.

La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que beneficia tots els elements negatius que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista. Essencialment, la FIFA dona diners a les associacions nacionals de futbol perquè els gastin com considerin millor per al progrés del futbol als seus països. Per descomptat, molts règims simplement agafen aquests diners i se’ls embutxaquen, deixant el futbol sense desenvolupar. Però a la FIFA això no li importa gaire.

La política de la FIFA també està empitjorant. El 2018, no es va pronunciar contra les polítiques russes contràries als drets LGBTQIA+, però tampoc els va donar suport. A Qatar, es va prohibir als capitans dels equips portar braçalets amb els colors de l’arc de Sant Martí. Ara, la FIFA defensa activament Trump i fins i tot el celebra.

Només una fracció de les nacions que participen al Mundial són democràcies —i encara menys liberals—, i el mateix s’aplica al conjunt dels membres de la FIFA. Hi ha maneres de defensar els valors liberals sense el postureig civilitzacional?

Si vols ser coherent, hauries de deixar la política al marge tant com puguis, perquè si converteixes la FIFA i el Mundial en un projecte liberal-democràtic, aleshores et dirigeixes a una minoria d’estats, i mai no seràs veritablement global. Es podria argumentar que ser polític, encara que de vegades siguis hipòcrita o incoherent, és millor que mantenir-se al marge de la política. Però ja no estic segur que sigui així, perquè les campanyes d’inclusió de la FIFA s’han tornat tan buides, tan vagues i tan plenes de pinkwashing que l’únic missatge que arriba és que tot el que diuen sobre política és una collonada. [Nota de la traductora: “pinkwashing” es manté en anglès perquè és un terme d’ús habitual per descriure l’ús instrumental de causes LGTBIQ+ per millorar la imatge d’una institució.]

Al mateix temps, és clar, la política sempre hi és. Organitzar un Mundial és una gran oportunitat per a qualsevol règim, i la neutralitat no fa que l’esdeveniment deixi de ser polític. Però sí que tinc un problema amb fixar expectatives elevades i no estar mai a l’altura —que és precisament el que ha fet la FIFA amb la seva agenda de drets humans i els seus grans compromisos amb la sostenibilitat. No pot existir un Mundial sostenible, i sempre hi haurà participants que no respectin els drets humans. Aleshores, per què la FIFA no introdueix una agenda menys ambiciosa però que realment compleixi?

Vivim un moment de ressorgiment del nativisme i del nacionalisme, amb l’extrema dreta en ascens arreu del món. Alimenta un Mundial farcit de política aquestes dinàmiques, o el futbol pot canalitzar el nacionalisme cap a alguna cosa més afable, fins i tot unificadora?

El sociòleg britànic Michael Billig va encunyar el terme “nacionalisme banal” per descriure les representacions quotidianes d’una nació, que construeixen un sentit compartit d’identitat nacional. Es tracta, per exemple, de banderes nacionals penjades a l’exterior dels edificis públics. El nacionalisme esportiu entra dins d’aquesta categoria, i té elements negatius. Al meu país, els Països Baixos, una part del nostre sentiment antigermànic no provenia de la Segona Guerra Mundial, sinó del futbol. Al mateix temps, els equips de futbol en molts països són més multiculturals que les societats, i jugadors de diferents ètnies esdevenen herois i models per a molts —almenys mentre guanyen.

El que és peculiar del futbol és l’emoció i la intensitat que afegeix al nacionalisme banal, fent que el nacionalisme sigui una mica secundari. Guanyar vol dir guanyar un partit, no que la teva nació domini una altra. Per molt que em desagradin les banderes, crec que hi ha un pànic moral al voltant del nacionalisme i el hooliganisme en el futbol. Hi ha elements inclusius i exclusius: pot ser tant bo com dolent.

Imparteixes un curs sobre futbol i política. Com interpretes aquesta relació, i com veus que evoluciona?

Gran part de l’atenció se centra en l’alta política: institucions, governs, partits, etcètera. A mi m’interessa més la ‘baixa’ política de l’esport, la música, la cultura, etc. Faig servir el futbol per ensenyar política, perquè el futbol reflecteix la societat de moltes maneres. Curiosament, aquest és un dels cursos més radicals que he impartit. Llegim Judith Butler i la performativitat de gènere, i parlem molt d’identitat i globalització.

Pensa en la rellevància creixent dels “equips de la diàspora”, aquelles seleccions nacionals que  estan més  formades cada vegada més per jugadors nacionals “de sang” encara que no hagin nascut ni crescut al país que representen. Senegal n’és un exemple paradigmàtic, amb gairebé la meitat dels jugadors nascuts o criats fora del país —principalment a França, la seva antiga potència colonial. Els equips de la diàspora són, en certa manera, el contrari dels “equips cívics”, formats per jugadors de minories nascuts i criats en un país, com els alemanys d’origen turc. Això mostra que fins i tot els estats molt restrictius amb la immigració poden ser molt flexibles quan es tracta d’esportistes d’elit, i que les persones antiimmigració no tenen cap problema amb això.

La UE també ha tingut un paper important en la configuració del futbol modern. La sentència Bosman del Tribunal de Justícia de la Unió Europea, el 1995 va sacsejar el sistema europeu de traspassos futbolístics per alinear-lo amb les normes del mercat únic. I com que Europa és tan dominant en el futbol global, la sentència va canviar el sistema mundial.

Interpretes el futbol com a part de la societat civil. Quin és el raonament darrere d’aquesta associació?

Solia treballar sobre la societat civil a l’Europa postcomunista a finals dels anys noranta i principis dels 2000, hi havia una associació positiva entre una societat civil forta i una democràcia saludable. Però el discurs tenia un enfocament molt limitat en grups prooccidentals, grups feministes, etcètera. M’interessaven els anomenats grups de la societat “incivilitzada”, que no eren necessàriament prodemocràtics, però que unien molt a les persones i eren políticament actius. Els hooligans i els ultres sovint tenen dues cares: tenen mala reputació, particularment a Europa, però també són actius en bones causes, com ajudar persones pobres o comunitats locals després de terratrèmols o altres desastres naturals. M’agrada aquesta complexitat.

Com ha canviat el neoliberalisme el futbol?

Per donar resposta a aquesta pregunta sovint faig servir el club al que dono suport, el PSV Eindhoven. El PSV va ser fundat per treballadors de Philips. Era, en molts sentits, una representació de l’economia industrial, d’una forma de capitalisme arrelat. Philips tenia una connexió amb Eindhoven perquè tenia fàbriques a la ciutat, i senzillament no pots  agafar fàbriques i traslladar-les a un altre lloc. Ara tens clubs, com el Manchester City, que són un reflex perfecte del neoliberalisme global. Un règim estranger decideix invertir en un club no perquè tingui una connexió amb una comunitat local, sinó perquè aquest club és una marca global i et dona accés a una audiència global. La connexió entre capitalisme i futbol sempre hi ha estat, però el capitalisme ha canviat, i el futbol està canviant amb ell.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

Sent nostàlgic, he de recordar que els vells temps no sempre van ser tan purs. Abans dels fons d’inversió, hi havia l’oligarca rus Roman Abramóvitx que va comprar el Chelsea. En contextos més petits, hi havia el venedor de cotxes de segona mà que dirigia el club local. L’escala era més petita i més local, però aquell tipus també era dubtós i feia servir el futbol per elevar la seva pròpia imatge.

El que em preocupa des del punt de vista de la societat civil és que, tot i que sempre hi va haver explotació i jerarquia, també hi havia una connexió amb la comunitat. Philips depenia d’Eindhoven. Els capitalistes d’avui no tenen aquesta connexió, i la comunitat local gairebé ja no té veu. Els grans clubs ja no depenen de la venda d’entrades com a part important dels seus ingressos. Ara els diners provenen dels drets de retransmissió i dels patrocinadors.

Els aficionats són a temps de salvar el joc en el qual s’ha convertit?

Els aficionats són una mica com els addictes: tenen el poder de destruir el sistema demà mateix si deixen d’alimentar la maquinària. Ningú no invertirà diners en el futbol si ningú no el mira. Però, si ho fan, també hi surten perdent. Per això tenen poques opcions per plantar cara. Poden resistir la mercantilització des de dins del sistema. A Alemanya, per exemple, van aconseguir frenar la implantació dels partits dels dilluns al vespre. O bé poden abandonar el sistema del tot i crear clubs alternatius propietat dels aficionats, però aquests clubs no poden competir al màxim nivell.

No soc particularment optimista perquè veig que el futbol modern es destrueix a si mateix de la mateixa manera que ho fa el capitalisme. S’expandeix a nivells insostenibles, com un esquema piramidal en què el valor es va aprimant cada cop més. Les firmes de capital privat i els règims estan injectant diners al sistema perquè esperen alguna cosa a canvi, ja sigui benefici o victòries diplomàtiques. Però poden retirar-se tan ràpidament com hi van entrar si s’adonen que ja no els queda res a guanyar. I quan la bombolla esclata, no tornem al punt on érem abans, perquè les lleialtats han desaparegut. La generació d’anglesos que ha quedat exclosa dels estadis de la Premier League pels preus no tornarà així com així.

Molts clubs de futbol es troben entre les institucions més antigues que existeixen. Han existit durant més d’un segle, i han donat sentit al fet de ser d’algun lloc. Quan una antiga ciutat minera perd un equip de futbol, és una pèrdua important per a la comunitat.

Malgrat tot, el futbol encara és capaç de crear comunitat i connexió. Hi ha res que els partits polítics o les organitzacions de la societat civil en puguin aprendre?

El tipus de relació que tens amb un club que segueixes és profundament irracional. No pots recrear aquesta relació artificialment.

Una cosa que se’n pot aprendre és la importància de l’arrelament. Si la gent continua donant suport a un club fins i tot quan perd o baixa de categoria, és perquè s’hi sent connectada. Molts clubs locals funcionen gràcies a voluntaris i persones que no en treuen diners. La professionalització creixent i la manca d’arrelament són cada vegada més febleses comuns dels moviments progressistes, i veig que una cosa semblant passarà en el futbol modern.

Si no et reconeixen com a part de la comunitat, la gent sent que has perdut el contacte. La majoria d’ONG avui dia no tenen voluntaris; tenen professionals. I per als professionals, la institució importa més que la causa. Si el que t’importa principalment és una causa, trobes maneres de fer la feina fins i tot quan s’acaben els diners. Però si el que t’importa principalment és la institució, passaràs a una altra cosa i trobaràs una altra feina. Les grans ONG s’han convertit en negocis amb llocs de treball molt ben pagats ocupats per persones que passen d’una organització a una altra. El mateix està passant al futbol.

Pel costat positiu, el futbol no s’ha tornat també més inclusiu?

Absolutament. Als anys vuitanta i noranta, les dones o les persones queer no se sentirien segures en un estadi de la Premier League, i ara sí. En certa manera, la gentrificació ha fet el futbol més accessible per a alguns grups. És clar que ha exclòs una part de la classe treballadora blanca, però una part de la classe treballadora blanca abans excloïa altres grups. Hi he pensat molt, perquè com qualsevol nostàlgic, hi havia una part que no veia. Com a home blanc heterosexual, formo part del grup que abans posseïa l’estadi, i per això mai no vaig experimentar l’exclusió.

