This week we take a closer look at the Green Transition in Europe - from the invaluable invertebrates in the soil beneath us, to the end of obsolete coal mines and the revolution in transport, our show investigates just how fast Europe is becoming greener - and how to ensure no-one is left behind in the race to decarbonise.
Ursula von der Leyen made the Green Transition one of the landmark measures of her term as president of the European Commission, vowing that the EU will be carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve that goal, almost every aspect of Europeans’ way of life will have to be revolutionised, from homes to jobs, food-production and farming to heavy industry and transport, the Europe that Brussels wants in the coming decades will face major upheaval.
To make that possible, the EU’s solution is the Green Deal: the baton of stricter legislation accompanied by the carrot of financial compensation. One key pillar, for example, is the Just Transition Fund which will mobilise €55 billion to aid regions that have until now been reliant on coal for jobs and energy.
Despite those efforts, the Green Transition remains deeply controversial, with farmers’ protests in recent months highlighting the difficulties the sector feels it faces with the forced march towards greener practices – but they are not the only ones: the car industry also has concerns that imposing the end of the petrol/diesel motors by 2035 will handicap the sector – which employs 13 million people in the EU – faced with competition from the United States and China.
In this special report, our reporters Johan Bodin and Luke Brown travelled across Europe to find out just how the Green Transition is affecting Europeans’ lives: from Tallinn in Estonia, Green capital 2023, which is renovating its Soviet-era housing stock, to a French start-up which hopes to get millions of Earthworms to help farmers use less chemical fertiliser, as well as the regions of Poland where the closures of lignite mines mean thousands of miners need new jobs to avoid an economic catastrophe. A tour of Europe undergoing the Green Transition – despite the difficulties.
Editor in chief : Caroline de Camaret.
Reporters : Luke Brown et Johan Bodin
Video editing: Aurélien Porcher et Fabrice Briault.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the DG Regional and Urban Policy. Neither the European Union nor the DG Regional and Urban Policy can be held responsible for them.
