September is here and Brussels is starting up again as policymakers and stakeholders return form their vacation. However, as any election year, this September is a bit special.
While Ursula von Der Leyen has already been confirmed as the President of the Commission in July, we are still missing the other Commissioners. All Member States have to nominate Commissioner candidates with the hope of obtaining a policy portfolio that is as important as possible. Once all Member States have put forward their nominee(s), von der Leyen will have to allocate the different policy areas to each Commissioner.
However, the European Parliament also gets its word. Before being confirmed, the would-be Commissioners have to go in front of the Parliament for a hearing where they will have to answer MEPs’ questions. MEPs have a chance here to grill them about their plans for when/if they do take office. And Commissioners candidates have to be convincing as the Parliament has to formally vote to approve them or not.
By asking the right questions, MEPs can get some level of commitment from Commissioners about their priorities for the new term. Re-elected MEPs can ensure that new Commissioners won’t let their hard work during the past mandate die off without efforts on implementation and newly elected MEPs get to feel the temperature and understand how their priorities may be addressed over the next 5 years.
As EuropeOn, we see these next five years as a turning point for the Green Deal, that can enable the ambitions formulated during the last legislature to fully materialise and finally put us on track to meet our targets. Two main focus areas should be addressed in this regard:
- Electrification: now that the headline targets have been set for 2030 with Green Deal legislation such as the Directives for Energy Efficiency, Energy Performance of Buildings, or Renewable Energy (among many others!), it’s time to turn our attention to how these targets will be met.
Electrification is the answer to most of our implementation questions. It is a cost-effective, tried-and-tested, and homegrown solution that will, in addition to our energy and climate challenges, address energy security, energy poverty and local growth. This is why we are calling on the Commission to release a dedicated Electrification Action Plan in its first 100 days.
- Workforce and skills: change starts with people, and we may not have enough of them. As mentioned above, electrification is the way forward and the listed Directives all hinge on switching many end-uses to electricity, be it heating, transport or industry. However, this switch will have to be concretely carried out by people, skilled workers that will have to be available to support the steep rate of electrification needed to meet our intermediate targets. Electrical contractors are at the forefront of this challenge, and yet report full order books and difficulties hiring new personnel already as we speak. With the steadily increasing demand for electrical work, their numbers will have to grow. Yet, electrical contractors struggle to find enough workers on labour markets to fill their vacancies (up to 96.000 vacancies in Germany alone).
This is mainly due to a lack of attractiveness for technical jobs and education that has been entrenched in our societies by decades of overvaluation of academia. This can only de redressed with a massive rollout of awareness campaigns across all Member States to promote technical jobs.
Finally, we have to make sure that green workers are well trained. With labour shortages, it can be tempting to bank on short courses to quickly bridge workforce gaps, but electrical installations are becoming increasingly complex and require workers with full trainings and expertise to ensure quality, reliability and, most importantly, safety.
These proposals are central to the implementation of the previous policy agenda (i.e. the Green Deal) but also to what has been put forward in the Political Guidelines for the next term’s agenda, such as the Clean Industrial Deal or the promise of sustainable prosperity and competitiveness.
Commissioner nominees now have an opportunity now to integrate these proposals in their plans and, if not, MEPs should grill them about how they will tackle electrification and labour shortages during the confirmation hearings.
