Five Pillars of the EU Green Recovery

How is Europe going to manage their "New Green Deal" amidst the economic and social turmoil of the pandemic? A panel of European thought leaders discussed this topic this morning and shared some interesting key takeaways that also should resonate with the StartUp and Finance community:

1) Don't think zero-sum games: Saving jobs, the economy, and saving the environment are not mutually exclusive or conflicting tasks. If we play our hand right, we can integrate these seemingly conflicting objectives. But we have to overcome our natural tendency to favour our own and short term interest over the joint interests of society.

2) Beware of the medicine: With the trillions in economic stimulus in play, we run the risk to destroy many years of progress in both European and ecological progress. How should France impose environmental and social conditions on financial aid if Germany does not impose such conditions for their aid & stimulus programs? Luxembourg, France, and Spain all committed to including social and environmental conditions in their (green) recovery programs.

3) Accelerate the skills transformation: Transforming the job reality of all the people whose jobs are at risk is a key priority for the green recovery. Investing in intelligent talent transformation on a pan-European level should become a central pillar of the green recovery. As an example, Poland already has a major stake in off-shore wind employment without running a single Polish off-shore wind farm. There‘s an opportunity in new skills, even if applied on a European instead of a domestic, national level.

4) Money decisions matter more: Financial Services and decision-makers around long-term financial investments (like pension funds and asset managers) can substantially impact the impact the Green Recovery will develop by advocating their investment preferences towards clear and transparent (reads published and actively curated) ESG standards and impact investment policies.

5) Hold your politicians accountable: We, the public, should demand an open and public debate from our policymakers and politicians now, before the funds are distributed and before the rules on how national and corporate (reads lobby) interest again supersedes European and citizen interest. I would ask everyone who cares to write to their specific representative both on a national as well as on a European level, to take this debate into the open. And to do it NOW!

And while the positive attitude of the panelists sounds promising, the official papers Brussel issues seem to label Ursula von der Leyen's call for a green recovery as mere lip service - the temporary addendum to state aid published on May 8th explicitly does NOT require any strings attached to state funding.

Thanks to the panelists Teresa Ribera (Spain), Fatih Birol (France), and Claude Turmes (Luxembourg) for their open, energetic and optimistic approach. Keep up the excellent work and let's make sure we get this one right. Also great applause to Frédéric Simon for hosting the panel as EURACTIV's editor on energy and environment.

For those of you that want to listen to the panel check out https://youtu.be/hAf7TOpOgxA.