Industry fingerprints on European Green Deal

Manmade toxic chemicals are linked to rising health, fertility, developmental and environmental problems, including the collapse in insect, bird and aquatic mammal populations. 

Last week, a damning European Environment Agency report found that chemicals were one of Europe’s main environmental problems and most off-track policy areas. Environment ministers and parliamentarians have repeatedly called on the European Commission to do more on chemical safety. 

Ursula von der Leyen duly promised a “zero pollution” goal and other improvements within a European Green Deal as part of her bid to become Commission president.

But a recent leak of the Green Deal reflected a host of chemical industry preferences. Plans for a “package of regulatory measures” by 2021 were part of a draft that emerged on 29 November, but was removed in a second draft seen by the European Environmental Bureau days later. That version contained no chemical policy reforms whatsoever. An “innovation principle” is present in a leaked Commission presentation, roughly a copy and paste of industry proposals.

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