Però la securitització i l’expulsió de la gent pels preus no són les úniques opcions per combatre la discriminació, i els aficionats més rics no són necessàriament menys racistes. Molt del sexisme, l’homofòbia i el racisme que veus als estadis és performatiu. Per tant, el camí a seguir és redefinir el paper de l’aficionat. Alemanya mostra que es poden tenir estadis assequibles que també siguin més inclusius. Funciona millor quan són els mateixos aficionats els qui es controlen i es moderen mútuament. El Borussia Dortmund, per exemple, tenia un problema important amb neonazis als anys vuitanta i, en gran mesura, va aconseguir expulsar-los.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

La popularitat del futbol femení està explotant. Pot ser una alternativa més saludable a les dinàmiques que has estat descrivint?

Sovint recorrem a les dones per resoldre els problemes que han creat els homes. Diem que els homes són així, de manera que necessitem més dones, perquè les dones són diferents. Però les dones no són necessàriament millors que els homes. Si l’estructura t’empeny en una determinada direcció, no importa qui siguis. En l’estructura actual, que el futbol femení continuï sent “pur” també voldria dir que les dones continuïn cobrant molt menys que els homes en nom d’algun ideal, i no crec que això sigui just.

En qualsevol cas, sembla que el futbol femení s’està transformant ràpidament al futbol modern i avança en la mateixa direcció que el futbol masculí —potencialment fins i tot més de pressa. La propietat de varis clubs ja és una realitat. Als EUA, un club de Columbus, Ohio, ha pagat recentment 200 milions de dòlars a la National Women’s Soccer League per incorporar-se a la lliga el 2028. Això són molts més diners del que s’està gastant en les jugadores.

Tot i així, molts clubs de futbol femení són més actius políticament que els clubs masculins, perquè les jugadores són més explícites. Ser futbolista dona encara es veu com una transgressió, de manera que tendeixes a estar més compromesa políticament. Però quant menys transgressor i més mercantilitzat es torni el futbol femení, menys polític serà. De moment, continua sent una via d’escapament per a molts aficionats perquè és més assequible i més divertit —sens dubte per als grups minoritaris, i particularment per a les persones queer.

On se situa el futbol femení pel que fa a la seva dimensió comunitària i de societat civil?

Gairebé tots els clubs femenins han estat fundats per clubs masculins, de manera que molt pocs són realment l’expressió d’una comunitat. Hi ha excepcions, com el Turbine Potsdam a Alemanya, que és un dels equips femenins amb més èxit del país. Però ara han estat  superats per clubs com el Bayern de Munic i el Wolfsburg, perquè no pots competir amb els gegants.

Tanmateix, la majoria dels aficionats al futbol femení tenen un propòsit polític, i en aquest sentit són l’expressió d’una comunitat. Molts aficionats subratllen que hi són per donar suport a l’esport femení, no a un club concret. Ningú no va a un partit de futbol masculí per donar suport al moviment. Per tant, hi ha un element de comunitat.

Translated by Sandra Cruz

Nearly two years after the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul Romania’s 2024 presidential election, there is no clear end in sight to one of the most divisive political sagas in the country’s recent history. With anti-establishment sentiment on the rise, evidence of Russian interference might not settle the matter and rebuild trust with citizens.

Since his election as president in Romania’s May 2025 re-run, Nicușor Dan has yet to fulfil a key campaign promise: releasing a detailed report explaining why the Constitutional Court cancelled the 2024 presidential race after far-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round with nearly 23 per cent of the vote.

The Court justified its unprecedented intervention on the basis of intelligence assessments alleging a coordinated foreign interference operation. According to those evaluations, the campaign involved illicit financing, online manipulation, and Russian-linked networks that artificially boosted Georgescu’s visibility on platforms such as TikTok.

Dan repeatedly promised greater transparency on the matter. He initially suggested the report wouldlikely be released by the end of January 2026. Officials within the presidential administration later shifted the expected release date to the end of April. However, no report was published. Then, the president said that it would come out later this year, without providing a clear timeline.

In the absence of the promised report, Dan has nevertheless made increasingly categorical public claims. He has stated that, “without a doubt”, Georgescu had benefited from “an infrastructure created by Russia”. Dan has also argued that Romania has been the target of Russian hybrid warfare for at least a decade, and suggested that around 90 per cent of the information gathered by state authorities could eventually be disclosed publicly.

Dan may be right. The interference may have been real, serious, and well-documented. Still, there remains a consequential question that no authority has publicly addressed: Was annulling the election a proportionate response? Did the alleged Russian campaign decisively distort the result, or did nearly a quarter of Romanian voters choose Georgescu for reasons of their own?

The legitimacy of the annulment ultimately depends not only on what happened, but on whether what happened justified one of the most extraordinary interventions possible in a democratic process. And even proving proportionality may not be enough in a country where trust in institutions has been eroding long before 2024, and where, for many, the verdict on that question has already been reached.

Uncharted territory

In March 2025 and in the wake of Romania’s decision to annul the elections,  the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters, released a report examining when constitutional courts may invalidate elections. The Commission emphasised that annulment should be a measure of last resort, reserved for exceptional circumstances and supported by clear evidence. Under international democratic standards, the Commission stressed, results should only be annulled when irregularities can be shown to have directly affected the vote’s outcome.

That is a high bar, and the Commission noted it is especially difficult to meet when the alleged irregularities concern online campaigning rather than voting or ballot counting. It added that online political speech is generally protected by freedom of expression standards, making it “currently hard to see how the form and content of campaign messaging of candidates could amount to a violation of electoral law that may lead to the annulment of the elections”.

How feasible, then, is it to demonstrate that the irregularities in campaigning invoked by Romania’s Constitutional Court determined the voting results? Luciana Alexandra Ghica, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest, argues that the challenge is notable. Establishing such a causal link requires long-term technical data, sustained multidisciplinary cooperation, and, above all, political will.

“This might be the most difficult part,” she explained, adding that success depends on “the mechanisms needed to support such an effort.” In her assessment, Romania currently lacks much of that institutional capacity, with “too little coordination, too little recognition of experts, and too many appointments based on personal connections”.

What the evidence shows

In its decision to annul the election, Romania’s Constitutional Court concluded that the electoral process had been “compromised throughout its entire course” by irregularities that “distorted the free and fair nature of the vote,” linking it to a coordinated foreign interference operation.  Yet the ruling did not explain why annulment was a proportionate response, nor did it attempt to demonstrate how the alleged irregularities concretely affected the outcome.

Subsequent investigations have strengthened the case that Romania was indeed targeted by a sophisticated influence campaign. In September 2025, the General Prosecutor’s office published a report that Dan presented to European leaders the following month. The report exposes a coordinated Russian-linked operation of considerable scale. It states that companies including AdNow, MGID, Geozo, and AdsKeeper built alarge online influence network using fake social media pages, AI-generated content, and native advertising, as well as cloned doppelgänger websites designed to mimic trusted news outlets and public institutions.

Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

More than 2,000 Facebook pages and coordinated Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and clickbait ecosystems were allegedly activated to identify and grow receptive audiences by manipulating vulnerable individuals, spreading anti-government information, and eroding trust in institutions ahead of Romania’s 2024 elections.

Then, closer to polling day, the same pre-built ecosystem was reportedly “activated” or repurposed more explicitly for electoral influence, with content shifting toward coordinated messaging that supported Georgescu and amplified political disinformation during the campaign period.

These findings are substantial, but they do not resolve the question of proportionality. Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, whether Georgescu’s performance depended decisively on the operation, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

Lingering questions

Two considerations make the proportionality case harder to establish. One is the question of why voters supported Georgescu in the first place. While official explanations for the annulment have focused on foreign interference, analysts argue domestic political and social grievances also played a significant role in boosting his appeal. “External interference overlapped with internal anxiety, with Russia’s hybrid campaign exploiting a level of weakness within our own democracy,” stressed Ioan Stanomir, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest.

A key component of this anxiety was socio-economic dislocation. According to Stefan Hofmann, the head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Romania, large segments of the electorate felt “isolated and shut out from opportunity”, particularly amid widening inequality. Georgescu was able to harness those frustrations by offering voters something more visceral than policy: a sense of belonging, identity, and recognition. “A discourse like Georgescu’s addresses the disorientation and fear people felt,” Hofmann said.

The second consideration is that this pattern was not unique to Georgescu.  Elena Lasconi, the runner-up of the first round of the 2024 election, also sat outside the mainstream political establishment and made the corruption and failures of the political class a key theme of her campaign.

That both frontrunners emerged as vehicles for anti-establishment sentiment points to a broader public dissatisfaction that predated the election and cannot easily be attributed to foreign influence alone. “When voters want to channel their frustration, to put it mildly, they turn to options outside the political mainstream,” Hofmann said.

The stronger the role played by genuine domestic grievances, the harder it becomes to demonstrate that foreign interference was a decisive causal factor in producing Georgescu’s success. Hofmann notes that Romanian authorities could have considered a more targeted measure, like disqualifying Georgescu, while allowing the second round to proceed. Such an approach would have addressed concerns surrounding him without invalidating the votes already cast by millions of Romanians.

Whether that or other alternatives would have been legally viable or politically preferable, remains open to debate.

The counter-narrative

In the absence of a fully consolidated public justification, the annulment has not settled into a single authoritative interpretation. Instead, it has become a contested political reference point, increasingly shaped outside formal institutional channels. Many Romanians doubted from the outset that the circumstances justified the Constitutional Court’s decision. An IRES poll conducted shortly after the annulment found that 62 per cent of respondents considered it a bad one.

Public trust in institutions has continued to decline since then. An INSCOP poll comparing July 2025 with January 2026 showed trust in the presidency falling from nearly 35 per cent to around 28 per cent, while trust in Parliament dropped from 14.5 per cent to just under 12 per cent.

At the same time, support for far-right parties and figures has grown. A January 2026 CURS poll found Georgescu to be the most trusted political figure in the country with an approval rating of 36 per cent. Following him were George Simion – another far-right figure who lost to Nicușor Dan in 2025 – at 32 per cent, and Dan at 31 per cent. Meanwhile, an INSCOP survey on parliamentary voting intention placed the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) – the party founded and chaired by Simion – at around 38 per cent, significantly ahead of any competitor.

For AUR and Georgescu, the annulment has become a central mobilising narrative, framed as evidence of systemic illegitimacy: the 2024 election was “stolen”, Georgescu is the rightful president, and all Romanian elections are vulnerable to manipulation. In response to Dan’s report presented to European leaders, AUR published its own assessment, describing the annulment as a “state coup” carried out through “unconstitutional means”.

In AUR’s framing, Russia’s intervention in the election was used as the pretext to justify the coup. The report concludes that Romania is “not a democracy”, and that “the coup has exposed the general vulnerability of state institutions and of the oligarchic system governing the country”. In November 2025, when speaking about municipal elections in Bucharest, Georgescu argued that “all these elections are a farce”.

In 2026, he once again claimed that the annulment was an act of “desperation” because the Romanian people were about to “take back their country”. He added that the Constitutional Court’s decision was conducted with “external colleagues, namely the European Union,” thus inverting the foreign interference narrative to implicate Brussels rather than Moscow.

