SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

French minister: US green plan should be ‘wake-up call’ for EU industry

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Friday said Washington's $430 billion plan to spur climate-friendly technologies in the United States must be seen as a wake-up call for Europe.

Wind power
Washington is putting forward an ambitious plan to support climate-friendly technologies in the US. Photo by Thomas Richter / Unsplash

The EU “must be able to sweep in front of our own door” before worrying about the effects of the US climate plan on European industry, Le Maire told AFP in Washington, where he was part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s US state visit.

Even though the EU has already “changed its approach” on promoting green industry, the US climate plan must be seen as a “wake-up call” in the European Union, he added.

Le Maire’s comments came as EU countries have poured criticism on Washington’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), seeing it as anti-competitive and a threat to European jobs, especially in the energy and auto sectors.

Subsidies for green energy

The act, designed to accelerate the US transition to a low-carbon economy, contains around $370 billion in subsidies for green energy as well as tax cuts for US-made electric cars and batteries.

Macron on Wednesday slammed the plan’s “Made in USA” provisions as “super aggressive” for European businesses.

But at a joint press conference with Macron, Biden said that he and the French leader had agreed to “discuss practical steps to coordinate and align our approaches”, though he said he would not apologize for the US plan.

Biden added the IRA was never intended to disadvantage any US allies.

Threats of retaliatory measures

Last month, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened to appeal to the World Trade Organization and consider “retaliatory measures” if the United States did not reverse its subsidies.

Le Maire also criticized the EU’s own climate spending plans, arguing that they were too cumbersome and loaded with red tape.

“If the ambition is the same” as the Europeans, the United States relies on methods that “are simpler and faster”, he said.

“They put immediate and massive tax credits where we provide state aid (to specific projects) which sometimes take two years to be adopted and are too complex to implement,” said Le Maire.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

NEW CALEDONIA

New Caledonia independence activist to be held in France

A pro-independence leader in the French Pacific territory New Caledonia will be held in France after being charged Saturday over deadly riots last month, his lawyer said.

New Caledonia independence activist to be held in France

Christian Tein, head of the CCAT group, will be sent almost 17,000 kilometres (10,500 miles) to France with the group’s communications chief Brenda Wanabo.

An investigating magistrate charged Tein in New Caledonia’s capital Noumea on Saturday. He was the first from a group of 11 people arrested Wednesday to be charged over the violence, in which nine people died, including two police officers.

Hundreds more were wounded, and around 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) of damage was inflicted during the troubles.

Authorities did not immediately say what charges Tein faces, although Noumea chief prosecutor Yves Dupas said his investigation covered armed robbery and complicity in murder or attempted murder.

Tein’s lawyer Pierre Ortent said he was “stupefied” that his client would be sent to a prison in Mulhouse in eastern France. Wanabo’s representative Thomas Gruet said she would be sent to Dijon.

READ ALSO: PODCAST: What are real French values and does France care about its troubled far-away territories?

Dupas confirmed that some of those arrested on Wednesday would be transferred to custody in France, without giving names.

“No-one had any idea in advance that they would be sent to mainland France. These are totally exceptional steps” for New Caledonia, Ortent said.

Gruet said Wanabo, a mother of three children, “had never called for violence” and was “distraught” to be separated from her family.

“The legal system has committed every error in managing this crisis,” he added, saying magistrates were “answering to purely political considerations”.

Stephane Bonomo, lawyer for another detainee, Gilles Joredie, said the prosecutors’ actions was creating “martyrs for the independence cause”.

Riots, street barricades and looting broke out in New Caledonia in mid-May over an electoral reform that indigenous Kanak people said would leave them in a permanent minority, putting independence hopes definitively out of reach.

France’s government repeatedly accused Tein’s CCAT of orchestrating the violence, to which it responded by sending over 3,000 troops and police to the territory. The CCAT has denied being behind the riots.

SHOW COMMENTS