Euroviews. Corporate capture won’t solve environmental crises

We are appalled that on Tuesday, the Belgian Presidency of the EU is organising, alongside the lobby group the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) and its Belgian industry member Essenscia — a closed event for chemical and other intensive industrial energy users and high-level political leaders at BASF’s chemicals plant in Antwerp.

By overseeing and participating in this event Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, alongside other attendees such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have failed to recognise the culpability of the corporate interests attending in contributing to the climate, toxic pollution, and biodiversity crises which pose a tremendous risk to planetary boundaries and a death threat to communities around the world. 

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.

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. 

The goals of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the Farm to Fork strategy to restrict hazardous chemicals in consumer and agricultural uses in the EU, as well as to prevent the export of banned substances, including chemicals and pesticides, have faded away. 

Meanwhile, industry has also secured massive support for new fossil fuel infrastructure and false solutions to the climate crisis such as hydrogen, carbon capture, and offsets.

The industry has a long history of crying wolf and exaggerating the consequences of