Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel criticised his Belgian counterpart’s call to put a halt to enacting new EU climate laws to ease the burden on companies at the Second European Political Community Summit in Moldova.

Bettel reacted to De Croo’s call for a regulatory break on EU environmental laws that echo the same call Macron made earlier in May, a call that has been criticised by the Belgian Greens and EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

“It would be a wrong sign to deny that the climate crisis is a top priority”, Bettel told journalists in Moldova, referring to the fallout between De Croo and Timmermans that followed De Croo’s call.

“There should be no excuses to push back the sustainability goals,” said Bettel, adding that ensuring sustainability is of utmost importance and “a responsibility towards future generations”.

Timmermans and De Croo fell out ahead of the summit in Moldova.

“What I don’t understand in De Croo’s analysis is that he thinks nature restoration and climate policy are two different things. There can be no climate policy without nature restoration,” said Timmermans. “A very large part of our climate policy is based on solutions derived from nature. […] Dead wood does not absorb CO2”, he added.

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not be achieved by big words from Timmermans in his European bubble,” said De Croo before the meeting in Moldova.

(Luka Krauss, Anne-Sophie Gayet | EURACTIV.com)

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