For more than a decade, Bruselas has been telling us a comforting story: leading the climate crisis is not only a moral obligation but also an automatic economic threat.
The Green Deal was sold as an inevitable hearth for bright prosperity. But the reality (geopolitical, industrial and social) has become that we entered through the front door without asking for permission.
And what it draws from is neither denial nor cynicism, but a basic principle of governance that the EU has too often neglected: evaluate results, no intentions.
Europe overestimated its ability to unilaterally transform the global economy.
While here standards have been raised, duties multiplied and regulation turned into a dogma impervious to reality, other powers have opted for a more earthly focus: the United States subsidizes and protects its industry; China plans, controls supply and export plans; and India grows together.
In the EU, we have instead turned competitiveness into “presumptive” collateral damage.
Headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels.
This fragility is about geopolitics.
Ukraine, the gas crisis, energy dependence and the North American protectionist revolution have shown something uncomfortable for slogans: Economic security and climate ambitions do not always go hand in hand.
As the price of energy suffers, inflation opens up and voters fall, Bruselas immediately discovers the word “pragmatism”. It is not an ideological revolution: it is a forced correction of reality and urns.
In this new table, carriage transport has been transformed into the popular regulation punching bag.
If we need to fulfill “deberes” disproportionately and quicklywhile the actual market structure remains unchanged. In Europe, 93.5% of registered trucks are diesel and 4% are electric.
This is the result of a great European sin: false technological neutrality.
He proclaims neutrality, but suggests a transition with a predetermined ganador.
If you promise the freedom of the solution, but you will be penalized for everything that is not battery-powered.
It seems insecure and you get paralyzed inversions and a gradual aging of the fleet.
To speed up decarbonization, the regulator slows it down. Because when the rules are constantly changing and actually ambiguous, companies do the only rational thing: they hope.
Road traffic is not a minor actor that can apply the “ya se apañarán” therapy. It is the blood system that keeps the economy alive.
“Every time Brussels hits a wall of reality, its response is usually the same: changes, moratoriums, exemptions and adjustments, but no real change of focus.”
The 6.5 million trucks that travel on the EU’s red roads are almost equal to 80% of the country’s load, expressed in tonne-kilometres. A percentage that rises to 96% in the case of Spain, which transport companies are the most active in Europe, including Polacas and the Germans.
Going into this sector under mountains of bureaucracy is not climate policy, It’s an exercise in economic self-sabotage.
The surprising thing is that once Bruselas is shocked by the wall of reality, his response is usually the same: changes, moratoriums, exemptions and adjustments, but never a real change of focus.
A good example of this is the deployment of ETS II by 2028, the flexibility of the plan to phase out internal combustion vehicles in the new EU car package or the low-emission zones born with prorogations under the arm.
Many laws, little enforcement rising costs for people support the economy every day.
If you want to do this, it is advisable to enter the latest regulatory “hit”, the CountEmissionsEU directive.
Sounds good on paper. A common method of calculating emissions in transport with a criterion well to the wheel (from the well to the street) in order to compare modes of transport and reduce greenwashing.
The problem is not the idea, but the design. When we try to apply to renewable fuels, we enter the regulatory scope: RED (Renewable Energy Directive), sustainability criteria, marketability requirements, TTW factors (tank-to-wheel), WTW (well to the wheel), severity multipliers, and a todo catalog of categories by origin.
When you turn the system into a technocratic labyrinth dominated only by consultants and specialists, the answer is obvious: companies do not use it to reduce emissions, but to clarify cases and survive purposefully.
Europe is stacking its pies with renewable fuels exactly when the most immediate fix to reduce CO₂ occurs in the existing fleet. The data is irrefutable: fuels like HVO enable the remarketing of emissions to a very significant level.
In tests and demonstrations associated with initiatives such as the Tour of Europe, a 77% reduction was recorded.
But here’s the twist: with the faintly scared WTW mark, the certified reduction leading to the transporter, which is based on 100% HVO, can be diluted (or even disappear) as written on the previous labels.
Let me put it another way: if it decarbonises on asphalt but is suspended in an excellent regulator.
The end of climate ingenuity is not an abdication, but an opportunity to redefine European leadership. Assuming this would be a problem, it is the first step towards advancing a truly effective climate policy.
*** Marcos Basante is the president of the Association of International Transport for the Carretera (ASTIC).
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