Green jobs set to find home away from Europe, head of largest industrial union warns

The EU’s Green Deal promised new jobs in green industries offsetting job losses elsewhere, but these jobs are currently being created outside Europe, warned Judith Kirton-Darling, general secretary of the bloc’s largest industry association. 

While European industries are grappling with transition targets to inch closer to climate neutrality by 2050, the bloc’s leading industrial trade union is worried that they might be heading for a “brutal economic period,” IndustriAll Europe’s Kirton-Darling told Euractiv in an interview on Tuesday (3 September).

“I’m not sleeping very well at the moment,” she said.

Research, including by the European Commission, expects the Green Deal to have an overall “limited” or even net positive impact on jobs, which is based on the assumption that “there will be […] new industries, while other industries transform or decline,” Kirton-Darling said.

However, “what we’re seeing is that those new jobs are not coming in Europe,” she added.

While green industries like wind turbines and electric cars are growing worldwide, productions in Europe are at the “brink of closing”.

On Monday, German media reported that Europe’s largest carmaker Volkswagen will forego its previous pledge to protect 110,000 of its work posts in Germany, planning to close at least one production site.

“In sectors where we are the market leader, in renewable energy or the automotive sector, we shouldn’t be losing our position,” Kirton-Darling said, blaming both “political” and “corporate failure”.

For “some of the things that are happening, the responsibility lies at the door of corporate management, which have pursued cost competitiveness over investment and innovation in their industries,” she said.

“But we’ve got to get a grip. Otherwise, we’re entering into an extremely difficult and [most likely] brutal economic period for Europe,” she warned.

Automotive sector in the trenches

The situation in the automotive industry is of particular concern for Kirton-Darling, who called it “the backbone of European manufacturing,” providing 13 million direct and indirect jobs.

“So much of our foundation industries – whether it’s chemicals, basic materials or basic metals – feed into the automotive sector, that the crisis in the automotive sector has massive ramifications for industrial workers across Europe,” she said.

To boost demand for electric cars, the EU should consider “social leasing schemes,” she said, citing a French plan introduced last year, which has been halted due to massive demand.

This should be linked to “social conditionalities to support the transformation of the automotive sector,” Kirton-Darling said.

Other measures would need to tackle the reskilling of workers and the build-up of the necessary charging infrastructure for electric cars, she added.

“We’re storing some hope in the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ that von der Leyen has announced,” Kirton-Darling said, referring to the Commission chief’s candidacy address to the Parliament in July – but added that policymakers should first of all “recognise the scale of investment that is needed” to achieve such shifts.

“We don’t question the target of where we’ve got to get to. But we have a lot of problems and questions about how to get there,” she said.

China has an advantage over Europe in electric vehicles also because the latter has “bet on the wrong horse” – i.e., on diesel, Kirton-Darling said.

Half of primary steel capacity could be lost

IndustriAll chief was also “extremely worried” about steelmaking in Europe.

According to the umbrella group’s internal calculations, decarbonisation projects announced by European steelmakers would only account for “half of [Europe’s] current primary steel making,” she said – meaning that there are “tens of thousands of jobs at risk” for plants that do not yet have a plan to decarbonise.

Under the EU target to reach climate neutrality by 2050, large emitting industries like steel will need to undergo hefty transformations, as no new emission allowances will be available as of 2039 under the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).

While many steel production sites in northern and western Europe have plans in place to switch to climate-friendly steel production, Kirton-Darling warned “in Central and Eastern Europe, it is all theory.”

Plans for lead markets for green steel, as mentioned in von der Leyen’s speech in July, could be part of the solution, she said. However, the EU would also need “new measures to deal with overcapacities” in traditional steelmaking.

“The steel capacity being built up in countries like India is massive,” she said, noting that this was an “active industrial policy” from countries like China and India to drive down prices, “to then kill competition and to dominate markets”.

“It’s such a strategic sector, for defence reasons [and] for energy transition reasons, that for us, it’s incredible that we would be in a situation where politicians [don’t] recognise the strategic importance of having our own domestic steel making capacity,” Kirton-Darling said.

[Edited by Anna Brunetti/Alice Taylor-Braçe]