Deindustrialize in the name of the climate

Yes, “I am willing to pay a little more for sustainable products to take care of the planet, but if this contributes to generating local employment, added value and social cohesion in our country”, in line with the proposal for a Buy European Act.  It is not an isolated reflection. It joins the debate addressed by member countries on a myriad of European rules and strategies, such as the application of the new European emissions trading scheme (ETS2). A system that will affect road transport and heating, transferring the price of carbon directly to fuels and logistics. What is evident is that Europe cannot afford a climate transition that expels factories, destroys industrial employment and weakens its economic sovereignty.

This has a lot to do with ETS1, which comes impacting on our economy, also requires a deep review, almost in its entirety, given the need to help exports to markets without environmental costs, because industrial employment is threatened, as is business delocalization in the face of an increasingly unequal global competition. And it cannot be forgotten that without industry there is no stable employment, without stable employment there is no social cohesion and without social cohesion there is no viable green transition.

In Spain we have moved from a stage marked by ideology to realism. Europe already knows that the game is not being played with the same cards and the risk involved in deindustrializing in the name of climate. Added to this is the energy fragility that Europe is experiencing in an increasingly unstable geopolitical context, market tension, and instability aggravated by the war in Iran.

China continues polluting while continuing to apply active industrial support policies and controlling energy costs for strategic sectors. The United States, for its part, maintains a stable framework of tax incentives for clean industrial investment, with multi-year tax credits and a structurally lower energy cost than the European one.

Without aligning sustainability and economy, environmental commitments are not viable

If we transfer it to national politics, we go from a sanchismo in Spain focused on raising environmentalism flags that only feed the winds of marketing, to a Draghi Report which, with warnings included, tells us that “Europe is in a more difficult situation and with a growth model that is fading”: a full-fledged call to action that comes to say “let's take care of what's ours”. Nobody in this country would doubt, in view of his discourse, the environmentalism of Pedro Sánchez, until seeing his data, of course.

Data that shows that, without aligning sustainability and economy, environmental commitments are not viable. In 2022, its law on waste and contaminated soils came into force, which thanks to an amendment by the undersigned also came to be called “circular economy”, although only the title was circular. A law that had more than 200 amendments from my group and that, except for two, all were rejected by the votes of the left.

Four years later, this law is one more example of Sánchez's erroneous policy. A policy that analyzes neither the impact that its decisions have on the environment, nor on the economy, nor on Spanish families. Let's give some examples to get closer to reality. Spain has gone from having a circularity rate of 10.4% in 2010 to 8.5% in 2023, when the European average stands at 11.8%.

Today the Spanish industry spends more on waste management and we are the only country in Europe that has implemented a plastic tax, making the cost of products more expensive, fundamentally from the agri-food sector. Since 2019 the average price of the shopping basket has risen by more than 40%. Not so our purchasing power.

Another of the great problems affects the competitiveness of our companies, not only for bearing taxes that do not exist in other countries of the European Union, but also for having at the helm a vice-president, Teresa Ribera, and who was her Secretary of State and today minister of the sector, Sara Aagesen, more focused on acting as ambassadors in international summits than on defending with their own content the interests and productive reality of our country.

They leave us a country more dependent on third parties, with an increase in imports of recycled plastic and packaging. The trade deficit of plastic packaging in our country tripled from 2021 (-549 million euros) to 2024 (1,305 million euros). Another example, the recycling industry, essential for the circular economy, can no longer assume the entry of cheaper and untraceable imports, with an increasingly high risk of divestment, when paradoxically we have one of the largest plastic recycling capacities in Europe.

That is, less autonomy, more dependence, less competitiveness or, what is the same, a dangerous path towards deindustrialization. Not to mention legislative balkanization. One thing is to defend the autonomy of the Autonomous Communities, enshrined in their statutory texts, and another distinct thing is to propose, in the already hyper-regulated European context, for each issue affecting the Spanish economy, 17 different regulations in a global world where investment seeks legal certainty. The end-of-waste status is an example.

In a world marked by scarcity, competition and unstable geopolitics, they are essential to depend less and have greater strategic autonomy

Law 7/2022 opened the door to "case-by-case" resolutions by the Autonomous Communities, but the legislative technique and the lack of uniform criteria have generated legal uncertainty and friction with the free movement of goods. The result, a complex processing, difficulties for mobility within the national territory that penalize local economies, isolated strategic sectors and a greater decrease in our capacity to produce secondary raw materials. Yes, secondary raw materials.

In a world marked by scarcity, competition and unstable geopolitics, they are essential to depend less and have greater strategic autonomy. If we go back to the beginning, it is logical to think that there is weariness of green policies that stimulate other markets while ruining our local economies.

It is the echo of polarization. The task ahead is immense, to convince many again that polluting, as China and other countries do, is wrong, and that protecting the environment is not only good, but also ethically the right thing to do. But it must be done with common sense, making it compatible with the economy. Let's decarbonize, yes, but creating opportunities here, in Spain; protecting our companies, attracting investment, with quality jobs and retaining talent, not pushing it into exile.