Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, favors an EU response to the United States’ massive $369 billion subsidy package for ‘green energy.’ ‘The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022’ presents incentives for developing ‘clean’ energy like solar and for buying electric vehicles. The legislation was signed into law by President Biden in August.
Von der Leyen wants to respond to this U.S. legislation with more ‘green’ energy plans across Europe.
“The Inflation Reduction Act should make us reflect on how we can improve our state-aid frameworks, and adapt them to a new global environment,” stated von der Leyen in Bruges, Belgium, Politico reports. She called for a “structural answer” in her speech and for Europe to “do their homework” in part to “mitigate competitive disadvantages.”
The act with the misnomer ‘Inflation Reduction’ does not seem to be primarily aimed at reducing inflation at all, but rather subsidizing ‘green energy’ and ‘health care’ with billions of dollars. It would enhance Obamacare subsidies for three years (at the cost of $64 billion), increase taxes for American citizens, boost funding for the IRS ($80 billion), and create hundreds of billions of dollars in ‘green energy’ money for the federal government to distribute.
An updated Penn Budget Model analysis found that the bill would only reduce inflation by 0.1% over five years. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) presented similar results. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) found that the bill’s 15% corporate minimum tax would hit manufacturers hardest, as Breitbart notes.
Raising taxes and subsidizing companies that deal in ‘green energy’ has long been a failing strategy in the German political landscape. The Ukraine conflict was the last straw to break the camel’s back after decades of disastrous energy policy by the governing parties in Germany. In recent weeks, the German parliament has repeatedly discussed measures to have enough energy to get through the upcoming winter.
Steffen Kotré, energy policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, commented:
The current dark lull casts a harsh light on the failed energy policy of the left-green ideologues. Currently, wind and solar have a capacity utilization of only about five percent. Our last three nuclear power plants supply as much electricity as all the wind turbines and solar panels in the country combined. Even the pretended goals of the green transformers fail: Due to the low share of nuclear energy, CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour were much higher than in almost all European countries. In contrast, every addition of coal and—almost CO2-free—nuclear power plants immediately leads to an increase in safe electricity generation, and every prevented shutdown helps.
As Von Leyen has previously served as German minister of family affairs and youth, conservative voters had hope in her as protector of conservative family values—since she is the mother of seven—but became quickly disillusioned when she pushed legislation encouraging women in the workforce and massively invested in day care for children instead of supporting families in their own proper education of children.
Von der Leyen’s plans for Europe are yet to be defined, but as evident from previous warnings aimed at conservative forces in the EU, nothing good can be expected.
