In her previous life, Catherine Chabaud, a French MEP, was a navigator. A fervent protector of the ocean, it is essential for her to keep a fundamental objective in this Covid-19 crisis: that of a recovery that respects our environmental commitments. 

How is the Green Deal weakened by the coronavirus crisis?

Before anything else, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those unsung heroes and heroines who have been fighting on the front, second or third line every day for many weeks to save our lives and keep our economy afloat. In the midst of a storm, these people are staying the course. Their dedication is admirable. We have an individual and collective responsibility to rise to the occasion in our response to the crisis and in the world we are preparing for tomorrow. Let me now answer your question more specifically.

The Green Deal was the objective that the European Union had set itself until the emergence of Covid-19, an ambitious project that united European citizens around a concrete objective: to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The idea was to commit the European Union to a green transition that would create jobs, based on the restoration of ecosystems and the boosting of eco-innovations. In the face of the Covid 19 crisis, opposing forces seem to be acting behind the scenes to distort our initial objectives and empty the European response of its ecological commitments. However, it is more crucial than ever to stay the course, or even to accelerate it or change it in the light of the lessons of the crisis. We must prepare the Europe of tomorrow and already consider the end of the crisis as an opportunity to replace our approach and speed up the ecological transition at European level. As such, the economic recovery package proposed by the EU will tell us more about the nature of the objectives pursued. Today, there is a real risk that the Green Deal will be one of the major sacrifices of the economic response of European States. Together with the French Renaissance delegation, I am mobilised to ensure that the climate and environmental objectives that we set ourselves at European level before the crisis last, are maintained, strengthened and accelerated in the post-crisis response. On this subject, our determination is total, because our common future is at stake!

Read the full interview here.