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A Conversation With EU Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra

The president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has indicated that she wants her second mandate to focus on competitiveness. Your portfolio focuses on climate. Are these objectives compatible?

The President has been a great champion of climate policies.

What she is doing—and what we are doing as a Commission—is continuing with climate action at full speed. You can have a desire to change policies — but the science won’t change. It is not something you can choose to address or ignore. You can put your head in the sand for a couple of days, but when you take it out, the problem is still there — and the price tag, unfortunately, will only go up. There is no alternative to more climate action.

But it is also true that we will not help the climate agenda nor our people if we do not have a thriving business environment for heavy industries and clean tech. We have to make sure Europe is a place that is open for business: we need to dramatically speed up permitting, simplify rules and regulations. That doesn’t mean lowering the bar, but we need to do a lot more on innovation and promote our own economic security. We have to decrease our strategic dependencies and climate policies allow us collectively to do that. 

I do not believe these are incompatible.

Still, a significant part of the European public opinion has become less enthusiastic about climate policies: the green wave that shaped the legislative agenda in 2019 has fizzled out. Have you lost the public opinion on climate?

The overwhelming majority of Europeans say they are deeply worried about climate change and demand policymakers do more. And yet a significant contingency of that group is worried about the impact climate policies might have on their jobs and livelihood. Those two things are not a contradiction. They are at best a paradox.

When you work in a factory or in a coal plant, you can perfectly understand why we need climate policies but you also worry about the future. Will you lose your job if the plant closes? We need a just transition for people with limited means. The backbone of our society is the middle class — and it is absolutely essential that these policies work for them.

The same idea applies internationally. Even though we are in a dramatically difficult phase of geopolitics and diplomatic relations around the world are strained, humanity has no choice but to solve this problem together. I saw it at the most recent COP in Baku. Climate action is one of the areas where there is still an appetite for joint solutions. I heard it from my colleagues in Africa, Asia, even China, and from our friends in Latin America. 

You were the lead European negotiator for the 2024 COP meetings. From the outside, the COP seems to have gone from being a key meeting for world leaders to a much more subdued affair. Does the format still work? 

There are few things in international unanimity-based diplomacy more difficult than climate change. You have some 200 countries represented, all with their own short and long-term interests, and then the elephant in the room: the question of financing. It is dramatically complex. This is not to say that I agree with everything about the COP. I am very tempted to say that some of these negotiations could be done more efficiently.

The reality is, if you take a look at the facts, Europe is responsible for 6% of global emissions, the rest of the world accounts for 94%. But we can’t call it quits. On the contrary, we have a responsibility to make sure this is tackled. We need to put others on track for carbon markets and make sure they drive these numbers down too. Ultimately, it’s a global endeavour and we have to be present as Europeans.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has argued that the Green Deal has been designed with an ideological approach that is detrimental to European industry. Her discourse is part of a wider, international backlash from the right against what they see as an agenda that uses climate as a tool to reaffirm identity politics. Are they right?

I don’t think climate policies are woke or ideological.

I myself am not a big fan of woke and I consider the overemphasis that woke puts on identity to be deeply unhelpful in societal debates that ultimately affect us all. 

There is a broad understanding, whether you come from the right or the left, that when it comes to climate you have to look at the science. And science tells us that this is a dangerous moment if we don’t take action. There are very few classic climate sceptics left in this debate. 

Isn’t climate change stuck in a culture war already?

Finding climate solutions is not woke, it is not ideological. This is why I insist we cannot conflate this question. The problem with what we call “woke” is that it doesn’t judge matters on the basis of merit or character. It is constantly embarking on identity politics and sees the world through a very narrow lens. That is why I am critical of it. I cannot think of a more universal cause than fighting climate change. It’s one of the few areas where there is still political will to reach joint solutions. 

A number of Member States and your own political family, the European People’s Party, are calling for a review of key climate targets, such as the ban on the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035. The car industry is also pushing back against what it sees as too many deadlines and fines. Will you be able to implement your policies against this shifting tide — which we have already seen with the Deforestation law?

I have a very different view on what is happening.

It is very important to say that we have a fantastic industry that gives people mobility and that means freedom. I am very attached to the idea of mobility. I am not anti-car. I like cars, I own an electric and I have a deep appreciation of what transport — whether it’s cars, boats or rail – has done to advance humanity. Mobility and growth are inextricably linked. But when it comes to 2035 specifically, I do not see how changing that target is going to help the climate or the industry. 

Some in the auto industry want it to be relaxed but I can also tell you some of the most competitive performers in the sector are telling us they have already made investments and they want predictability. The most important thing you can give the industry — and I come from the private sector — is, in fact, predictability.

The EPP is not asking to undo the Green Deal or throw away all targets. There is a debate as to how we get to net zero in the most competitive way. That is a valid point. To say the EPP is negating our climate agenda is simplistic and misses the point on what the party is saying: climate action and business have to go hand in hand. Ultimately, there is much more commonality than it seems between us because we all want the sector to thrive in the future.

