Growth, Climate and Compromise: Into Europe's Move After the European Green Deal

The finding is that climate commitments survive inside a narrower, business-focused agenda that gives less attention to nature protection and social change.

Europe's green promises touch everyday concerns, from the air people breathe to the jobs that support their families and the energy bills arriving each month. The European Green Deal brought these concerns together in 2019, presenting environmental protection as a reason to rethink how the economy works. The Clean Industrial Deal, introduced in 2025, puts greater emphasis on helping European businesses compete, raising questions about what happens to the wider environmental promise.

Simon Schunz explores this change in his study, "From the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal—Dialectic Change in the EU's Meta-Discursive Strategising," published in Sustainability. His research examines how the European Union describes its problems, the future it wants and the steps needed to get there. The findings show that climate commitments survive inside a narrower, business-focused agenda that gives less attention to nature protection and social change.

The study uses critical discourse analysis, a close reading of policy language that examines how words frame priorities and responsibilities. The researcher compares the Clean Industrial Deal and its guiding framework, the Competitiveness Compass, with the Green Deal, drawing on earlier research into Europe's previous strategies. This is an interpretation of policy documents, rather than a measurement of emissions reductions, job creation or environmental recovery.

A broader green promise becomes an industrial priority

The original Green Deal treated climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution as connected problems requiring changes across farming, transport, energy and industry. Its vision included climate neutrality by 2050, healthier ecosystems and a fair transition that involved citizens in shaping the changes. The paper notes that its rollout produced 154 environmental targets, with many incorporated into legislation.

The Competitiveness Compass places Europe's economic position at the centre of the story, describing pressure from American technology leadership, Chinese competition, expensive energy and barriers to innovation. Variations of the word "competitiveness" appear 97 times in the document, reflecting the importance given to growth and productivity. The Clean Industrial Deal fits inside this framework, presenting industrial renewal and emissions reduction as parts of the same business strategy.

The change becomes visible in the language and audience surrounding the two deals, with references to nature and citizens giving way to technical discussions of clean technologies and manufacturers. Ursula von der Leyen presented the Green Deal to the European Parliament in 2019 and launched the Clean Industrial Deal before business representatives in Antwerp in 2025. The researcher reads this shift as part of a wider move from a public promise about society and nature toward a closer partnership with selected industries.

Climate goals remain, with a narrower environmental focus

Climate neutrality by 2050 remains a central commitment, and the new strategy supports a circular economy in which materials stay in use through reuse and recycling. The Clean Industrial Deal expresses an ambition for the EU to become a world leader in circularity by 2030, linking resource efficiency to reliable supplies and industrial strength. The researcher finds that biodiversity protection and pollution prevention lose their place as central objectives in the new strategic documents.

Support concentrates on energy-intensive industries, including steel, chemicals and automotive manufacturing, together with clean technology businesses expected to supply the next generation of industrial solutions. The proposed tools include more affordable clean energy, faster permitting, public and private investment, flexible state aid and public purchasing that creates demand for lower-carbon products. International partnerships, access to raw materials, digitalisation and stronger coordination between European and national authorities complete the approach.

Social fairness remains present through references to quality jobs, training and a just transition, but the study finds its role considerably reduced. Worker training is presented largely as a way to give employers the expertise needed to compete, and citizen participation receives less emphasis than under the Green Deal. The distinction matters because a strategy can retain climate targets without preserving the same commitments to public involvement, ecological protection and fairness.

Europe is being asked to support industry and remove rules

Researcher identifies three roles assigned to the EU under the new approach: protector, promoter and simplifier. Protection involves defending European businesses through trade measures and investment screening, and promotion involves funding, public purchasing and partnerships that open markets. Simplification centres on removing regulatory burdens that policymakers describe as obstacles to innovation and growth.

The tension comes from asking public authorities to intervene more actively in industrial development and to reduce their regulatory role at the same time. The researcher argues that repeatedly describing rules as burdens or barriers encourages deregulation, extending the meaning of simplification beyond making procedures easier to follow. The resulting strategy gives political support both to advocates of stronger green industrial policy and to those seeking fewer constraints on businesses.

The paper calls this "dialectic change," meaning a compromise formed by retaining some parts of an existing approach and rejecting others. Climate action and circularity are combined with the stronger growth-and-competitiveness focus associated with the earlier Lisbon Strategy and Europe 2020 agenda. This combination changes the destination as well as the route, reducing the Green Deal's broader ambition to reshape the relationship between society, the economy and nature.

Political compromise leaves questions for the future

Researcher suggests that the political shift to the right, changing positions within the European People's Party and pressure from business groups helped reshape the agenda. Economic disruption following the pandemic and the energy crisis linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine provided a backdrop, with foreign governments pressing for fewer regulatory demands. He presents these influences as plausible explanations requiring further investigation, rather than a fully established account of what caused the change.

Existing climate legislation, businesses' investments in decarbonisation and the political cost of abandoning earlier commitments help explain why climate goals survived. The paper describes implementation disputes, including delayed deforestation rules and a proposed reversal of the previously agreed 2035 combustion-engine ban, as evidence that competing priorities remain unresolved. Its analysis is limited by its focus on central strategy documents, leaving room for research into surrounding speeches, political negotiations and practical outcomes.

The concern for readers is whether Europe can give businesses a dependable direction without weakening the environmental protections that give its transition purpose. The researcher warns that uncertainty could undermine investment and the EU's ability to influence global standards through its own rules, often called the "Brussels Effect." A strategy built to strengthen Europe's competitiveness could lose some of that advantage if companies and citizens cannot tell which promises will hold.