According to Ghica, the narratives being pushed by Georgescu and his allies are unlikely to fade quickly. Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward. What makes this particularly hard to reverse, Ghica argues, is that the audiences most exposed to these narratives are also the least equipped to scrutinise them: people with “limited digital and functional literacy, heavily reliant on social media, and affected by considerable social and economic inequalities.”

Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward.

Dan’s quicksand

While the “stolen election” narrative has provided AUR and Georgescu with a powerful mobilising tool, it does not fully explain their sustained popularity. Anti-establishment sentiment has been further reinforced by a broader climate of political instability that Dan’s first year in office has done little to change.

Dan, a former mayor of Bucharest, came to office as an outsider candidate, promising reform and a break with established political practices. That positioning made him vulnerable to any perception of indecision or continuity with the system he had promised to change. His first year as president has supplied critics with considerable material.

The most significant test came in early May 2026, when a no-confidence motion brought down the government of prime minister Ilie Bolojan. The procedure was initiated by the Social Democrats and AUR over painful austerity measures and tax increases introduced to address Romania’s fiscal deficit, the largest in the EU at9.3 per cent of GDP in 2024 and 7.9 per cent in 2025.

For the Social Democrats, this was also a political escape from the costs of staying in power as unpopular fiscal measures hit their voters and patronage networks, while AUR used the moment to amplify its anti-austerity, anti-establishment message.

Dan declined to publicly back Bolojan, arguing that his role was that of a mediator. Critics, however, say Dan’s position implicitly validated the legitimacy of the Social Democrats’ move. They are also openly questioning whether the president’s passivity in this and other matters can bring stability, or whether it surrenders control over key political outcomes to other forces, such as the Social Democrats.

Amid heightened political turmoil, the no-confidence motion passed.  Dan subsequently sought to reassure the public, insisting that Romania remained stable. But as weeks passed without the confirmation of a new government, his assurances rang increasingly hollow.

“President Dan is in a delicate situation,” stressed Professor Stanomir. “One year after his election, he is compelled to rebuild a parliamentary majority. Such a challenge is likely to affect the years of his mandate that lie ahead.”

The rule, not the exception

Romania has not been the only target of Russian electoral interference in the EU. Ahead of Poland’s 2025 presidential election, minister of digital affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski publicly warned of an “unprecedented” Russian attempt to influence the vote via cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation. Yet the elections proceeded.

In Croatia’s 2025 presidential election, researchers found that Russian-linked bots and disinformation campaigns favoured the anti-NATO candidate, Zoran Milanović,

spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media platforms to sway public opinion.

The EU has begun responding. In December 2024, the Commission launched a formal investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act, following the release of Romanian intelligence reports suggesting the platform had been used to facilitate foreign interference.

In an email exchange, a Commission spokesperson confirmed to me that the proceedings remain ongoing. The outcome of this initiative could have lasting implications for the role of major tech platforms in electoral processes and, more broadly, for the influence of privately owned tech companies on democratic institutions. Nevertheless, the Commission has been careful to define the limits of its role. “The organisation and conduct of elections is a national competence,” the spokesperson said. “Elections have always been and will always remain in the hands of the citizens.”

That delineation matters. The EU can pressure platforms to “protect the integrity of elections through the Digital Services Act” and sanction individuals linked to disinformation campaigns. It can also support member states through bodies like the newly established European Centre for Democratic Resilience, which aims to help EU countries build their capacity to detect threats to democratic processes and strengthen resilience.

What the EU cannot do is answer the questions that Romania’s annulment continues to raise. Those questions remain Romania’s to resolve.

Can the loose ends be tied?

This is why the long-promised presidential report matters. Its most important task is not simply to establish what happened, but to explain why the response that followed was necessary and why less intrusive alternatives would have been insufficient to protect the integrity of the democratic process.

But even a report that does so convincingly may not be enough to reverse the continued decline in trust in institutions or the rising support for anti-establishment forces in Romania.

A detailed account might settle some of the concrete disputes that have festered since the annulment, like Georgescu’s claim that he is the rightful president. Rebuilding trust, however, will require more than evidence alone. “To get back some level of trust, people’s feelings have to be acknowledged and understood,” KAS’ Hofmann said, both in relation to the 2024 election and the broader dissatisfaction that preceded it. Romania’s traditional parties, he suggests, need to confront their own record more openly, even when doing so means acknowledging uncomfortable truths.

Ghica sees the structural obstacles as even more daunting. Trust in democratic processes and electoral integrity could be re-established, she argues, only through sustained, coordinated effort. “Time is not on our side in this hybrid war. The levels of social polarisation, digital and functional illiteracy, as well as economic inequality, which generates frustration toward others and toward authorities, remain very high.”

As the techno-authoritarian race to develop advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies continues at full steam, Silicon Valley’s sway over regulatory agendas has come to rival – even surpass – that of many states. Yet, between the ambitions of global superpowers and AI giants, Europe has the opportunity to seek something better. An interview with award-winning journalist and author Karen Hao.

Alessio Giussani: Several metaphors have been evoked to describe the current model of AI development – a parrot or a mirror, for example. Why did you choose that of empire?

Karen Hao: I think those metaphors are all extremely useful. I focus on empire because I’m not just looking at the technical artefact itself and what happens when it’s deployed in society, but also at the production of this technology and the actors who consolidate an extraordinary amount of economic and political power to produce it.

There are four main reasons why I call this system an empire. First, these companies lay claim to resources that are not theirs: individuals’ data, as well as the work of writers and creators. Second, they exploit an extraordinary amount of labour, and that goes for the workers they exploit within the production process and the supply chain of these technologies, as well as the workers whose labour rights are eroded when the technology is deployed.

The third aspect is information control. A major facet of empires’ expansion is the ability to filter all knowledge production and information through the lens of their imperial agenda, and this is precisely what AI companies are doing. They control and censor the science that gets produced by bankrolling most AI researchers, and they are building an information technology that they seek to make the central portal through which everyone else engages with the world, including in education.

Lastly, they wrap all this in a civilising mission. They say that they’re engaging in this work because ultimately they are trying to bring humanity a technology that will elevate us to a utopian state, and if the bad guys – which usually means China – develop it before us, then we will instead descend into a dystopian state. This is a kind of religious narrative that was also common among empires of old.

The AI empire, as you are describing it, is not limited to a company; it’s a system, a logic. What lies behind your focus on OpenAI and on the figure of its CEO, Sam Altman?

One answer is that people need stories to help make concrete what would otherwise be an abstract idea. But OpenAI is also particularly interesting because it made all of the major decisions that changed the norms within the industry, pushing it towards empire-building. It was OpenAI that decided to scale at all costs, to work with large language models, and produce a chatbot-like interface for them. Pretty much everything that the public understands to be associated with AI today was first decided within OpenAI’s walls.

By telling that history, it becomes much more obvious that AI is not inevitable, because you start to realise there were real people making those decisions based on their values, their worldviews, their personal vendettas – whatever it is that actually shaped the trajectory of AI development. Sam Altman’s ideologies are imbued in the model, not just in an abstract sense. You often hear the truism that models reflect their creators, but I wanted to show how this actually happens. It’s about the companies, the people, and the economic and ideological environment they are part of.

As these technologies grow more powerful, asserting control over their deployment is becoming an existential question. We saw Big Tech bowing to Trump at his second inauguration, but we are also seeing AI CEOs increasingly at odds with the government. Who will end up having the final say – the state or private companies?

There is an ongoing battle for who’s going to call the shots. I see the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley as an alliance of convenience, but a very fraught one. They represent two different models of empire, each with its own imperial agenda. Both are trying to expand and quite literally take over more land from other countries, but the Trump administration sees AI companies as tools in the hands of the state’s imperial ambitions. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley sees the Trump administration as a tool of their imperial ambitions, but they’re not actually on the same page, because each of them wants to be the supreme entity that comes out on top.

There have been moments when the US government has demonstrated that it’s still on top – when Trump and Musk collided, Musk got booted out. However, when the Department of War clashed with Anthropic, the company showed that it was the stronger power in that instance: Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth evoked the nuclear option, threatening to declare the company a supply chain risk as the ultimate stick that he could whack to get Anthropic in line, and the company still didn’t get in line. Quite embarrassingly, the Department of War has become deeply dependent on a private actor that is unwilling to cooperate on the government’s terms, and the government can do nothing about it.

There needs to be accountability for both of these imperial actors, and that accountability will not come from either of them; it has to come from the people. From bottom-up, grassroots organising, which we are beginning to see blossoming all around the world, including in the US. As impervious as the alliance of convenience may appear, it is actually extremely fragile, and there are opportunities to accelerate its demise by applying more pressure at its pain points.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society.

The state of AI development looks like a competitive race to the bottom between rival companies and global superpowers. What role has geopolitical competition with China played in bringing AI to its current predicament?

China is a card that Silicon Valley has played for a decade, pretty much ever since it got kicked out of China. But when you look at the track record of this argument, you see that what has happened is consistently the opposite of what Silicon Valley said would happen.

They said that by not regulating Silicon Valley companies – and by regulating China through export controls – American technology would dominate worldwide. Yet TikTok is now the most popular social media platform, and Chinese open-source AI models are becoming more and more popular around the world, including in the US. They also promised that Silicon Valley dominance would have a liberalising effect on the world, but that hasn’t come to pass either; their effect has been deeply illiberalising. There has been an extraordinary erosion of democratic institutions and a rapid acceleration of democratic backsliding, aided by Silicon Valley platforms and AI technologies.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society, what kind of AI technologies would support that vision, and what resources we need to bring it about. We should be competing not in a race Silicon Valley defined, but on the ideas and values we want to uphold. And I believe Europe has an opportunity here to show the world a third way, different from those of the US and China, that resets the rules of the game.

The European Commission has recently adopted a tech sovereignty package as part of Europe’s effort to chart its own technological path. How should we articulate this vision to avoid ending up with a European version of a surveillance-based, oligarchic business model?

The North Star that Europe should be following is not sovereignty for sovereignty’s sake, but the purpose of achieving that sovereignty. Europe, or at least most of it, is one of the last bastions of democracy in the world. It upholds human rights and freedoms, and it needs tech sovereignty to help advance these values. As long as it remains extremely dependent on systems being developed in a very authoritarian way and seeking to undermine European societies, it cannot uphold its values. Sovereignty as a concept tends to become vague if you just start thinking about it as a goal in and of itself. It should be a means towards a purpose.

What kind of coalitions, constituencies, or sites of conflict should we be starting from in order to build that alternative vision?

First of all, we should understand AI governance in an expansive way. Strengthening labour rights and protecting civil society, for example, counts as AI governance. Students, teachers, and health care workers should also be at the table to help shape and contest how AI is developed and deployed in society. Education is key, both as a sector and a coalition that we need to bring in, and in terms of public education around AI.

Another important aspect is funding AI researchers and entrepreneurs to figure out the more technical aspects of what you are trying to build and how you want to apply it. But you can’t just give them money without allowing the rest of society a say; otherwise, you are just replicating the problems we have in the US, where it’s essentially technocrats or techno-authoritarians calling the shots.

