This week a group of companies met European leadership in Antwerp, Belgium to discuss the future for European industry, economic infrastructure and job growth. Their concerns were valid: with the American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Chinese government’s over-investment in green energy and transport sectors, Europe risks losing out on the so-called Green Transition. With companies moving production outside of the EU at an alarming rate because of energy and regulatory restrictions, the Antwerp Declaration for a European Industrial Deal is a call to restore competitiveness and ensure a future for European industry.
The Declaration outlines ten key recommendations to ensure that industry will survive and play a role in the emerging green economy.There points make sense. As a major employer and source of prosperity, Europe needs a strong industry able to continue to innovate and lead in important new market developments. At the moment, 108 companies from 18 sectors have signed on.
And to no surprise, a large band of anti-industry activist groups is campaigning against this, to stop industry from even being allowed into the dialogue on the future of the European economy. Led by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), they wrote a letter to the Belgian Prime Minister, who is presiding over the rotating European Council and got 73 NGOs to sign it.
What follows is an assessment of the Antwerp Declaration and the responses of the European activist community led by CEO’s Vicky Cann. The industry proposals are in blue, the anti-industry activist response in red and my comments in black. What is astonishing is how disconnected and biased the activist position is: Industry Pollutes, Industry Lies and Industry must continue to be Denormalised. You don’t need to know any more and you definitely must not allow the corporate beast out of its cage and back into the policy process.
EU, Stick to the Playbook: Industry is Not Welcome
The activist community has succeeded in excluding corporations from the policy table, preventing EU officials from meeting industry representatives and destroying trust in industry. This was demonstrated in my Industry Complex series. So when European officials went to Antwerp to listen to the ideas of industry leaders, their only concern was that these officials should not engage with them (and that they were not invited to the meeting). They did not bother to read or consider the content of the Antwerp Declaration. They did not offer anything positive for the future of European industry. For example:
Antwerp Declaration: The next European Commission needs to prioritise new projects for abundant and affordable low carbon renewable and nuclear energy.
Anti-Industry NGOs: These crises are a result of decades of irresponsible corporate decision-making that has insisted on producing and using hazardous substances and burning fossil fuels for profit. …industry has also secured massive support for new fossil fuel infrastructure and for false solutions to the climate crisis such as hydrogen, carbon capture, and offsets.
So industry is demanding more support for abundant renewables and the activists keep banging on about their use of fossil fuels. Maybe signatories like Friends of the Earth should stop campaigning against nuclear energy then? But even on renewables like wind, there are incoherent regulations that need to be harmonised. The Antwerp Declaration calls for:
The action plan needs to include actions to eliminate regulatory incoherence, conflicting objectives, unnecessary complexity in legislation and over reporting.
In the past five years, BASF, other chemical corporations and intensive energy users, and their lobby groups, have waged a huge lobby campaign in Brussels and across Europe to undermine and destroy ambitious regulations promised by the von der Leyen Commission.
Actually what industry wants is a rational regulatory framework with a level playing field. Often incoherent or non-aligned regulations block the ability of industries to develop innovative, green solutions. The recent rationalisation of the NGT (plant gene editing) regulation is a case in point (one which almost every NGO signatory fought tooth and nail to stop).
But a key element of the future of European industry is to reduce pollution. Industry states:
Empower consumers (businesses and private) to choose net-zero and circular products, based on transparent product and environmental carbon footprints. … Create a single market for waste and recycled materials and also a true European energy market.
When I worked for industry, we were constantly looking at uses for our waste products so it comes as no surprise that the sector has embraced the EU’s Circular Economy strategy. But for the activist groups they only want to talk about pollution:
… corporate interests … contributing to the climate, toxic pollution, and biodiversity crises … you are rewarding big polluting industries … the reality of the industry-generated toxic pollution crisis … providing such privileged access to industries that are known for their harmful products … citizens and environments suffering from chemical, pesticide, and fossil fuel pollution … ensure that big polluters can no longer evade responsibility for the climate crisis.
So while industry is proposing coherent regulations to develop more renewable energy supplies, means to fight climate change and combat pollution with better recycling and waste management solutions, the activists just want to name-call and gripe about why they hate industry. These NGOs offer nothing new, speak for a tiny representative group and prefer to generalise and spread bias to continue their campaign of undermining trust in industry. Their letter was disappointing although predictable given their tired, failed ideals and exclusionary politics. The only thing that has changed is that there are many more NGOs in this campaign to denormalise industry from the policy process.
Should European policymakers take these activist groups seriously? If they have nothing to offer, should these anti-industry groups take themselves seriously?
A Scruffy Band of Weary Warriors
The anti-industry letter was signed by 73 NGOs and civil society groups. With 18 industry sectors presenting their position, it is not surprising that they would attract a lot of hate from different groups, from the anti-plastics combatants to the stop pesticides groups to, well, the anti-everything movement. This was a clear opportunity for the NGOs to speak on behalf of their stakeholders, the unrepresented civil society, who, we are told, have entrusted them.
And just how committed were they? Much like the handful of people who came out to protest in front of the European Parliament during the final days of the failed #StopGyphosate campaign, the turnout in Antwerp was dismal beyond despair. While 73 NGOs signed the letter to announce their outrage, only three people showed up to be the voice of civil society. I suppose the voice of the people have spoken (but maybe it was too early to get out of bed).
Some I can understand could not make the trip, like Muchi Children’s Home, who have signed many Pesticide Action Network letters but, as far as I can see, is a daycare centre in Zambia. Maybe they were tied to the Hamraah Foundation, a group tied to promoting education in India. Also, I think, Indian-based is the Association For Promotion Sustainable Development, but they are lacking a website and their Twitter (X) account has been suspended. The “11 march movement” also had no website. I could not find the Judean People’s Front on the list but perhaps Corporate Europe Observatory had forgotten to ask them.
And that Pythonesque portrayal of this collection of scruffy anti-industry groups is apt. They claim to represent the voice of the people but in the end they are usually just three people in a room with a laptop and a twitter feed. (And these three people usually each work for four different, but related, NGOs as 9-to-5 idealists.) They have contempt toward, and are largely intolerant of anyone who questions them. They have access to a fair amount of funding by left-wing foundations, anti-vax groups, US tort law firms and Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires which allow them to keep the facade of a movement when, in the end, the reality of their isolation is making them quite bitter and cynical.
So why do the media and policymakers still give a voice to this motley crew of hate, bias and illogic? Their views are not rational, evidence-based or representative, their objectives are destructive and their ideology dangerous to human health and the environment. They are frauds. Their time is up.
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