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In February, Ireland’s Joint Committee on European Union Affairs convened to examine the EU Emissions Trading System and its potential extension to international aviation.
Witnesses from Opportunity Green, an environmental advocacy group, presented a case for ambitious expansion with more flights covered, higher revenues ring-fenced for sustainable fuels, and a firm Irish lead during the country’s upcoming Council Presidency.
The presentation, in tone and content, was one of confident alignment with EU climate policies, but as is not unusual for an Irish parliamentary Committee, it left many of the underlying assumption unchallenged.
Stronger carbon pricing, the committee heard, is not merely desirable, it is necessary.
It was perhaps a good thing that the Committee was not watched by many people given the current state of national anger in Ireland around carbon taxes and the Irish Government’s collection of billions in said taxes since 2010.
Anyway, three weeks later, in the European Parliament’s plenary on energy security and affordability, ECR MEP Elena Donazzan offered what we might call a very sharp counterpoint.
She urged the Commission to halt and reassess the ETS itself, commenting that “the ETS is one of the systems that produces more costs than positive effects.” She went on, “the Commission should put a stop to that system because it is expensive and it is not producing the environmental effect that we want.”
Governments, she noted, retain sovereignty over their choices, but the Commission holds real leverage over policy-driven burdens.
The contrast between the Oireachtas committee room and the plenary debate could not be more obvious.
The Irish forum treated the ETS as a tool needing only refinement while the other identified it as a structural drag requiring urgent correction.
Donazzan’s intervention reflects a growing recognition across parts of the European right that Europe’s energy costs are no longer solely the product of global markets or geopolitical shocks.
They are shaped, as many of us have been pointing out for some time, and in measurable degree, by deliberate policy choices.
The ETS sits at the centre of this. Introduced as a mechanism to internalise the cost of carbon, it has evolved into a revenue-raising instrument whose price signals now permeate electricity bills, industrial input costs, and investment decisions.
Recent data from energy-intensive sectors bear this out. In 2025, average electricity prices for EU industry remained more than double those paid by their American counterparts and roughly 50 per cent higher than in China.
Carbon costs themselves account for roughly 11 per cent of the typical EU electricity bill. Yet their influence is disproportionate. The ETS price feeds directly into wholesale power costs, particularly in member states still reliant on coal or gas for marginal generation.
What does this mean? Well, the forthcoming 2026 ETS review, scheduled for July, now carries heightened stakes for one. The Commission has already floated limited adjustments to the market stability reserve and concessions on free allowances. These are welcome signals, but they are very far from the fundamental reassessment Donazzan advocates.
The Irish case illustrates the tension with particular clarity. Ireland’s economy has long been anchored by foreign direct investment, much of it American, drawn by a competitive corporate tax regime, English-language workforce, and, crucially, relatively stable energy supply.
Yet the February committee session focused on extending ETS coverage to extra-EU flights departing from European airports. The ever zealous proponents have argued the change would generate billions in revenue for sustainable aviation fuel while closing a perceived loophole.
More pragmatically minded opponents however have noted that aviation’s contribution to total EU emissions remains modest compared with road transport or heavy industry. They have also noted that tourism, already an industry that has been severely damaged through Irelands reckless asylum accommodation polices, and which accounts for a significant share of Irish GDP and employment, is seriously price-sensitive.
Adding costs to air travel ticket of even a few euros per passenger compound quickly for a small island nation dependent on air connectivity.
The ECR Group’s position is not a call to abandon emissions reduction, it’s just a demand for intellectual honesty about trade-offs, something that rarely if ever makes an appearance at these type of Dáil debates where the guests seem to be selected for their ability to spout the most awful nonsense without critique from Committee members.
Yes, the ETS was designed as a cap-and-trade system, but n practice, it has become a de facto tax whose revenues are increasingly earmarked for green spending rather than returned to citizens or reinvested in industrial modernisation.
Donazzan’s reference to “costs which have been imposed on us as a result of certain ideologies” captures this critique.
Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, EU policy-makers have often treated carbon pricing as self-evidently virtuous, sidelining questions around real world impacts including competitiveness.
The upcoming ETS review does offer a moment for course correction rather than acceleration, but realistically what are the odss of that happening given the almost fantatical adherence to to green for green sakes policies that have dominated the EU discussions in this area for years.
There is hardly a green or climate policy out there that has not been embraced no matter how idiotic or counter-productive it has shown itself to be.
You could argue I suppose, and I do, that the Commission must resist the temptation to treat every shortfall in environmental outcomes as proof that the cap needs tightening further. But this is already to fail significantly in taking what we might call the psychology of the Commission into full account.
There is just no telling some members that that policies should be reviewed and analysed on their own merits. Simply having green or climate on the tin is no longer good enough. If the system is generating more costs than verifiable environmental gains, as Donazzan rightly contends, then pausing expansion and recalibrating allowances is the rational response, not an admission of defeat.
European Conservatives have long argued that sovereignty and competitiveness are not opposing concepts but that they are mutually reinforcing.
Member states of course retain the right to pursue ambitious domestic climate policies if their electorates support the costs. What they should not be asked to do is shoulder supranational mechanisms whose burdens fall unevenly and whose benefits remain unclear at best.
The Irish committee’s discussion, well-intentioned as it was, exemplified this tendency to view EU climate architecture as settled law rather than a policy experiment subject to empirical review.
Donazzan’s intervention reminds us that experiments can and sometimes must be adjusted when results diverge from expectations.
Restoring affordable energy should not cause huge arguments to arise. It only makes sense to recognise that it is in fact a precondition for sustaining the industrial base and ultimately, the very revenues needed for genuine technological breakthroughs.
Without competitive energy prices, Europe risks not just deindustrialisation by design but, and I say this without exaggeration, a real and profound breakdown in the social order.
So, while the hallowed Commission now faces a choice of whether to treat the ETS as sacrosanct or treat European industry as indispensable, we can only hope that for once it wakes up to the real world implications of its members who push a form of climate zealotry that is untethered from the dramatic consequences being stored up for ordinary people.
Is it too much expect Europe to take this path? Perhaps it is, and that is a terrifying thought in and of itself.