You are not starting from scratch. A lot of work has already been done to establish the common goals society should strive towards. I’m talking about the Sustainable Development Goals, for example. That could be a starting point for figuring out how to fund AI innovation.

The narratives around current AI technologies are extremely polarised. On one side, you have those who say there’s nothing particularly new about these technologies, and that the bubble is about to burst. On the other, you have those who believe AI will transform our lives, revolutionise supply chains, and make us all redundant. What do you make of these different stances?

It’s true, many people tend to exaggerate the benefits without considering the costs of these technologies, or overemphasise the costs without seeing the benefits. But I think there’s quite a large percentage of people who agree that we want the benefits of AI, but not at the cost of our own ability to live a dignified life, with access to good health care, economic opportunity, a healthy environment, and a flourishing planet. That’s the most balanced approach to take.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build, because they each come with a different set of trade-offs; some of those align with the future that we want to build, and some others don’t. We should choose wisely.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build.

What’s your own relationship with existing AI tools?

I don’t use them for three main reasons. One, the ethical stance. Two, the privacy stance: I’m investigating these companies, and they are ultimately the most effective surveillance technologies ever invented. Three, these tools are not very useful for the particular skill set that I need to perform my job.

I’m not saying that everyone should do the same. I’ve talked with many people who clearly get something out of these tools, or are required to use them as part of their professional role. Rather, the way to get out of the current problem is to do the same that we’ve done with other industries in the past, like the fashion industry. When we discovered that many of our clothes were being produced in a really horrific way, we didn’t just get rid of clothes. There was a lot of consumer and worker organising, government regulation, and general public backlash that reined in the industry. Of course, the fashion industry is still far from perfect, but at least there are alternatives now, and consumers can vote with their wallets over what kind of supply chain and corporate practices they endorse.

We need to do the same with AI. There are not enough alternatives for users right now, and for that to change, there needs to be more labour organising and more public backlash. Those who can abstain from these technologies should absolutely boycott them, and governments should step in to help create new markets for alternatives. Consumers have an important lever to pull, but it’s not the only one. As people, as individuals, we also wear the hats of the worker, the educator, and the citizen, and we should think about how to use all those roles in relation to AI development to make it better.

Alors que les fondements de l’alliance transatlantique sont mis à rude épreuve par l’unilatéralisme croissant des États-Unis, l’Europe se voit contrainte d’envisager sa propre défense. Mais à quoi ressemblerait cette défense – et quel en serait le coût, tant sur le plan financier que politique ? Les dirigeants verts Franziska Brantner et Rui Tavares s’entretiennent avec Édouard Gaudot sur la manière dont l’Europe peut se protéger sans perdre de vue les raisons pour lesquelles elle mérite d’être protégée. 

Edouard Gaudot: En quelques mots, comment qualifiez-vous l’état de l’Europe et celui du monde ? 

Rui Tavares: Je dirais une crise généralisée de l’imagination. D’ordinaire, l’imagination vient après la guerre. Là, tout l’enjeu serait d’avoir l’imagination avant le conflit. 

Franziska Brantner: Pour moi, ce serait la confusion et le manque de courage côté européen, et, pour les Américains et le reste du monde, le retour de la puissance et de la folie. 

Rui Tavares: Tout à fait. Il y a une forme de folie qui accompagne cette absence d’imagination, comme si on vivait une réalité parallèle. 

Comment peut-on être un leader écologiste dans un monde plongé dans le chaos et les conflits ? 

Rui Tavares: Il faut être très pédagogique, et très serein à la fois, pour ne pas effrayer les gens, mais les préparer à avoir des débats politiques et à faire des choix qui sont très durs. Mais l’opinion mûrit : il y a 10 ans, il aurait été impossible de parler avec réalisme d’une communauté européenne de défense. Maintenant, tout le monde voit qu’avec Trump, si les Européens ne font pas une communauté européenne de défense, au moment décisif, ils seront démunis. 

Franziska Brantner: Je suis plutôt fière d’avoir anticipé ce débat dans un pays comme l’Allemagne. À l’époque, tout le monde me disait : « mais tu es anti-transatlantique » ; alors que j’expliquais déjà que tout cela n’a rien à voir avec les États-Unis – il s’agit de notre responsabilité. Maintenant, c’est devenu plus ou moins une évidence que les Américains ne seront pas là pour toujours pour nous. La tâche pour l’Europe est donc d’assumer et d’assurer sa sécurité et sa défense, aussi militaire.  

Ça veut dire quoi « défendre l’Europe » pour les écologistes ? 

Franziska Brantner: C’est défendre la paix et la liberté. Ça signifie que la défense de l’Europe ne peut être qu’européenne. Je remarque qu’une grande partie des adhérents du Parti Vert allemand (ils sont à ce jour plus de 180 000) ont beaucoup moins de doutes que les cadres du parti quant à la nécessité d’une capacité militaire.  

C’est surprenant quand même pour des partis, surtout en Allemagne, qui se sont construits dans les années 70, entre autres, autour du pacifisme et de la non-violence. 

Franziska Brantner: Il y a une profonde différence entre pacifisme et non-violence. Bien sûr qu’il faut promouvoir une éducation non-violente, une société non-violente. Mais ce n’est pas le pacifisme. Chez nous, c’est Joschka Fischer [ministre des Affaires étrangères d’Allemagne entre 1998 et 2005] qui a commencé cette révolution culturelle à l’époque du Kosovo. Mais avec l’Ukraine, ça a complètement basculé. Aujourd’hui, je me retrouve au centre de gravité du parti, parce que certains Verts surenchérissent tellement qu’il faut leur rappeler que les armes ne sont pas nécessairement la seule ni la meilleure réponse. 

C’est défendre la paix et la liberté. Ça signifie que la défense de l’Europe ne peut être qu’européenne.

Rui Tavares: On aurait dû avoir le débat sur l’armée européenne après s’être assurés qu’on aurait bien une démocratie européenne, avec tous les instruments de fiscalisation et un Parlement qui peut contrôler cette armée. Mais le problème, c’est que la guerre en Ukraine a installé l’urgence et renversé les priorités. Je le ressens aussi dans mon électorat – quand je suggère d’y aller prudemment, ils répondent que Poutine est à nos portes et que Trump pourrait menacer d’annexer les Açores, où il y a déjà une base américaine, comme il a menacé le Groenland. Cette question a même été posée au premier ministre, qui a répondu : « Le mieux, c’est qu’on n’en parle pas. » 

Ainsi, face à ceux qui veulent accélérer la militarisation de l’Europe, il faut rappeler que l’Europe n’est pas encore prête, car il lui manque les instruments de contrôle et de financement. 

Franziska Brantner: Parmi les verts allemands, il y a un débat sur ces questions de financement au niveau européen. Il y en a qui insistent sur cette interdiction des dépenses militaires par les traités. Même si les moyens étaient là, ils préfèrent défendre d’abord le cadre institutionnel, plutôt que de trouver des façons de faire avancer à la fois le financement et le contrôle démocratique. C’est un problème, car quand on aura trouvé la voie, il vaudrait mieux que tout cela reste sous le contrôle d’un Parlement. 

Comment doit s’articuler la défense européenne dans les équilibres géopolitiques actuels ? Quid de « l’alliance des puissances moyennes » à la Carney, de l’architecture de sécurité globale, de l’offre de parapluie nucléaire français ? 

Franziska Brantner: Il nous faut un budget européen pour la défense commune, avec des objectifs communs. Je préférerais que cela se fasse au sein des institutions, mais si pour des raisons de légalité ou de majorité c’est impossible, alors imaginons des institutions ad hoc. Quant aux alliances, il me paraît absolument nécessaire d’y intégrer le Royaume-Uni, et peut-être la Norvège. Ensuite, la Turquie ou le Canada ont aussi un rôle à jouer, mais à une échelle plus large. 

Pour le nucléaire, soyons lucides : ni a fortiori les États-Unis d’aujourd’hui, ni la France ni la Grande-Bretagne n’accepteront le partage des responsabilités, au sens de partager le pouvoir du « bouton rouge ». Néanmoins, nous devons parler entre Européens, avec la France et la Grande-Bretagne, au sujet d’une doctrine nucléaire européenne. En contrepartie, nous devrons évidemment financer davantage le conventionnel. 

Et la contrepartie politique ? La garantie nucléaire induit une forme de leadership stratégique que les partenaires de la France ne sont peut-être pas prêts à accepter et que la France n’est peut-être pas prête à assumer ? 

Franziska Brantner: C’est possible, mais on n’a pas le choix. La menace de Poutine est réelle et le recul de Trump aussi. Je souhaiterais tellement que nous vivions dans un monde meilleur, mais ce n’est pas ainsi. Si on n’y arrive pas en Europe, il y a déjà des conservateurs allemands qui proposent une force de frappe allemande – je pense que c’est une très mauvaise idée, même si l’Allemagne en aurait les capacités. D’une part, cela violerait notre constitution, et de l’autre, les traités internationaux. 

Rui Tavares: Sur la garantie nucléaire française, la vitesse du débat est étonnante. Ces choses, normalement, avancent à une lenteur glaciale, mais là on l’envisage concrètement. Selon moi, il faudrait faire quelque chose de très simple, mais très visible : inscrire l’emploi du nucléaire français dans le cadre de l’article 47 du traité, qui parle de venir en aide à l’État membre menacé avec « toutes les ressources » – donc l’arsenal nucléaire aussi. 

Quant à cette alliance des puissances moyennes, ça me chagrine toujours un peu qu’on s’arrête au Canada. Et le Brésil, le Mexique, les autres pays ? Voilà des partenaires stratégiques. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crois qu’on les aborde surtout par les intérêts économiques et politiques. 

Rui Tavares: C’est vrai, mais c’est aussi que les Européens négligent ce que ces pays-là disent sur l’état du monde, sur le développement, sur les réformes de l’ONU. Ils ne veulent pas écouter ce que le Brésil aurait à dire aussi sur les questions de la mémoire de l’esclavage, par exemple. Ces pays veulent parler de ça aussi. Si l’Europe veut contrer les puissances autoritaires en ralliant ces puissances moyennes peu attachées au système international fondé sur l’ONU et les règles partagées, nous devons nous mettre à leur écoute – car ces partenaires potentiels en ont marre de l’arrogance européenne. C’est pour ça que nous avons échoué à les engager pleinement dans le soutien à l’Ukraine. L’Europe doit sortir de ses évidences et de sa zone de confort. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crois qu’il y a quand même une différence à faire entre les liens économiques, voire politiques et stratégiques, et les liens de défense. Je suis tout à fait d’accord avec toi sur les premiers, mais pour la défense européenne, je suis moins convaincue. 

Rui Tavares: Pourtant, si tu prends l’exemple de la sécurité contre les narcotrafics dans l’Atlantique du Sud, il faudra parler avec les Sud-Américains. 

Outre les alliances, la « défense de l’Europe en Européens » passe par les questions industrielles. Un budget militaire, soit, mais pour quoi faire ? 

