After Trump’s climate rollback, how solid are the EU’s green rules?
US president Donald Trump has just announced that his administration no longer recognises that a range of greenhouse gases poses a threat to public health and the environment.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the EU, considered the most ambitious bloc on the green transition, are discussing rollbacks of existing green rules.
Should Europeans be worried about the future of climate policies?
Trump: “We are officially terminating the endangerment finding, a disaster Obama policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”
The endangerment finding was an administrative determination conducted by the US environmental protection agency, which simply stated that a range of greenhouse gases posed a threat to public health. This became the legal basis for any greenhouse gas reduction measure in the US.
But the Trump administration questioned it. It established a new panel of carefully chosen scientists to write a report challenging widely accepted science on the impact of greenhouse gases.
This new panel report is set to replace the 2009 endangerment finding.
As a result, American climate rules will be harder to implement from now on. Individual states would still be able to adopt their own regulations, but these would be easily challenged in court because the scientific basis has been undermined.
Many US experts warn that the reversal will have detrimental effects on health and on global warming.
Should we worry about this trend coming to the EU too?
Donald Trump is known for his climate denial. The first thing he did after his reelection was to leave the Paris climate agreement.
In contrast, the EU is known for its ambitious climate goals.
However, in the past year, the EU has seen more and more of its leaders challenging climate rules in a search for greater industrial competitiveness.
Even France and Germany, the two most powerful countries in the bloc, have been challenging the well-known Green Deal, which is an ambitious set of climate rules.
Just last week, an important meeting on competitiveness resulted in several EU heads of state asking the EU to ease its carbon market rules to relieve the burden on businesses.
Since the beginning of 2025, the EU has started a major simplification effort aimed at cutting obligations for companies and encouraging them to stay in the EU.
While the EU insists that it is not rolling back previous rules, the truth is that some climate ambitions have been reduced.
One example is that large companies based in the EU, like Volkswagen or TotalEnergies, no longer have to implement climate transition plans. Legislators deleted this obligation that they had previously agreed on.
Another example is the end of internal combustion engine sales in 2035, which was also part of the Green Deal. After a few EU countries asked to reconsider this ban, the EU finally proposed to make it less strict, allowing carmakers to sell combustion engine vehicles up to 10 percent of their fleet in 2035, instead of the zero percent previously agreed.
Could the EU become climate-sceptic?
As previously said, the EU’s situation is not comparable to that of the US under Donald Trump.
There is a broad consensus within the EU that climate change needs to be addressed. What we are observing now is that institutions are searching for more flexible ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The situation is worrying because even the ambitious efforts made by the EU in the run-up to 2050 will not be enough to reverse climate change.
But at least, the EU is not at a point of changing course completely.
For example, when the European Commission proposed easing the ban on combustion engine sales in 2035, it made this conditional on reducing greenhouse gas emissions during the production of the cars.
One reassuring point for the planet is that industry worldwide has already begun shifting to greener technologies, and the economic outlook for this transition is strong.
Companies may ask for more time, but they know a U-turn is not economically viable.
With or without Trump, the global economy will move forward, because it is the only rational path.
