Von der Leyen trims Green Deal to preserve 2050 net-zero core

Ursula von der Leyen is dismantling parts of her own Green Deal to keep its beating heart alive. The European Commission president, a former doctor, has concluded that the only way to defend the 2050 net-zero target against a hostile parliamentary majority is to amputate the policy's limbs, corporate reporting rules, a pesticides regulation, the strict 2035 combustion-engine phase-out, while leaving the climate law itself untouched.

The election that changed the arithmetic

Last June's European Parliament election rewrote the legislative arithmetic. Von der Leyen secured a second term with a centrist coalition, but a parallel right-wing majority emerged, uniting her own European People's Party (EPP) with hard-right groups. EPP president Manfred Weber has since used that majority to chip away at green legislation, calculating that the Commission needs EPP votes more than the EPP needs the Commission's full Green Deal.

A Commission official familiar with von der Leyen's thinking, granted anonymity to protect the relationship, described the shift bluntly: "We're in a very different place than we were at the beginning of the first mandate in 2019. The president remains committed to the Green Deal, it just now has to incorporate some of these changed realities." Those realities include a parliament where the centre-right's priority is industrial competitiveness and regulatory relief, not biodiversity or circular economy targets.

What has been cut and what remains

The list of abandoned or weakened measures is growing. The Commission has withdrawn a proposed regulation on sustainable pesticide use, which aimed to cut chemical pesticide use by half by 2030. It has watered down the 2035 ban on new combustion-engine cars by allowing e-fuel exemptions. It has scrapped the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive's requirements for companies to disclose environmental impacts and climate-risk exposure. And it has shelved any prospect of regulating agricultural emissions, the sector that accounts for roughly 11 percent of EU greenhouse gases and has proven politically untouchable.

What survives is the European Climate Law, which enshrines the 2050 net-zero target, and the Fit for 55 package that translates it into sectoral legislation for 2030. Von der Leyen's calculation is that these core instruments are defensible because they are already law, whereas the broader sustainability agenda, nature restoration, circular economy, zero pollution, lacks the same legal armour.

The simplification argument

The Commission frames every retreat as "simplification". Paula Pinho, the chief spokesperson, put it this way: "Simplification is in the interest of the European Green Deal. If it gets too complex, it won't be done." The argument is that businesses, especially smaller ones, cannot comply with overlapping reporting obligations, and that regulatory fatigue fuels the political backlash. Critics counter that complexity is the price of a policy that tries to align an entire economy with planetary boundaries, and that "simplification" has become a euphemism for deregulation.

The distinction matters. When the Commission proposed the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, it applied to large companies. The reporting requirements now being removed applied more broadly. The pesticides law had already been negotiated and agreed by co-legislators before the Commission withdrew it, a rare move that underscores the political pressure. The combustion-engine compromise came after Germany, backed by the EPP, demanded an e-fuel loophole. Each concession has a specific constituency and a specific political author.

The anti-greenwashing flashpoint

Last week the strategy nearly unravelled. After the EPP and far-right groups pushed to ditch an anti-greenwashing directive that would have forced companies to substantiate environmental claims, the Commission signalled it would withdraw the bill. The backlash was immediate. Socialist MEP Tiemo Wölken, who worked on the law, said: "VDL needs to get EPP in line. The European Parliament's biggest group is trying to kill everything related to the sustainability agenda." Centrist and centre-left parties accused von der Leyen of subservience to Weber.

Within days the Commission reversed course, or clarified that it had been misunderstood. Its position now is that the directive stands, but the rules should not apply to the smallest companies. The episode revealed how thin von der Leyen's room for manoeuvre has become: a single misstep on a relatively minor file triggered a crisis of confidence among the very MEPs she needs to pass the next wave of climate legislation.

The 2040 target and the outsourcing option

The next test arrives this week with the Commission's proposed 2040 climate target. Von der Leyen favours a 90 percent emissions cut from 1990 levels, a figure the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change recommended. But a coalition of member states, backed by the EPP, wants the target decoupled from nearer-term effort-sharing rules. They also want flexibility to meet part of the obligation by financing reductions in poorer countries, effectively outsourcing domestic decarbonisation.

A draft of the proposal seen by POLITICO shows the Commission is prepared to allow international carbon credits to count towards the 2040 goal, a significant shift from the current architecture where the EU's targets are met domestically. The 90 percent figure remains, but the mechanism for achieving it is being loosened. For von der Leyen, keeping the headline number is the victory; for critics, the outsourcing provision undermines the integrity of the entire framework.

Green parties and the interdependence argument

Vula Tsetsi, co-chair of the European Green Party, argues the amputations are self-defeating. "All this demonization of the climate policies … creates a lot of uncertainty," she said. "It is von der Leyen's role to defend what for her has been so important in the previous legislation, meaning the Green Deal. And she should not give up." The Greens' case is that climate, nature and corporate responsibility are interlinked: you cannot decarbonise agriculture without addressing nitrogen pollution, you cannot clean up supply chains without due diligence rules, and you cannot maintain political consent for net-zero if citizens see biodiversity collapsing around them.

The Commission's own impact assessments have historically supported this view. The 2020 Green Deal communication described it as "a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use." That language, growth decoupled from resource use, has largely disappeared from current Commission discourse, replaced by competitiveness, simplification and strategic autonomy.

What the member states want

The Parliament is only half the story. In the Council, a blocking minority of member states has formed around agricultural and industrial interests. Poland, Hungary and Romania have opposed tightening effort-sharing targets. France and Germany have pushed for automotive flexibility. Italy has led the charge against the pesticides law. The Commission's concessions often reflect Council pressure as much as Parliamentary arithmetic. Von der Leyen is navigating a pincer movement: the EPP in Parliament, a conservative bloc in the Council, and a Commission bureaucracy that drafted the original laws and now watches them being unwound.