Rui Tavares: Quand les Américains ont construit leur puissance militaire au lendemain de la guerre, ils ont fait des investissements publics colossaux dans la recherche, à travers le MIT et des programmes spécifiques. On sait tous que l’Internet est directement issu de ce genre de recherche. Je trouve inquiétant que la révolution de l’intelligence artificielle, fondamentale dans le domaine de la défense, soit complètement dominée, commandée et organisée par le privé – sans aucune participation publique. Là, l’Europe aurait une énorme opportunité historique de faire des investissements publics massifs, surtout dans la recherche, la science et la technologie, avec des objectifs ambitieux. 

Si on montre que la recherche militaire produit des avancées civiles, on peut sortir de ce piège très efficace qui force les électorats à choisir entre avoir les moyens d’un modèle social et avoir les moyens de le défendre.

Franziska Brantner: En Europe, c’est l’Ukraine qui fait ça. Ce sont les plus créatifs et innovants. Plus encore que les États-Unis. 

À ce propos, comment répondre à la question piège qui dénonce le sacrifice des dépenses sociales sur l’autel des dépenses militaires ? 

Franziska Brantner:  D’abord, il nous faut un marché de la défense unique et intégré, avec des économies d’échelle à la clé et une capacité de créer ainsi notre souveraineté technologique, par exemple l’IA. Ceci doit être fait d’une manière à générer des gains technologiques et économiques, des « dividendes de la défense » pour la productivité et la souveraineté industrielles européennes.  

Mais il est évident qu’on ne peut financer longtemps la défense qu’à travers la dette. Dans le budget allemand, il y a déjà aujourd’hui 80 milliards d’euros annuels de services de la dette. On s’attend à 40 milliards de dettes supplémentaires rien que pour la défense. Pour les plus jeunes générations, c’est intenable. Et il y a aussi le risque d’une dette non soutenable qui peut nous coûter très cher, au sens économique et ensuite social. Donc à un moment, soit on augmente les ressources, soit il faut couper quelque part.  

Il faut aussi devenir plus efficace économiquement. Si la productivité ne progresse plus, ça va nécessairement peser sur le reste du budget. On a eu de la chance, pendant 80 ans, mais les « dividendes de la paix » sont finis. 

En revanche, il y aura des dividendes des dépenses publiques pour la défense, dont il faut s’assurer qu’ils ne soient pas accaparés par les plus riches. Voilà une autre façon de reposer la question de la répartition public-privé. Et soyons lucides : Nous avons besoin d’une industrie de la défense européenne pour protéger notre paix et notre modèle de vie – ce qui à terme produira de nouveaux dividendes, d’une paix nouvelle et souveraine.  

Rui Tavares: Je suis en désaccord sur ça. Je ne voudrais pas revivre les débats de la crise de la zone euro, qui ont été vraiment très douloureux. Il y a une différence, peut-être culturelle, entre Nord et Sud, sur cette question de la dette. Quand on me dit qu’il faut investir dans les dépenses militaires pour répondre aux défis internationaux et qu’il n’est pas sérieux de ne pas prendre sur les dépenses sociales, je réponds que l’investissement sur la défense sans dette, c’est cela qui n’est pas sérieux. L’effort militaire a toujours coûté cher. Si on prend au sérieux une menace existentielle, on ne se tracasse pas à cause de la dette. D’autant que dans le passé, les investissements militaires ont tous été accompagnés ou suivis de près par de nouveaux investissements dans le social. 

Imaginons : il y a une crise du logement en Europe, une question très concrète pour beaucoup de gens. Si on développait de nouvelles technologies de construction, avec de nouveaux matériaux issus de la recherche, si on avait une agence européenne du logement, on pourrait encourager ces progrès. Et puisque les armées ont toujours été pleines d’ingénieurs, il peut y avoir là un bénéfice de l’investissement militaire – un dividende de guerre. 

Si on montre que la recherche militaire produit des avancées civiles, on peut sortir de ce piège très efficace qui force les électorats à choisir entre avoir les moyens d’un modèle social et avoir les moyens de le défendre. En ce sens, l’Allemagne a un rôle clé : il faut que les Allemands comprennent que l’Europe est prête à investir dans une dette sûre. Maintenant que la dette américaine n’est plus sûre, si les Européens font enfin le choix des fameux Eurobonds, il y aura des milliards d’euros prêts à être investis. 

Franziska Brantner: À condition que ce soient vraiment des investissements. Sinon ces ressources sont gaspillées, et ce sont les générations suivantes qui doivent financer. On a engagé près de 100 milliards de dettes pour la défense et 99% de cet argent est allé dans des trucs du passé. 

Il faut donc développer un complexe militaro-industriel européen, qui produise du futur, pas qui comble le passé ? 

Franziska Brantner: Voilà. Il faut rompre avec les inerties du passé. C’est le cas aussi dans notre modèle social en Allemagne : il y a des réformes qui améliorent la qualité des services et permettent en même temps des économies, et il faut les faire. On ne peut pas juste refuser l’économie, c’est impossible. Surtout avec une société qui vieillit. On ne peut pas se cacher derrière les faux-semblants. Je pense qu’il faut investir dans la défense, réformer le secteur économique et social.  

Comment est-ce qu’on prépare les populations aux réalités de la menace et aux réponses ? 

Rui Tavares: J’ai beaucoup aimé le rapport Niinistö, parce qu’il transmet aux Européens le savoir-faire des Nordiques sur ces questions de défense, qui reposent sur la société, les familles, les liens. On peut reproduire certaines choses comme les livrets sur la sécurité chez soi, la défense de proximité, qu’on peut imprimer et donner à tous les foyers européens. Ensuite, il faut tenir compte des réalités culturelles et sociales : s’il faut avoir deux semaines de vivres à la maison pour être préparé, au Portugal, le 10 du mois, quand le salaire est déjà dépensé, je suis sûr que le kit de sécurité ne tient pas. 

Il faut donc peut-être penser aussi à des réseaux de distribution. Mobiliser les mairies d’arrondissement. Inclure les pompiers. Ce sont autant d’opportunités de faire une Europe tangible. Quand on a des inondations, des incendies catastrophiques, les gens s’attendent à une réponse européenne. Avec ce type de kit européen de réponse aux guerres et aux catastrophes, qui pourrait être distribué, ce serait plus clair. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crains que ça ne marche pas, que sans l’urgence, les gens ne soient pas prêts. 

Au-delà de la base industrielle et technologique de défense européenne, quelle politique industrielle faut-il mettre en œuvre à l’échelle de l’UE ? 

Franziska Brantner: Je pense que la compétitivité européenne repose sur trois piliers. D’abord la résilience, avec la réduction de nos dépendances, surtout de la Chine et des États-Unis. Ensuite, l’innovation. Pas seulement dans la défense, mais aussi dans le numérique, la bioéconomie, la médecine. Et enfin, le troisième, c’est la question de la durabilité, pour répondre au changement climatique et aussi aux inégalités. Je veux qu’à la sortie des écoles, il y ait à nouveau une majorité de parents qui pensent que leurs enfants iront mieux qu’eux. Pour ça, il nous faut une éducation qui développe les compétences et les capacités d’innovation de nos jeunes. C’est une compétitivité au service du bien-être social, de la qualité de vie.  

Quelles priorités voyez-vous pour le futur de l’Europe? Selon vous, qu’est-ce qui fait aujourd’hui la cohésion européenne et l’actualité du projet européen ? 

Franziska Brantner: Je pense que la question à se poser est d’abord : « Pourquoi on veut la paix, la liberté et la démocratie ? » Pour nous, Européens, l’enjeu est de donner un sens à la liberté qui ne soit pas celui de JD Vance et un contenu à la paix qui ne soit pas celui de Poutine. C’est à nous de le faire, parce que c’est l’Europe qui porte ces valeurs-là. Et sans elles, le projet européen est vide. 

Rui Tavares: Je suis tout à fait d’accord, et je voudrais ajouter une notion : la qualité de vie. Quand on regarde l’Europe depuis l’extérieur, ce qui la caractérise, c’est une façon de vivre et des standards de qualité de vie. Notre idée de liberté se construit dans le droit universel à cette qualité de vie. Ça ne veut pas dire que tout le monde est riche, mais ça veut sûrement dire que personne n’est pauvre. En mettant cette notion au centre des politiques européennes, on voit rapidement que ça englobe tout : l’économique, le social, l’environnement, la culture, la sécurité, la défense. 

Ce qui m’inquiète, c’est que j’ai l’impression que la qualité de vie a cessé d’être un objectif de la politique. On entend des discours qui proposent de sacrifier tel ou tel service pour faire des économies. Mais je pense qu’épargner pour épargner, ça ne dit rien aux Européens. Personne ne veut être compétitif pour gagner une guerre économique dont on ne voit pas les bénéfices. En revanche, les Européens sont fiers et attachés à leur qualité de vie et pour de bonnes raisons. Si on réussit à les convaincre que les politiques proposées prennent cette qualité de vie au sérieux, je pense que les gens accepteront plus facilement les sacrifices.

As the foundations of the transatlantic alliance strain under the weight of the US’s growing unilateralism, Europe is being forced to imagine a defence of its own. But what would that defence look like – and what would it cost, financially and politically? Green leaders Franziska Brantner and Rui Tavares talk to Edouard Gaudot about how Europe can protect itself without losing sight of why it’s worth protecting.

Edouard Gaudot: Amid heightened geopolitical tension and the growing prevalence of military conflict, can you briefly describe the state of Europe and the world today? 

Rui Tavares: I’d say there’s a general crisis of imagination. Usually, imagination comes after war. But today, the challenge is finding imagination before conflict. 

Franziska Brantner: For me, it’s confusion and a lack of courage from Europeans, and from the Americans and the rest of the world, it’s the return of madness and “might makes right.” 

Rui Tavares: Exactly. There’s a form of madness that comes with this absence of imagination, as if we’re living in a parallel reality. 

What does green leadership look like in a world plunged into chaos and conflict? 

Rui Tavares: We need to educate people but stay calm at the same time. We must avoid scaring them and instead prepare them for political debates and tough choices. Public opinion matures: 10 years ago, it would have been impossible to talk realistically about a European defence community. Now, with Trump, everyone can see that if the Europeans don’t create one, they’ll be defenceless at the decisive moment. 

Franziska Brantner: I’m rather proud to have seen this debate taking shape in a country like Germany. Previously, everyone would say to me, “You’re just an anti-Atlanticist,” even as I explained that my emphasis on defence autonomy had nothing to do with the United States but was about our responsibility. Now, it’s become very clear that the Americans won’t always be there for us. The task for Europe, then, is to step up and take responsibility for its own defence and security.  

For the Greens, defending Europe means safeguarding peace and freedom. Therefore, Europe’s defence can only be European. I note that many German Green party members (of whom there are over 180,000 today) have far fewer reservations than the party’s leaders do about the need for a stronger military capability.  

That’s surprising for a party that was founded in the 1970s on, among other things, pacifism and non-violence. 

Franziska Brantner: There’s a profound difference between pacifism and non-violence. Of course, we must promote non-violent education and a non-violent society, but that isn’t pacifism. In our party, it was Joschka Fischer [German foreign minister from 1998 to 2005] who started this cultural shift at the time of the Kosovo conflict. But with Ukraine, everything changed. Today I find myself in the party’s centre, because some Greens have gone so far that they need reminding that weapons are not necessarily the only answer, nor the best. 

