BRUSSELS — Destroying the EU’s environmental policies to boost manufacturing and keep Europe competitive with China and the U.S. is a mistake, says former Arsenal player and French international soccer player Mathieu Flamini.

Instead, the athlete, who is now the CEO of a France-based chemicals company, says the bloc should double down on moving away from fossil fuels, arguing that weakening rules like the EU’s Emissions Trading System would not solve Europe’s competitiveness problem.

„The reality is, if we believe we’re going to remove the carbon tax in Europe and suddenly we’re gonna be competitive with China or other [regions], we’re lying to ourselves,” Flamini told POLITICO in an interview.

Flamini co-founded GF Biochemicals in 2013, the same year he returned to north London to play for Arsenal for the second time, after a five-year stint in Italy with AC Milan.

Flamini won three caps for the French team, making his debut in 2007 against Morocco — a potential quarterfinal opponent for France at this World Cup. His company turns agricultural waste into bio-based chemicals used in everyday items such as paints, cosmetics and cleaning products.

The Frenchman believes the European chemicals industry, already under pressure from soaring energy prices and geopolitical shocks such as the Iran crisis, needs to accept its inevitable transition from fossil fuel-based ingredients towards bio-based alternatives.

The case against fossil fuels is two-pronged: They pollute the atmosphere with planet-warming CO2; and they are mostly imported from outside the EU, compromising the bloc’s strategic autonomy.

„We have to embrace and accept that there is an evolution like any other industry, from combustion engine to electric engine; [in the] chemical industry, from a petrol-based industry to bio-based,” said Flamini.

But that’s easier said than done. Lawmakers and member countries are already looking for ways to weaken the ETS, or even scrap it altogether. At a ministers’ meeting in Brussels last month, a handful of member countries raised concerns over the impact of carbon pricing on their industries during a meeting of EU economy ministers.

Read the full interview by POLITICO’s Jakob Weizman here.

Forrás