No, Macron Is Not a “Climate Bad Guy”

It’s not often that Emmanuel Macron deserves defending. But for once, he might have a point.  

A Politico article this week breathlessly declares Macron to have “joined the climate bad guys club.” Apparently, he is “jamming on the brakes” when it comes to the European Union’s climate targets. Last week, France—along with Germany, Poland, and Italy—demanded that a planned vote on the bloc’s 2035 and 2040 climate milestones be postponed. According to Politico, Macron’s “efforts have put him in the same camp as traditional climate blockers such as Poland and Hungary, boosting their chances of weakening the bloc’s green ambitions.” One expert warns that “those closest to Donald Trump are winning the argument on climate in the EU.” 

It’s true that this was a surprising move from Macron. The French president has typically talked a big game when it comes to climate. It was he, after all, who once pledged to “make our planet great again.” Under his watch, France has remained one of the EU’s lowest per capita emitters, thanks in large part to its roughly 70% nuclear-powered electricity mix. His government launched the €30 billion France 2030 investment plan to expand renewables, green hydrogen, and battery manufacturing, and he backed the EU’s carbon border tax to keep heavy industry from fleeing to ‘dirtier’ jurisdictions. Macron also shepherded the 2019 Energy and Climate Law that locks in a net zero target for 2050 and accelerated the closure of France’s remaining coal plants.

So why the apparent change of heart? As per Politico, “Macron insists he’s in favour of rigorous climate targets and just wants more time to ensure the EU is getting this far-reaching decision right.” A senior French official said that Macron’s government agrees with the goal of cutting emissions by 90% by 2040, but the question remains of how to reach it. That is certainly an important question—it will be by no means a painless process, and Macron is likely wary of the immense cost. He won’t have forgotten 2018 through 2020, when the fuel-tax hike that was meant to ‘green’ transport detonated the gilet jaunes uprising, forcing the government to first freeze, then scrap the eco-tax to stop the unrest. 

Macron must also be keeping an eye fixed on France’s farmers. Throughout last winter and spring, hundreds of tractors ring-fenced Paris and blockaded motorways from Occitanie to Île-de-France, echoing similar actions in Belgium, Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Their grievances included rising diesel, ever-thicker binders of paperwork, and new land-use and nitrogen rules that clash with planting cycles—all of which were directly or indirectly the result of Europe’s obsession with decarbonising. The same scenes played out across the continent. In January and February of 2024, farmers massed in Brussels’ EU quarter—parking tractors outside the Berlaymont, torching hay bales and firing manure at the European Parliament. In Germany, tractorcades gridlocked Berlin and Hamburg during the January 2024 nationwide protests against diesel-tax changes and new compliance rules, with follow-ups through spring 2024. And in the Netherlands, the farmers’ movement surged from 2019 to 2023—peaking again in 2022–2023—with inverted flags and manure dumps outside provincial offices over nitrogen caps that threatened compulsory buy-outs of family farms in order to comply with EU climate targets. Farmers, often the first to bear the brunt of nonsense green policies, have made it abundantly clear that they will not sit by and watch as Brussels destroys their livelihoods for the sake of some pie-in-the-sky ideology. 

France, along with many other European nations, is discovering that bankrupting a country in the name of vague promises about ‘saving the planet’ is not a winning policy. The bill for green ideology is eye-watering. Brussels itself says meeting 2030 targets needs roughly €477 billion in additional green investment every year on top of current spending (about 3.2% of EU GDP), with a separate €210 billion push just to deliver REPowerEU—the EU’s plan to end reliance on Russian fossil fuels by cutting demand and accelerating renewables—by 2027. In France, the grid operator, RTE, projects €100 billion for transmission upgrades by 2040 to cope with electrification, new nuclear and offshore wind—roughly triple current annual spend—before you count distribution networks and generation. Households will also feel the squeeze from the new carbon market for road fuels and heating (ETS2), so much so that the EU has created a Social Climate Fund of at least €86.7 billion (2026–2032) to cushion “energy and transport poverty”—an explicit acknowledgement that households will bear the brunt of this green transition. And as the days start to get shorter and colder, Macron and every other European leader will be hoping they don’t face brown- or blackouts. 

To the kind of people who would frame Macron as the “bad guy” for refusing to bow down to climate worship, none of this matters. It’s easier for them to paint France, Poland, Hungary, and every other country pushing back against the EU’s green agenda as evil than it is to admit that that agenda is going to have catastrophic consequences. The blunt truth is that Net Zero is a pipe dream. The idea that the EU will be entirely carbon neutral by 2050—the goal currently enshrined in law—is a dangerous fantasy. There simply isn’t the financing, infrastructure, or public consent to pull it off. If Brussels continues to try, it risks dragging the entire continent into a veritable Stone Age. 

It’s definitely wishful thinking to suggest that Macron has finally come around to this idea. Given that he is currently wrestling with an unstable, collapsing government, he is also under immense political pressure, especially from the eco-sceptical Right. Whatever his reasons, we should all hope that dissent from a previously strong green ally might start to slap some sense into the EU. The eco-zealots might think that Macron and Co. are the villains, but they’re the ones demanding that Europeans suffer for their grand ideological designs.