For the Greens, defending Europe means safeguarding peace and freedom. Therefore, Europe’s defence can only be European.

Rui Tavares: Ideally, we would be having this debate on a European army after making sure that we really have a European democracy, with full tax-raising powers and a parliament that could oversee this army. But the war in Ukraine has brought urgency and upended priorities. I sense it in my voters [in Portugal], too: when I suggest moving cautiously, they reply that Putin is at the gates and that Trump could threaten to annex the Azores – where there is already an American base – just as he threatened Greenland. This question was even put to the prime minister, whose answer was: “It’s best we don’t talk about it.” 

So, to those who want to accelerate Europe’s militarisation, we must point out that Europe is not yet ready because it lacks the mechanisms for oversight and funding. 

Franziska Brantner: Among German Greens, there’s a debate about funding at the European level. Some insist that European treaties prohibit military spending. And even if the resources were there, they would rather defend the institutional framework than find ways to move ahead on funding and democratic oversight. This is a problem, because once we find the path forward, it would be better if all this remained under parliamentary oversight. 

What about the “alliance of middle powers” proposed by Mark Carney, the global security architecture, and the French nuclear umbrella? How should European defence fit into the current geopolitical landscape?  

Franziska Brantner: We need a European budget for common defence, with common goals. I’d rather this were created within the institutions, but if it’s impossible for reasons of legality or majority, let’s devise ad hoc institutions. As for alliances, it’s absolutely essential to include the United Kingdom, and maybe Norway. Turkey and Canada also have roles to play, but on a broader level. 

When it comes to nuclear weapons, let’s be clear-eyed: neither the United States – especially today – nor France nor the United Kingdom will agree to sharing responsibility, in the sense of sharing the power to press the “red button”. That said, Europeans must talk to each other, to France and the United Kingdom, about a European nuclear doctrine. In return, we will obviously have to increase funding for conventional weapons. 

A nuclear guarantee would entail a sort of strategic leadership from France that its partners may not be willing to allow, and that Paris may not be willing to accept.  

Franziska Brantner: That’s possible, but we don’t have a choice. Putin’s threat is real, and so is Trump’s retreat. I really wish we lived in a better world, but we don’t. If Europe can’t do it, there are already German conservatives proposing a German nuclear deterrent. I think this is a very bad idea, even if Germany has the capability. It would violate both our constitution and international treaties. 

Rui Tavares: On the French nuclear guarantee, the speed of the debate is astonishing. These things usually move forward at a glacial pace, but this is now actually being considered. I think we need to do something very simple, but very visible: expand French nuclear doctrine to include Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union. It talks about coming to the aid of threatened member states with all available resources. That would mean nuclear weapons, too. 

As for this alliance of middle powers, it always bothers me a bit that we stop at Canada. What about Brazil, Mexico, and other countries? There’s some strategic partners for you. 

Franziska Brantner: I think that our approach to them is primarily driven by economic and political interests. 

Rui Tavares: True, but Europeans also ignore what these countries say about the state of the world, about development and UN reforms. They don’t want to listen to what Brazil might also have to say about the remembrance of slavery, for example. If Europe wants to counter authoritarian powers by courting middle powers that are not particularly invested in the UN-led rules-based international order, we need to listen to them. These potential partners are fed up with European arrogance, and that’s why we failed to secure their full backing for Ukraine. Europe must challenge its assumptions and get out of its comfort zone. 

Franziska Brantner: I still think there’s a distinction to be made between economic ties – political and strategic ties even – and defence ties. I completely agree with you on the first three, but when it comes to European defence, I’m less convinced. 

Rui Tavares: But to fight drug trafficking in the South Atlantic, for example, you’ll have to speak to the South Americans. 

Alliances aside, a European defence of Europe means grappling with questions of industrial policy. A military budget is all well and good, but what for? 

Rui Tavares: When the Americans built up their military power after the [Second World] War, they made colossal public investments in research through the likes of MIT and special programmes. As we all know, the Internet was a direct result of this type of research. So I find it worrying that the revolution in artificial intelligence, fundamental in the realm of defence, is completely driven, shaped, and dominated by the private sector, with no public involvement. Here, Europe has an enormous historic opportunity to make massive public investments – especially in research, science, and technology – with ambitious goals. 

If we show that military research produces civilian advances, we can escape this pernicious trap that forces voters to choose between funding a welfare state and funding its defence.

Franziska Brantner: In Europe, it’s the Ukrainians who are doing this. They are the most creative and innovative. Even more so than the Americans. 

And how should we respond to those who claim social spending is being sacrificed on the altar of military expenditure? 

Franziska Brantner:  First of all, we need a single, integrated defence market with economies of scale and the capacity to develop our own technological sovereignty, in AI for example. This must be done in a way that delivers technological and economic benefits – “defence dividends” for European industrial productivity and sovereignty.  

But it’s obvious that in the long run we can’t fund defence through borrowing. Germany already spends 80 billion euros a year on servicing debt. An extra 40 billion euros of debt is expected to be added just for defence. For younger generations, it’s unsustainable. And there’s also the risk that unsustainable borrowing could cost us dearly, both economically and socially. So at some point, we must either increase resources or make cuts somewhere.  

We also have to become more economically efficient. If productivity stops growing, it will put more pressure on the budget. We got lucky for 80 years, but the peace dividend is gone. 

That said, there will be dividends from public spending on defence, though we’ll have to make sure that they’re not pocketed by the richest. That’s another way of asking how we draw the line between public and private.  

Let’s be clear about this: we need a European defence industry to protect our peace and our way of life – and in the long run, this will pay fresh dividends from a new and sovereign peace.  

Rui Tavares: This is where I disagree with you. I don’t want to reopen arguments from the Eurozone crisis, which was extremely painful. But there’s a difference, perhaps cultural, between north and south on the question of debt. When I’m told that we must invest in defence spending to meet global challenges and that doing so without cutting social spending is unrealistic, my response is that investing in defence without borrowing is what’s unrealistic. Military investment has always been expensive. If we take an existential threat seriously, we don’t fret about debt. Especially given that, in the past, military investment has always been accompanied or followed by new social investment. 

Just take into account the fact that there’s a housing crisis in Europe, an issue that’s very real for many people. If we developed construction technologies, with new materials invented through research and development, and if we had a European housing agency, we could build on this progress. And since armies have always been full of engineers, this might be another benefit of military spending – a war dividend. 

If we show that military research produces civilian advances, we can escape this pernicious trap that forces voters to choose between funding a welfare state and funding its defence. This is where Germany has a key role to play: Germans must understand that Europe is willing to invest in safe debt. Now that American debt is no longer safe, if Europeans were to finally opt for the famous Eurobonds, there would be billions of euros ready to invest. 

Franziska Brantner: So long as these are really investments. Otherwise, they’re a waste of resources, and future generations will have to pay for them. We’ve taken on almost 100 billion euros in defence debt, and 99 per cent of this money has gone into stuff that’s obsolete. 

So, we need to develop a European military-industrial complex, one that builds for the future, not the past. 

Franziska Brantner: Exactly. We must break free from past inertias. It’s also the case for our welfare state in Germany: there are reforms that will improve the quality of services while also making savings, and they have to be implemented. We can’t just refuse to make savings. It’s impossible, especially with an ageing society. We can’t hide behind false pretexts. I think we have to invest in defence while also reforming the economy and public services.  

How do we prepare people for the reality of the security threats facing Europe and the responses they require? 

Rui Tavares: I loved the Niinistö report [drawn up by Sauli Niinistö, former president of Finland and special adviser to the president of the European Commission] because it shares with the rest of Europe Nordic know-how on defence, which is based around society, families, and bonds. Some materials – like booklets on preparedness and local defence – can be reproduced, printed, and distributed to all European households. But it’s important to take into account cultural and social realities: you’re supposed to have two weeks’ supplies in the house to be prepared, but in Portugal, where wages are often spent by the 10th of the month, I’m sure the survival kit won’t last. 

So, we should perhaps think about distribution networks, mobilise local councils, and even involve the fire service. These are also opportunities to make Europe tangible. When devastating fires or floods break out, people expect a European response. With a European war and disaster survival kit that could be distributed to citizens, Europe’s role in helping people would be clearer to see. 

Franziska Brantner: I fear that it won’t work – that without a sense of urgency, people won’t be ready. 

Besides the European defence technological and industrial base, what industrial policy should be implemented at the EU level? 

Franziska Brantner: I believe European competitiveness rests on three pillars. First, resilience, which requires a reduction in our dependencies, especially on China and the United States. Next, innovation. Not just in defence, but in tech, medicine, the bioeconomy. And the third is sustainability, which is a necessary response to climate change and inequality.  

To succeed, we need education that develops our young people’s skills and capacity for innovation. It’s competitiveness in the service of social wellbeing and a better quality of life.  

Going forward, what objectives do you think Europe should prioritise? How can the European project gain more relevance and foster cohesion?  

Franziska Brantner: I think the question we must ask ourselves first is: “Why do we want peace, freedom, and democracy?” For us Europeans, the challenge is to give a meaning to freedom that isn’t JD Vance’s, and a substance to peace that isn’t Putin’s. It’s up to us to do this, because it’s Europe that upholds these values. And without them, the European project is hollow. 

Rui Tavares: I couldn’t agree more, and I’d like to add another idea: quality of life. Seen from the outside, Europe is defined by a way of life and a standard of living. Our notion of freedom is built on a universal right to this quality of life. It doesn’t mean that everybody is rich, but it does mean that nobody is poor. When we put this idea at the core of European policies, we soon see that it touches on everything: the economy, social policy, the environment, culture, security, and defence. 

What worries me is a sense that the quality of life has stopped being a goal of politics. We keep hearing calls to sacrifice this or that service to save money. But I think that saving for saving’s sake doesn’t appeal to Europeans. Nobody wants to stay competitive just to win an economic war they don’t see any benefits in. Europeans are proud of their quality of life and are deeply attached to it – and for good reason. If we manage to convince them that the policies that affect them take this quality of life seriously, I think people will be more willing to make sacrifices. 

Forty years after the world’s worst man-made disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Belarus is aggressively expanding its nuclear ambitions, declaring its readiness to build a second plant. This effort is bankrolled and managed by Russia, which has already financed two reactors in Ostrovets and is now planning a third. But how did the nation that suffered most from the Chornobyl catastrophe come to embrace the “peaceful atom”, and why have anti-nuclear activists been unable to halt this trajectory?

The explosion at Chornobyl on 26 April 1986 left Belarus as the primary “target” of the radioactive plume. Due to prevailing winds in the disaster’s immediate aftermath, approximately 35 per cent of all caesium-137 fallout in Europe landed on Belarusian soil, despite the plant being located in Ukraine. 

The radiation forced the evacuation of 470 villages and towns. Some were literally buried – homes and farmstead buildings bulldozed into the earth to contain high doses of radiation. Estimates suggest that between 140,000 and 300,000 Belarusians left their homes forever; some fled voluntarily, while others were forcibly relocated by the state. 

