Europe is about to put a major bombshell under its own climate policy. By labelling nuclear energy and gas as ‘green’, Brussels threatens to untie these billions of investments from large investors and to put clean sources such as sun and wind at a disadvantage.

“If that happens, we can write ‘Paris’ on our bellies,” said GroenLinks MEP Bas Eickhout, referring to the climate agreement to limit the temperature rise to one and a half degrees. “Europe is undermining its own climate goals, thwarting green investment in Central and Eastern Europe and jeopardizing the credibility of the entire European Green Deal.”

The European Commission will not formally make the decision until next Wednesday, but that does not seem to be a big surprise anymore. President von der Leyen said earlier that in addition to sun and wind, Europe “needs a stable source, nuclear, and gas for the transition period”. “I think we have to find a way to recognize that these two sources play a role in the transition period,” her right-hand man Frans Timmermans told Politico last week.

According to sources in Brussels, the Commission is under great pressure from an occasional coalition between France, a fanatic nuclear lobbyist, and gas fanatics such as Germany and several Central and Eastern European countries.