The architect of the European Green Deal and former chief of staff to Frans Timmermans believes that competitiveness is now a stronger political argument than the fight against climate change.
According to El Periódico, Diederik Samsom, who led the team that drafted much of the regulation for the European Green Deal, argues that competitiveness is now a stronger political argument than the fight against climate change. The conversation took place in Barcelona, where Samsom was last week.
Samsom, born in Groningen in 1971, is a physicist from the Technical University of Delft, a former activist with Greenpeace, and a member of the Dutch Labour Party. From 2019 to 2024, he was chief of staff to Frans Timmermans at the European Commission. He currently chairs the supervisory board of Gasunie, the operator of the Dutch gas network.
According to his account, the regulation of the deal includes the emissions trading system, CO2 standards that from 2035 will only allow the manufacture of electric cars, renewable energy targets, and the REPowerEU programme aimed at reducing dependence on Russian gas. Samsom claims that Spain has implemented it quite well, which is why it suffers less than other countries from the Ormuz crisis.
Since 2019, reports by Enrico Letta (2024), Mario Draghi (2024), and the Commission's Competitiveness Compass (2025) have set a new agenda, where climate has been subordinated to competitiveness and strategic autonomy. Samsom confirms this interpretation.
Samsom believes that the Green Deal was born in 2019 with a moral ambition that has now disappeared, although he sees in the new arguments, such as resilience and competitiveness, different reasons to decarbonise Europe:
“Being more competitive is a much stronger political argument than fighting climate change.”
He adds that the Draghi report does not mention climate change even once, yet advocates for decarbonising industry and generating much more renewable energy. His main concern is biodiversity, which he believes has been left out of the debate because solar panels and wind turbines have a business model:
“Birds and bees do not.”
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