Belarus was also forced to withdraw 2,640 square kilometres of agricultural land from use – an area larger than the territory of Luxembourg. Radiation contaminated over 20 per cent of the country’s farmland, permanently altering the economic structure of what was once a predominantly agrarian nation. A quarter of Belarusian forests absorbed dangerous radionuclides like a sponge, making the gathering of berries, mushrooms, and the use of firewood hazardous even four decades later. 

In the first decade following the disaster, Belarus faced an unprecedented surge in thyroid cancer, particularly in the Gomel and Brest regions. Cases among children skyrocketed tenfold – a direct consequence of the “iodine shock” caused by Soviet authorities concealing the disaster while people celebrated May Day outdoors. 

Nowadays, official data suggests that one in ten Belarusians – including 180,000 children – still lives in radioactive contamination zones. Their bodies are exposed daily to low doses of radiation through local food and the environment. 

Meanwhile, state propaganda has begun to “forget” Chornobyl, framing its consequences as a historical event that has been successfully overcome. Assistance programs have been curtailed, and benefits for “liquidators” (recovery workers) have been revoked. Today, Belarus is ploughing land once deemed contaminated, grazing livestock on it, and harvesting timber from radioactive forests for export. Official health statistics no longer link thyroid disease or oncology to the 1986 disaster. Belarusians are being told that radiation is no longer a threat – and may even be beneficial. Yet warnings can still be found between the lines of specialised journals, which, for instance, continue to advise fishermen on how to cook fish that may contain caesium-137. 

The Kremlin’s geopolitical leash  

Despite the collective trauma of Chornobyl, President Alexander Lukashenko decided to build Belarus’s first nuclear power plant in 2008. The regime marketed it as a cutting-edge, safe project that would grant Belarus energy independence and cheap electricity. 

Defying expectations, the site chosen for the nuclear power plant was not in the already contaminated zones, but Ostrovets, a pristine area near the border with Lithuania (an EU and NATO member). On clear days, the cooling towers of the Belarusian NPP (BelNPP) in Ostrovets are visible from Gediminas Hill in Vilnius. 

Lacking the technology and capital to complete the project independently, Lukashenko turned to Russia for a 10-billion-dollar loan. Predictably, the Russian state nuclear enterprise Rosatom became the general contractor. The construction was plagued by scandals: the first reactor vessel was dropped during installation, and the second was damaged during rail transport. Nevertheless, the plant was inaugurated in November 2020, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the October Revolution in typical Soviet fashion. 

At the ceremony, Lukashenko remarked: “A little time will pass, and we will fully realise what a feat we have accomplished with the support of our elder brothers… I’m only half-joking when I say that since we’ve learned how, we should build a second plant.” 

However, the following years were marked by technical failures and unscheduled shutdowns. Six years after its launch, experts note that the plant has failed to deliver cheaper energy; in fact, electricity prices in Belarus have risen. Furthermore, the country now faces the massive expense of building its own spent nuclear fuel storage. 

The structural mismatch in Belarus’s energy strategy became painfully clear in 2024. According to the energy ministry, fully absorbing the output of just two nuclear units would require an annual demand surge of 18.5 billion kWh. However, with domestic consumption growing by a mere 6 billion kWh over the last five years, the project has become a white elephant. To make BelNPP economically viable, the country would need to consume in a single year what the plant has cumulatively generated over the past five. 

As a result, Belarus has effectively been placed on a 10-billion-dollar geopolitical leash. “Energy is the backbone of the economy, and in this, we are dependent on Russia,” notes Irina Sukhiy, an anti-nuclear activist and expert with the Green Belarus Alliance, which brings together Belarusian NGOs, experts, local communities, and activists. “If our eastern neighbours choose, they can cut off gas or stop supplying nuclear fuel.” 

Vanishing hopes for еxport 

In February 2025, the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) officially decoupled from the BRELL grid (connecting Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and began dismantling infrastructure on their borders with Belarus and with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. 

“We no longer have ties with Russia and Belarus; the energy system is in our hands,” declared Lithuanian Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas. This synchronisation with continental Europe, accelerated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, dealt a serious blow to Minsk’s export ambitions. Lithuania, once the primary hub for Belarusian electricity, has not only closed its borders but also legally banned the purchase of energy from Ostrovets. 

A year before, Lithuania’s nuclear power safety regulator, VATESI, had issued a formal demand to the Belarusian Ministry of Emergency Situations, insisting that the BelNPP halt operations until all outstanding safety concerns are fully addressed. VATESI underscored that since the project’s inception, Minsk has prioritised rapid construction and commissioning over rigorous quality control – a particularly alarming strategy for a facility located a mere 40 kilometres from the Lithuanian capital. “This irresponsible approach is increasingly manifested in frequent unplanned shutdowns and power fluctuations,” the regulator noted, suggesting that such systemic instabilities were likely overlooked or ignored during the critical construction and installation phases. 

Beyond technical failures, VATESI accused the Belarusian regime of systemic opacity. The regulator claimed that Minsk consistently conceals critical data regarding BelNPP’s unstable performance, emergency scrams, and protracted maintenance periods. Rather than accepting vague official explanations, the Lithuanian authorities are now demanding full disclosure on radionuclide emission limits, the publication of all international expert mission recommendations, and transparent reports on their implementation. Such data, the regulator insists, is indispensable for the accurate modelling and forecasting of potential radioactive releases in the event of a major accident. 

Meanwhile, Minsk shows no signs of slowing its nuclear expansion. Following the 2023 commissioning of the second unit at the Ostrovets plant, the regime signalled a further push in 2025 with plans for a third reactor. According to Energy Minister Denis Moroz, this new unit is slated for operation between 2035 and 2038. This trajectory has drawn a sharp rebuke from Vilnius. Lithuanian presidential adviser Deividas Matulionis said that the third unit represents a qualitative leap in the regional threat level. He warned that, while the first two reactors were already a source of deep concern, a further expansion would pose an even more formidable security challenge. 

According to Evgeny Makarchuk, an energy security specialist at the International Strategic Action Network for Security, this stance has deprived Belarus of access to the Nord Pool power exchange market. Under different political conditions, Belarus could export up to 2.1 billion kWh per year, generating revenue of 230 million euros. Instead, the BelNPP generates a huge surplus of electricity with nowhere to sell. Ukraine is closed due to the war, and Poland maintains a strict sanctions regime. While this surplus could theoretically flow eastward, Russia itself suffers from excess capacity and has no need for Belarusian kilowatts at market prices.  

“Strategic isolation has effectively turned Belarus into an energy island,” notes Sukhiy. The Ostrovets plant was originally conceived as a profitable route to Western markets, but the collapse of the BRELL network has turned it into a structural dead end. Instead of a bridge to Europe, the plant now functions as an isolated asset, operating solely within the Kremlin’s broader energy and political manoeuvres. 

Tightening control 

Technical incidents at the Ostrovets plant have sparked concern in Europe about whether Minsk has learned the lessons of Chernobyl. The regime’s secrecy and the lack of independent monitoring only exacerbate the atmosphere of persistent mistrust between Belarus and its neighbours. 

The tension further increased at the end of 2025, when the Russian defence ministry announced the deployment of the nuclear-capable hypersonic Oreshnik missile system in Belarus. Lukashenko presented the move as a means to ensure Belarus’s security.  

According to Lithuania’s national security threat assessment, the BelNPP has now become the central element of the regional threat. By deploying the Oreshnik missile system and tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the Kremlin has effectively blurred the lines between civilian energy production and aggressive military strategy. Lithuanian intelligence emphasises that the persistent lack of transparency regarding the plant’s operations and the proposed expansion of the facility are being used as psychological leverage against Vilnius. 

Beyond the safety concerns, officials view Russia’s state-owned giant, Rosatom, as a tool of geopolitical influence.  

Belarus has effectively been placed on a 10-billion-dollar geopolitical leash.

The (r)evolution that never happened 

Today, the BelNPP has become a monument to Belarus’s authoritarian regime. Dmitry Kuchuk, an environmental policy advisor to exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, believes this is a problem the future must solve. “You can’t just flip a switch and close it immediately. We will need a serious audit of the plant’s condition and safety before deciding its fate,” he says. As the former head of the Belarusian Green Party, Kuchuk personally advocates for the plant’s closure: “The sooner the better for the budget and the country’s development”. 

However, the Belarusian government has turned a deaf ear to the warnings of experts and environmental activists. “Belarusians are categorically opposed to nuclear power, and it must be understood that the decision to build the NPP was made by Lukashenko alone. He ignored even his own Academy of Sciences, whose experts argued that the country simply did not need such a plant and that existing capacities were sufficient,” says Kuchuk. 

Belarusian authorities did initially signal a pivot towards renewable energy development. In 2010, the country passed a law on renewable energy sources (RES), which aimed to incentivise producers and provide tax breaks. However, the subsequent pivot toward nuclear energy effectively brought the development of renewables to a standstill.  

In 2018, a study titled “Energy [r]evolution”, supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, showed that Belarus had the potential to reach 92 per cent renewable energy by 2050. The report examined two distinct scenarios. The first was based on existing state strategies, which prioritised natural gas and the expansion of nuclear power. The second was a “revolutionary” scenario focused on the aggressive development of solar and wind energy. “Our research demonstrated that Belarus possesses enough potential to transition to 92 per cent renewable energy by 2050. And that was based on technology available back in 2018,” says Sukhiy from the Green Belarus Alliance. “Naturally, such a transition requires significant upfront investment. However, these calculations show that, in the long term, this path is more economically viable than the scenario chosen by the state.” 

It is symbolic that Belarus’s first wind turbine – a 250-kilowatt Nordex unit standing 50 meters tall – appeared in 2000 as part of a project to assist those resettled from the Chernobyl zone. It was installed near the village of Stakhoutsy, close to Lake Narach in the country’s most pristine region. By road, it stands just 60 kilometres from the BelNPP – and even closer as the crow flies. 

Path to a green future 

Belarusian civil society, now largely operating from abroad, is rethinking national and regional security through the prism of energy. “It’s impossible to build a free state if its ‘energy heart’ runs on foreign fuel, is serviced by foreign specialists, and is burdened with foreign debt,” proclaims Sukhiy. 

“By creating a vision of a green Belarus and working on a green transition, we are laying the foundation for Belarus’s independence, reducing its critical dependence on Russian energy resources, and ensuring that Belarus becomes a modern country rather than remaining stuck in the past,” she adds.  

Central and Eastern Europe’s post-communist history suggests that during any democratic transition, Moscow might attempt to crush reforms by “turning off the tap”. In 2006, after the “Orange Revolution” brought a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine, tensions between Moscow and Kyiv escalated. Russia’s Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine following a dispute over pricing and debt. Another incident occurred in 2009, when Russia stopped all gas flows through Ukraine to Europe.  

In Moldova, after pro-European forces came to power in 2020-2021, Russia sharply increased gas prices, forcing Chișinău to seek new suppliers, including those in Romania and other EU countries. This crisis was a clear instrument of political pressure. 

However, according to energy security expert Makarchuk, “this does not mean that the future is predetermined. Crises occur where there is a lack of preparedness. If we start acting now, the consequences can be mitigated, and disasters for the people and the economy can be avoided.” 

