Climate ambitions and economic pragmatism

Climate ambitions and economic pragmatism, by no means “ambitions or pragmatism”. This realistic nuance is what the whole of Europe needs in order to rebuild its industrial and energy competitiveness architecture.

The European context is marked by geopolitical tensions, disruptions to energy supply chains, and price volatility—factors that have tested the resilience of the European energy system in recent years, but have also pushed European industry to the brink of a competitiveness fault line. Europe needs solutions that combine security and predictability of supply, favorable conditions for investment, and access to energy at competitive costs for consumers.

This is one of the directions called for by six organizations from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia—the Bulgarian Petroleum and Gas Association (BPGA), Czech Association of Petroleum Industry and Trade (CAPPO), Hellenic Petroleum Marketing Companies Association, Polish Petroleum Industry and Trade Organisation (POPiHN), Federația Patronală a Energiei (FPE), and Slovak Association of Fuel Industry and Trade (SAPPO)—which recently signed in Sofia the Declaration launching the Energy Alliance of Central and Eastern European states. At the same time, the declaration reaffirms the signatory organizations’ commitment to the European Union’s climate objectives, including achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

At the level of Europe’s major capitals and the institutions in Brussels, the architecture of the green transition already appears finalized on paper. Climate objectives have been set with mathematical precision, and the decarbonization timetable is presented as an irreversible path. Nevertheless, from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe, the reality on the ground looks fundamentally different. The major challenge today no longer lies in formulating spectacular targets, but in the technical, financial, and structural capacity to actually implement them. For the energy transformation not to become stuck in a systemic impasse, the continent’s leaders must accept an uncomfortable truth: Europe must not choose between ambition and pragmatism; it vitally needs both.

Viewed from our region, the transition is not an abstract exercise in legislative drafting, but a test of infrastructure resilience and competitiveness. Since the outbreak of the energy crisis, security of supply and maintaining industrial capacity have become indisputable strategic priorities. Nevertheless, the way new European regulations are designed often risks creating dangerous fault lines between noble intentions and implementation possibilities. When testing any environmental measure, we must simultaneously ask ourselves three essential questions: does it preserve security of supply, does it enable European companies to remain competitive and invest, and does it genuinely reduce emissions? If a single objective is achieved at the cost of sacrificing the other two, the entire structure loses its balance and requires urgent recalibration.

The rift between political ambition and technical reality is most visible in the Methane Emissions Reduction Regulation (MER). Although the energy sector fully supports environmental objectives, the practical application of the MER threatens to strike at the foundations of domestic production and imports. With regard to domestic production, the rigid requirements ignore the natural life cycle of existing infrastructure and the slow pace of administrative authorization processes. With regard to imports, companies are being asked to guarantee checks that are impossible to obtain across international supply chains of enormous complexity. The industry’s request to introduce a “stop-the-clock” approach until the methodologies are clarified is not an attempt to evade responsibility, but an appeal to reason: one cannot demand compliance within a legally uncertain and technically inapplicable framework.

Another telling example of the fragmented approach is the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). With regard to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, the European Union has set an ambitious storage target of 50 million tonnes per year. However, carbon dioxide storage cannot exist in isolation, as a simple administrative obligation, without integrated capture and transport infrastructure and real market demand. Extreme cases, such as Romania—where only three companies are being placed in the position of shouldering 20% of the European Union’s entire storage target—demonstrate the risk that disproportionate obligations will discourage investment and create critical bottlenecks. Instead of a simple coercive mandate, Europe has a duty to build a functioning market based on the entire value chain.

All these vulnerabilities converge on what is essentially the great stake of the transition: Europe will not achieve its environmental objectives through the endless accumulation of rules, but by attracting massive capital, facilitated by intelligent regulation. In the absence of legislative predictability and viable business models, we are forcing private capital to migrate to other, more investment-friendly regions of the world, precisely when we need it most at home. The success of energy policy is not measured by the volume of restrictions adopted in Brussels, but by the gigawatts of clean energy and resilience that we manage to deliver to the economy.

Anything related to people can also be resolved by people, if it proves to be wrong. To correct this course, European institutions must abandon the practice of consulting industry only after laws have already been drafted, when discussions are limited to damage control. The technical expertise of those who operate the networks and infrastructure must be heard from the initial stage of legislative design. Otherwise, the distance between political decision-making and economic reality will continue to deepen.

The energy transition in Central and Eastern Europe is not an ideological sprint, but an infrastructure marathon that requires resources, time, and pragmatism. If we want this historic project to succeed without destabilizing national economies, we must understand that technical rigor does not cancel out ambition; it gives it sustainability.

The fundamental lesson of these years is clear and can no longer be ignored: Europe must not choose between ambition and pragmatism. It needs both simultaneously.