22/04/2026
2025 was a hard year for the European Green Deal, with far more steps backwards and missed opportunities than forward progress. It could have been worse, and – depending on the European Commission’s ‘simplification’ package (omnibus) – it could still get worse. The war in Iran is reminding leaders, businesses and households of the urgent need for full fossil fuel independence and that the Green Deal is also a security and resilience agenda that merits a reboot.
In 2025, multiple forces led systematic attacks against the European Green Deal and civil society, weakening the EU’s flagship commitment to environmental and social protections and attempting to muzzle independent voices promoting progressive agendas. Foreign interference and disinformation by US and Russian forces fuelled anti-regulatory ideology and anti-EU sentiment. Together with short-term business profit motives, they sought to sideline science, citizens’ voices and commitments to protect people’s health, climate and the environment, rendering the EU less resilient to oil price shocks and political attacks. The forces also sought to weaken European democracies and the European project itself.
It is not too late to take stock of lessons learned from last year and consider the policies we need in the face of yet another fossil fuel crisis. The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), in its transformation tracker, assessed what went well in 2025, what missed opportunities there were, what went badly and what needs to be done in 2026. It covers 16 areas under 12 priorities set in the European Pact for the Future, which has received support from over 400 organisations. This article focuses on three: climate change and misinformation, the deregulation drive and attacks on civil society that put EU democracy’s resilience at risk.
Overcoming our dependency on fossil fuels – a political imperative
Despite intense lobbying, the EU secured an agreement to continue climate action beyond 2030, maintaining its commitment to climate neutrality for 2050. However, the 2040 target was weakened through ‘flexibilities’, creating uncertainty around the European Emission Trading System (ETS-II) and commitments for electric vehicles and heat pumps. Several EU policies for 2030 were weakened: the ETS-II start date was delayed from 2027 to 2028, and car fleet standards shifted from a strict 2030 target to a 3-year averaging window for 2030-2032. Both will slow the phasing out of fossil fuels. Ongoing concerns about the ETS I and II and lobbying against 2035 as the last deadline for the sale of new cars and vans running on fossil fuels, are further eroding the clarity and predictability needed by businesses and households. For this, climate policies need support, not doubt.
Things could have been worse with the Green Deal in 2025, but they could also have been far better, had Russian disinformation, US political pressure and international fossil fuel lobbying not sought to undermine the transition. According to the Polish secret services, and as reported in Defense24 and DeSmog, Russia has been spreading climate disinformation in Poland as part of a “long-term cognitive war” to sow division. A strong Green Deal is not in Russia’s interests. A strong Green Deal is also not in the interests of the fossil fuel industry, which spent over $1 billion to delay climate policy and undermine alternatives such as renewable energy.
Addressing fossil fuel dependence and tackling climate risks are both security priorities. In these times of war, the world faces a new oil crisis, a business affordability crisis and a cost-of-living crisis for households. In addition, the irrefutable evidence of existing climate impacts, augmented by the risks of cataclysmic impacts if the Gulf Stream (known as AMOC) were to fail, lead to the clear conclusion that our economies and societies need to wean off fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible. Therefore, we need to implement climate and environmental policies and ensure conditions for investments and energy independence, including ringfencing climate and nature spending in the EU’s budget and maintaining LIFE funding.
The erosion of social and environmental protections
There was some good news in 2025 – the first-ever European soil law was agreed, a new water resilience strategy was published, the implementation of nature and water laws progressed, green and affordable eco-labelled products boomed, and air quality continued to improve. These were arguably outweighed by many missed opportunities and steps back, both due to the omnibus package and beyond. The European Commission’s ‘simplification’ initiative has already adopted ten omnibus proposals, in practice resulting in deregulation.
The EU’s strength as a value-based global partner was weakened by the omnibus 1, which reduced the number of companies responsible for due diligence (under the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDDD). This reflects the risks of corporate capture, including by a targeted lobby campaign by a secretive alliance of mainly US companies that sought to undermine the CSDDD (as documented by SOMO and Global Witness). The common agricultural policy (CAP) simplification omnibus also weakened environmental protections. And the proposed environment omnibus (VIII) dismantles some business responsibilities in the industrial emissions directive (IED) 2.0, weakens essential nature safeguards for permitting and risks exposing workers and citizens to more toxic and hazardous substances. These, along with the earlier withdrawal of the pesticide regulation and delays in upgrading the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals regulation (REACH), underline the weakening of political commitment to the zero-pollution ambition despite public interest. Short-term business and industrial farming interests trumped health and responsibility concerns.
Some pockets of hope, however, remain as the European Commission has explicitly committed to proposing an EU-wide restriction on PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals’, from consumer products. Yet investigative journalists in the Forever Pollution Project identified intense lobbying, and there is a risk that industrial PFAS will get a regulatory free ride, despite scientific evidence and the very welcome efforts of 24 leaders from 19 countries who have taken PFAS blood tests to demonstrate the prevalence of the problem.
The EU omnibus became hostage to politics and suffered governance failures as well as accusations of maladministration linked to the lack of impact assessment and insufficient public consultation. It went beyond simplification and embraced deregulation in many areas, eroding predictability and regulatory certainty, rewarding laggards and undermining industry leaders.
Shrinking space for civil society and erosion of democracy
2025 was also a year when environmental civil society (but not only) came under attack, both within parts of the European Parliament and in the press, using disinformation to delegitimise, demoralise, and defund civil society, as part of the broader authoritarian playbook aimed at weakening the Green Deal and Europe’s democracy. The good news is that the disinformation did not go uncontested. The European Parliament’s plenary vote in May and the Commissioner’s statements confirmed the importance of civil society to democracy. However, despite the clear political support to civil society in the EU Civil Society Strategy and Democracy Shield, these commitments have not yet been matched by explicit financial support for environmental citizens’ organisations needed for progressive voices communicating citizens’ rights and needs.
A way forward for Europe
The Green Deal, democracy and the European project itself are under attack in a changing world order. The EU must chart its own path, independent of fossil fuels and materials, resistant to US political forces, resolute in the face of Russia and smarter than the disinformation drive. It should build on scientific evidence and welcome the legitimate voices of citizens (such as the ‘hands off nature’ campaign, which has already gathered over 400,000 signatures) and civil society organisations.
While EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines reaffirmed the commitment to the Green Deal, the political power struggle has changed course towards deregulation, affecting families across the EU and across the political spectrum. Impacts do not have party affiliations. The new oil crisis and the ensuing global chaos underscore the urgent need for a Green Deal reboot, with stronger measures to achieve fossil-fuel independence, which would benefit all of us.
Photo credits: Shutterstock/Martin Bergsma
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