The European Commission will put forward its new Clean Industrial Deal in the first quarter of 2025, underpinning the findings of the Draghi report. Luca de Meo, chief executive officer of Renault and acting chief of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, recently said he appreciated the Draghi report but argued the Commission is not involving the industry to the extent it should. Why?

My goal is to make a case for competitiveness and decarbonization. We will not find that through one-sided solutions. We live in a world that is far more complicated and infinitely more diverse. We are talking to the industry and that also includes every step of the supply chain: I come from the private sector and the Dutch finance ministry. That has shaped my views and my relation with businesses. We need business in Europe. I say that to colleagues who at times have been critical of the car industry — we need to look at how much they bring to society and the millions of jobs they provide.

When it comes to the European industry more broadly, we want to have a European dialogue and we will be taking a holistic approach. Our companies have to be able to compete at the lowest possible cost in financial terms, but also at the lowest possible cost in terms of society and climate. Decarbonization provides an opportunity: it will make us less dependent on Russia, less dependent on China and allow us to tackle the climate crisis we are facing full-on.

The European agenda operates in a global context and that will be shaped by the return of President Donald Trump to the White House. He has repeatedly said he has serious doubts that mankind is directly contributing to the increase of CO2 emissions. His mantra is “drill, baby drill”. At the same time he could have a gravitational pull for more countries to abandon the Paris Agreement, which the EU defends. What is the contingency plan?

We have a long history of exceptional cooperation with the United States. We have shared values. From my perspective, we will work relentlessly in the domain of geopolitics and also in the domain of climate. It is clear Americans are increasingly looking geopolitically to the East. But if you zoom out and ask in any European capital which place in the world shared interests, values and outlook most like your own, the answer will most likely be the United States. The same applies to Americans.

The return of Trump to the White House might also open a new cycle for Europe in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: how will you define this era?

We have to get used to a world of international power politics, more conflicts and wars, pushback on democracy, human rights and international institutions.

With climate, the impact will be even more frontal, not just in the way extreme climate episodes will affect human life — and that is a serious risk — they will also have enormous financial and geopolitical ramifications. Artificial intelligence, even if it can be a force for good, will also come with huge disruptions for humanity. I can understand why there is a fear about losing out, falling out of the middle class. There is also a concern, which I understand, that migration is not sufficiently controlled and integration has stopped working. Europe will be at the nexus of many of these dynamics.

My view: the world is entering a geopolitical winter.

Buckle up.

The EU has been successful in times of peace but it has not been tested in times of war.  Will this geopolitical winter hit Europe harder given its geographical position and its institutional structure?

Europe has largely benefitted from its exceptionally strong relations with countries and partners from all over the globe. The EU has a natural disposition to build strong diplomatic ties and it is truly the champion of international trade.

But given its geography, it is also vulnerable to climate change, unwarranted migration and now we have a neighbour, Russia, that is waging an absolutely horrible and unjustifiable war on Europe’s soil. This isn’t about Ukraine, this is about Europe’s own security: the most important and urgent of all these geopolitical challenges is Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The cheapest and best investment we can make in our long-term security is to provide Ukrainians with all the resources to win the war. If we don’t, the price tag on security will only increase and the damage to our credibility will be enormous. What we do in Ukraine will echo the future in ways that we cannot yet fully comprehend .

You said in a speech in September that “China is challenging us, in such a fundamental way that it would be naive to deny that Europe has a China problem”. What is Europe’s China problem?

There is no alternative to engaging with China — they are a country of 1.3 billion people and they are responsible for almost 30% of global emissions — we cannot be naive. It is clear we don’t have a level-playing field and if you look at intelligence reports — I refer to the country I know best, the Netherlands — they have publicly called out Chinese espionage. Other intelligence reports show the exact same thing. We should not be naive about how foreign actors — in plural — are active in our continent in a way that is potentially detrimental to our own future as Europeans.

The EU has pursued a foreign policy doctrine which argues China is a triple actor: a partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival. Will that doctrine hold?

China needs to show with actions whether it wants to be a partner or a rival. That means establishing a real level playing field. It also applies to the domain of cyber security and it is also true for climate. This is the standard we apply, not just to China, but to ourselves too. We have to be realistic and not take things at face value. We should not be naive.

We are coming from a world where, if you look back at the past ten years, we were sugar coating these geopolitical realities because they were somewhat uncomfortable, and not just vis a vis China. Russia is the prime example. We have now arrived to a point, slowly perhaps, where at least we are saying what is happening out loud. But it would be an illusion to think that in this era of power politics making statements is enough. We have to beef up our words with action. Many of our member states are doing exactly that — they are increasing spending in security and investing much more in the domain of defense. We have to be able to protect ourselves and the Union. Important steps have been made — but the challenges have also increased significantly. We have to be faster and more decisive.