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The European Union cannot “kill its industry due to climate change,” Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, told Euronews’ flagship programme Europe Today, as a brutal heatwave sweeping across Europe claimed around 1,300 lives and reignited the debate over the bloc’s climate policies.
Weber chairs the European People’s Party, the largest political force in Europe, which has in recent years rolled back parts of the Green Deal — the package of policies designed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the bloc by 2050 — in a bid to prioritise industrial competitiveness.
“What we are asking for is to be reasonable in the business aspect. So we need a common understanding to bring things in balance,” he said, underlining his party’s role in shaping the Green Deal during the previous legislature.
While Weber argued that climate policy must strike a balance with economic realities, he applied the same reasoning to personal energy use. For him, using air conditioning is a necessity, even though, when powered by fossil fuels, it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and has become a flashpoint in the debate over the EU’s climate transition.
“We have the big advantage that you can easily use the solar energy for air conditioning,” he said.
On the issue of migration, Weber slashed Spain’s massive plan to regularise undocumented migrants in the country, which has attracted more than one million applications.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has argued that immigration is essential to sustaining the country’s economy as its population ages, warning that Spain could lose 19% of its GDP by 2050 without it.
But Weber sees the sudden regularisation as “an issue” for other EU countries.
“I would expect that also leaders speak about this kind of massive, one million people-legalisation,” he said, claiming that regularised migrants would have the freedom to move around other EU countries, having an impact on society.
“One million [people] in a few weeks to be legalised, that is not a normal procedure,” he said.
The EPP leader also defended the EU legislation allowing the establishment of return centres for irregular migrants outside the bloc, recently approved by the European Parliament despite criticism over potential human rights violations.
However, he did not specify whether EU funds should be used or not to finance these centres, nor in which non-EU countries they should be set up. “We have partners in Africa, in the Middle East, where we can work with. But it is now up to the member states,” he said.
Watch the full interview with EPP President Manfred Weber in the video player above.
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