An Italian MEP resigned as rapporteur for the EU Parliament’s influential environmental (ENVI) committee, citing the role played by a green NGO in dictating emissions legislation.
Silvia Sardone, a Lega MEP, accused the green lobby group Clean Air Task Force (CATF) of influencing the committee’s work by viewing and altering texts without the proper oversight of elected officials.
CATF came to media attention in February for claims that it had unethically drafted a legal text submitted to the committee by green MEP Jutta Paulus after the name of an employee for the group appeared on the file.
Both the NGO and Paulus have denied the accusations, saying that it was an error and that the text had not been written by the group.
Sardone claims that the NGO lobbying is part of a more “systematic” campaign by climate NGOs to alter decision-making in Brussels and that MEPs on the environment committee have been kept in the dark about the backroom lobbying. The EU is fast-tracking multiple contentious tracts of climate legislation which have provoked the opposition of many on the political Right, including a prohibition on the sale of new petrol cars after 2035 and emission quotas for European industry.
Sardone added that she had repeatedly reported the lack of transparency in CATF’s lobbying tactics and even likened aspects of the group’s conduct to the perpetrators of the Qatargate scandal.
The ENVI committee from which Sardone resigned is tasked with scrutinising environmental and health legislation. The panel had become a forum for MEPs to air grievances about green regulations and the EU’s vaccine tendering process.
Sardonne’s resignation comes as the EU is pondering how to regulate foreign-backed NGOs. Many fear that NGOs in Brussels have become a law unto themselves and an entry point for foreign influence operations.
Sardone’s Lega party has publicly insinuated that Chinese influence operations are behind moves to ban the sale of fossil-fuel cars in Europe by 2035. Her party has been leading the charge against the EU’s decarbonisation efforts.
The resignation adds to the looming showdown between the NGO sector and legislators, as the EU seeks to clarify the ethical lines between what counts as unfair lobbying. The extent to which climate lobbyists have directed legislation against the wishes or interests of the European public may never properly be known.
