While some in Brussels have accepted it is wrong for environmental groups to be handed taxpayer money to promote the Green Deal, others continue to defy reality, even insisting that this isn’t lobbying at all.
Spanish Socialist Teresa Ribera, who is Executive Vice President for competitiveness and climate at the Commission, dismissed recent reports of paid influencing as a “perversion.”
It is not lobbying. It is raising public awareness and trying to identify where the difficulties and the challenges might be. And I think that we need that critical spirit.
She even described receiving feedback from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as “a very democratic and healthy way of identifying problems.”
Ribera used predictably doomy language when defending Brussels’ green agenda in an interview with Euractiv, insisting that “denying the consequences of climate change is quite risky,” and criticising “political families that are using people’s fears to go against the people.”
It could as easily—and more accurately—be said that Brussels is using climate fears to go against the people, especially European farmers.
Lobbying cash was taken from a billion-euro environmental subsidy and went, in part, towards pushing the continent-wide farming debate in a more green-friendly direction. NGOs were even, in some cases, given specific metrics to demonstrate their lobbying—or, as Ribera would put it, awareness-spreading—achievements.
The Party of European Socialists has, of course, been supportive of Ribera’s defence, and was particularly impressed by her “warning about the danger posed by climate change denial.”
We fully support the position of European Commission Executive Vice-President @Teresaribera to defend environmental NGOs from attacks by the EPP and her warning about the danger posed by climate change denial.https://t.co/1iIO6PntyN
— PES(@PES_PSE) January 31, 2025
After contracts obtained by Dutch daily De Telegraaf revealed the extent of Brussels’ lobbying operation, Croatian MEP Stephen Bartulica argued that the “green agenda is dead” and “Europe must prepare for a new era.” But if Ribera’s blatant dismissal is anything to go by, its advocates are not at all put off by attacks, and will simply find new avenues—both healthy and democratic—for pushing policies through.