To achieve this, Belarus will have to make a series of critical strategic decisions in the very first hours of its genuine independence from the Kremlin. The diversification of the energy market and a departure from total reliance on Russian energy sources must become a prerequisite for any future democratic transition. 

“Technically, I see opportunities to completely break our dependence on Russia. We have our own oil refineries capable of processing up to 24 million tons of oil, while our domestic market requires only six million tons. We have assessed our oil import capacity: approximately 1.5 million tons can be obtained from Lithuania and about two million from Poland. All of this can be processed to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, and fuel oil. Furthermore, crude oil and petroleum products can be imported by rail,” Makarchuk notes. 

Ultimately, securing Belarus’s sovereign future depends on sustained solidarity and strategic cooperation among its neighbours. This path cannot be taken in isolation; it requires coordinated regional efforts and strong support from the broader European community to transform Belarus’s energy independence from a national dream into a pillar of European security. 

This will be difficult, given that Belarus has sided with Russia, distancing itself from and alienating its neighbours. However, experts will not insist on a green transition for Belarus.“The assertion that Belarus cannot exist without Russian oil and gas is not entirely accurate. Yes, the stakes are high: in 2023, the gap between preferential prices for Russian gas and global market prices was 4.2 billion dollars. However, with sound policy, careful preparation, and supply diversification, the crisis can be overcome. It need not be a catastrophe for the Belarusian people,” Makarchuk adds. 

As for the Ostrovets power plant, experts agree that its presence during Belarus’s transformation will help balance the country’s energy system. However, in the long term, Belarus can meet its energy needs without the plant, especially given the country’s strong potential to develop renewable energy sources. Whether the political will for such a major change exists, however, is another question.  

For almost century, Europe’s agriculture has been structurally reliant on chemical fertilisers. The risks of this dependence have been made amply clear by successive conflicts that have disrupted supply chains, while decades of intensive application have led to pollution and soil imbalances. Changing this trajectory will be a tough challenge.

In France, the baguette has recently become a matter of public concern. According to the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), staples of the French diet like bread, cereals, and even potatoes are among the main pathways of exposure to cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal that accumulates in agricultural soils. While cadmium is naturally present in the environment, its levels in France have become increasingly concerning over the past two decades, prompting ANSES to issue warnings that a significant share of the population is estimated to exceed health-based reference exposure values, with higher levels observed among children and adolescents. At the core of this looming public health crisis lies the intensive use of phosphate-based fertilisers. 

As the French Parliament moved to tighten cadmium limits in agricultural soils this spring – finally aligning national standards with existing European rules – the European Commission adopted a Fertiliser Action Plan designed to facilitate farmers’ access to key agricultural inputs. Like previous geopolitical shocks, the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global trade, have revealed Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers.  

These local, national, European, and global developments point to a structural vulnerability at the heart of Europe’s food system, with fertilisers lying at the intersection of ecological constraints, public health, market volatility, and external dependence.  

Vulnerable supply chains 

On 19 May, more than 200 farmers protested in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, carrying a large red banner declaring a “fertiliser crisis”. Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the prices of many raw materials and fertilisers had surged. Urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, had climbed above 850 dollars per tonne, the highest level since 2022.  An estimated 30 per cent of globally traded volumes of urea passed through Hormuz before the war.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system.

The effect of the blockade was compounded by the growing importance of Gulf states in the global fertiliser market. The world’s largest urea production complex, for instance, is located south of Doha, in Qatar. In the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has also rapidly climbed the ranks among leading producers of phosphate-based fertilisers. The broader Gulf energy industrial complex, which underpins global fertiliser production, was put under pressure following Iran’s strikes on key energy infrastructure in the region. Qatar, for instance, suspended production of urea, ammonia, and sulfur after key facilities were damaged. 

Ammonia and sulphur, two key feedstocks used in fertiliser production, are intertwined with the fossil fuels extracted in the region. Ammonia, the key feedstock for the production of urea and all other nitrogen-based fertilisers, is obtained by combining nitrogen with hydrogen, the latter typically extracted from natural gas. Although efforts are underway to produce ammonia using “green hydrogen” produced from renewables, these technologies remain marginal.  

Similarly, sulphur is largely recovered as a by-product of oil and natural gas processing. Most of it is converted into sulfuric acid, essential for producing phosphate fertilisers, whose supply chains have also been disrupted by the war: Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are major sulphur exporters. Iran, which exported sulphur to China, Latin America, Pakistan, India, and other Asian and African countries, halted production of both sulphur and ammonia during the conflict. In light of the crisis, countries such as China – the world’s largest producer of sulfuric acid – Turkey, and India considered export restrictions. 

An old dependency 

Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers and their feedstocks has deep historical roots. Fertiliser use began as an innovative solution to increase agricultural productivity in the early 20th century, gradually reshaping the continent’s food system, and tying farming to industrial production and global supply chains. At the heart of this shift lies the industrial processing of three essential nutrients found naturally in the environment: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “It’s like a big kitchen,” a laboratory operator at Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara International, told me. “These elements are mixed together according to farmers’ needs, increasingly in tailor-made combinations.” 

One of the earliest artificial fertilisers, superphosphate (SSP), was first produced commercially in the mid-19th century by treating phosphate rock, rich in phosphorus, with sulphuric acid. With SSP, fertiliser manufacturing gradually moved from farms – where the natural manure cycle was rooted in the recycling of organic waste back into agricultural soils – into the hands of the agrochemical industry, accompanying the industrialisation of agriculture in the early 20th century.  

The expansion of phosphate use further tied agrochemistry to mining: phosphate rock is only found in a handful of countries, particularly in North Africa. Morocco alone holds more than 70 per cent of global phosphate reserves; it is the world’s largest producer and the second-largest exporter after China. With some reserves facing depletion in the coming decades, Beijing has implemented export controls on phosphate fertilisers since 2021. In 2017, the European Commission added phosphate to its list of critical raw materials, acknowledging its strategic importance and Europe’s exposure to supply risk.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system. Globally, fertiliser use rose from roughly 30 million tonnes in 1960 to more than 190 million tonnes today – a more than sixfold increase. According to estimates by Fertilizers Europe, the industry’s main trade association in the EU, of the roughly 180 million hectares of agricultural land in the European Union, nearly 124 million are now fertilised. The remaining areas consist mainly of permanent grasslands, fallow land, or land left temporarily out of production. 

Arable land dedicated to annual crops accounts for 57 per cent of fertilised land. Yet this broad picture masks significant regional differences. In Western Europe, a substantial share of agricultural land is devoted to permanent crops (such as vineyards, orchards, and forestry plantations) as well as fertilised grasslands. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, agriculture is more heavily concentrated on large-scale annual cropping systems, particularly cereals, oilseeds such as rapeseed and sunflower, and fodder crops used for animal feed. As a result, Fertilizers Europe expects most Central and Eastern European EU member states to record higher fertiliser consumption in the coming years. 

The EU as a whole remains a key player in the global fertiliser market, with France, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Romania accounting for the bulk of phosphate fertiliser consumption. France is also the continent’s largest consumer of nitrogen fertilisers.  

However, overall consumption is contracting. In 2023, European agriculture applied 9.3 million tonnes of mineral fertilisers, marking a 3.7 per cent decrease compared to 2022 and a decline of more than 20 per cent from the 2017 peak. While producer associations point to signs of stabilisation and hope for a return to pre-2022 levels, the market still appears not to have fully recovered from the disruptions triggered by the war in Ukraine.  

But amid recurring geopolitical shocks and ecosystems reaching critical conditions, to what extent is a return to business as usual in fertiliser use necessary or desirable? 

Nutrition and pollution 

Intensive fertilisation has enabled Europe to expand agricultural production and secure millions of tonnes of food, but it has also created a dependence that goes beyond the actual agronomic needs of soils.  

Decades of continuous application have, in some cases, led to nutrient accumulation or imbalances. Numerous studies, some of them published by fertiliser producer associations themselves, suggest that fertiliser needs in many European and American production systems are increasingly oriented toward maintenance applications (keeping existing soil nutrient levels stable) rather than corrective inputs (raising deficient nutrient levels to a healthy target). Meanwhile, regions facing nutrient deficiencies, such as many African countries, still struggle to access fertilisers. 

Intensive nutrient use in the Global North has intensified concerns over soil health, water quality, and the accumulation of contaminants in agricultural land, all of which have entered public and policy debates. In recent years, discussions on fertiliser use in the EU have increasingly centred on pollution linked to eutrophication, a process in which excess nutrients in water bodies trigger algal blooms that deplete oxygen and disrupt aquatic ecosystems. The problem remains unresolved and continues to affect lakes and river deltas across Europe, despite the EU Nitrates Directive, which aims to reduce agricultural nitrate pollution. 

In Italy’s Po Delta, pollutants accumulated along the river system cause algal blooms, particularly in the summer. In Spain, civil society organisations have taken agro-industrial actors to court for eutrophication in the Mar Menor, accusing them of illegal discharges that contribute to the lagoon’s degradation. France’s recent cadmium controversy has expanded the debate on fertiliser sustainability beyond production sites to food safety and public health concerns.  

EU contradictions 

Despite the reassuring slogans of fertiliser producers, often framed in humanitarian terms – “saving lives” and “feeding the planet,” – the environmental costs of the agrochemical industry have long fuelled public debate and grassroots mobilisation. In autumn 2025, for instance, Tunisia saw large demonstrations against the Groupe Chimique Tunisien along the coastline of Gabès, following the hospitalisation of more than 200 people, mostly children, for respiratory distress and gas poisoning. 

In Europe, this tension between productivity and environmental limits gradually entered policy frameworks. In the early 2000s, the European agricultural policy framework finally acknowledged the urgency of limiting fertiliser dispersion by introducing environmental measures and, more recently, eco-schemes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These measures encourage farmers to return to more traditional agroecological practices, such as crop rotation with legumes and other plants capable of naturally enriching the soil. Agroecology Europe, a Brussels-based organisation, also recommends a partial return to non-chemical soil fertilisation methods.  

Geopolitical instability has added another layer of urgency to Europe’s need to reduce its dependency on mineral fertilisers. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, stressed in May that the EU’s Fertiliser Action Plan isn’t just about supporting farmers in the short term but also aimed at “accelerating innovation in sustainable, home-grown solutions”. She also acknowledged that “climate leadership and economic resilience are interlinked”. 

However, the EU is rolling back climate and environmental measures to placate farmers and pursue economic competitiveness. In early 2026, under pressure from the agrochemical sector, the European Commission proposed an amendment to its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), allowing for the temporary exclusion of certain products – particularly fertilisers – in the event of “serious harm to the EU internal market.” Meanwhile, the signing of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement with South American countries in January 2026 angered the agricultural sector, particularly in France, with farmers fearing unfair competition from imported products.  

These conflicting interests show that reversing a century-long trajectory of agricultural intensification and supply fragmentation won’t be easy, particularly in the current political climate. In this context, the EU appears to be advancing the liberalisation of agricultural policy under the banner of “sovereignty”. However, the declining productivity of soils and mounting ecological pressures both point to the need to transform this trajectory.