# "The real burden is not the transition, but the cost of inaction" **Date de l'événement :** 08/09/2025 * Publié le 08/09/2025 ### Date 08/09/2025 ## Légende de l'image récupérée : à sauvegarder pour la coller dans l'étape suivante si les droits de l'image le permettent ## Chapô **At the start of the new academic year at Sciences Po's Paris School of International Affairs, Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition, called for a clear-sighted and determined Europe, capable of combining competitiveness and justice, prosperity and democracy. In the face of geopolitical divisions, social crises and the climate emergency, she called for action and a redefinition of the Union's role on the world stage.** ## Corps du texte I look around this room, and I realise that you represent more than 110 countries. You come from different geographies, different backgrounds, bearing different expectations, but you are united by your deep and sincere interest to understand and influence what is going on in the world. How can we help to improve the quality of life of people all over the world? How can we give sound and consistent answers to the different challenges ahead, in a very turbulent moment in geopolitics? How can we ensure the delicate balance between managing global conflicts and building the cooperation we need for lasting peace? How can we count on energy, goods, and services while ensuring long-lasting availability and an environmentally sound and healthy planet and ecosystems? What is the relation between peace and prosperity, the fight against inequality and global governance, and the importance of justice and security in a world growing increasingly divided? I propose a reflection on the role of Europe, because I think that Europe has a role to play. I could say: Europe is a need. Europe is a dream. Europe is a permanent and achieved goal, a project we need to build on. It is not that it represents and copes with all the challenges we may identify worldwide, but it is a relevant player in order to ensure that we can count on the right answers in the time to come. I think Europe is an asset. It is a value, it is a good reason to stand up for, and it is something that we need to fight for. We have spent years speaking about globalisation as a means to shape a promising, interconnected prosperity. We now realise that we may need to rebalance global and local in a context of turbulence and uncertainties, wondering whether we are able to build a fair combination between global and local, or whether we head towards chaos, lack of rules, and a kind of law of the jungle. The examples of chaos and challenges to what we have tried to frame in the last 70 years are already quite visible: rising geopolitical tensions challenge the ideals of peace, cooperation, and full respect for the rule of law, human rights, or the UN system. Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine tests Europe's resilience. The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe's failure to act and speak with one voice, even as protests spread across European cities and 14 United Nations Security Council members called for an immediate ceasefire. Global trade dynamics have exposed deep vulnerabilities in the systems we have long depended upon and require us to rethink and expand our partnerships. The weaponisation of trade, economic balance, supply chains, and economics in general, as well as technologies being used to bend rules to someone’s advantage—breaching the rule of law and the very principles of multilateralism that we have crafted in these decades—are all at stake. All of these things are not just sectoral or individual threats, but also challenges to the fundamental freedoms and rights upon which our societies, and the relations among us, have been built. It is striking to read people saying that there could be a kind of trade-off between democracy and performance. We have maybe forgotten what it means to live with a lack of democracy or human rights. We know that we do not live in a perfect world, and that there is still much to be done, but we should pay attention not to risk what has already been achieved, even if we need to improve it. This is why I think that staying silent in the face of injustice, lowering our standards to accommodate whoever, should not be an option. Accepting dependence, compromising values, compromising the future, should not be something we accept. Playing constructively and in a committed manner in the international arena is key to addressing these questions, and I count on you. At the very same time, we need to work internally, as Europeans. You have come to one of the most relevant institutions of research and exchange of thoughts, shaking our minds on how political science and commitment can help in this exercise. In that context, in the heart of Europe, I think it is worthy to remind ourselves that deepening our domestic action and capacities is also a way to improve and strengthen the quality, the capacity, and the skills of Europe to play worldwide in a consistent manner. It has been over a year since Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, the former predecessor of Arancha Gonzalez, reframed Europe’s focus on competitiveness and resilience. These reports reminded us that Europe's future hinges on embracing the green transition, pushing deeper unity, and making bold investments to ensure the future. The message was clear: we Europeans can do much more on our own initiative, by deepening our single market, working more closely as a Union, and building on our collective strengths. This is how we can be coherent when developing international policies. The Commission's new mandate focuses on a Europe that builds opportunities and competitiveness on the basis of a clean industrial revolution, providing security and ensuring our values. Over the last months, we have been working towards this vision in a very conflictual context. We have achieved many things, but we still need to work much more. One clear example is our single market. It sounds old—we have been talking about the single market since the very creation of the European Communities. It may sound useless, or it may be a source of frustration because it does not work sufficiently well. Let me tell you: it is still our best asset, and a very important thing to work on. Not at whatever cost, not in whatever manner, but by keeping the delicate balance between the market, social commitments, and the capacity to organise the ecosystem through regulation. The current political landscape clearly demands scale and a unified economic strategy if we want to create wealth, reduce inequalities, and build opportunities. The creation of wealth is also a question of security. People everywhere want to have opportunities for a better life—for themselves and for their children. It has to be fair. It has to avoid spoiling resources or compromising the future.  Instead of retreating into 27 separate national approaches, we need to focus on building a stronger, more integrated, and fairer Europe. This is the Europe I was talking about, and it remains our biggest weakness: the lack of unity in achieving the full potential of the single market. This lack of unity appears in different areas—finance, energy, economic security, standards, and more. A prosperous Europe depends on completing these frameworks and acting decisively. That was Letta and Draghi’s message. There are areas where we have made some progress, even though there is still much work to be done. Even if we talk beyond this domestic context in the single market, and we come back to climate—we are in Paris, about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. At the beginning of the summertime, something very important happened. It lasted half an hour on the front pages of the main media all over the world. The International Court of Justice confirmed something crucial: the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C is not just a political target. It means that states need to do their best. Every country, even those not officially part of the Agreement, must work to prevent climate harm. This opinion carries strong legal and political weight, and shows that Europe—even if we have done much—still needs to do more. That is part of the role that Europe should be playing: facilitating, bridging, and ensuring good partnerships around climate action, not only among the 27 member states, but also with the rest of the world. Our emissions have decreased by 37% since 1990, and our proposal to cut emissions by 90% by 2040 compared to 1990 levels represents a major milestone. We have come up with a proposal as the European Commission, but now we need to secure the Council’s support to give industry the long-term certainty required to invest. There are concerns, questions, even doubts on whether climate action is compatible with competitiveness, when in fact it is the other way around. What we cannot think of is providing goods and services while spoiling resources, causing climate damage, or failing to understand that we need to combine the two goals. The alternative is a non-option. It could not mean prosperity, because it could not last. It could not mean competitiveness, because it would be based on a false reality. This brings us into a different context that also has an impact on international relations. It is not just ethics, not just morality, not only climate. It is new geopolitics: the transition from the old oil and fossil fuel geopolitics to a new geopolitics based on a much more ecological economic reality. It is a market driver, an innovation driver, but also a very complicated way to restructure the way we produce, the way we relate to each other, the way we ensure trade and skills. Reducing emissions is the very first step forward to reducing the resilience challenge. We need to continue working to embed climate security into our policies—not as an abstract goal, but as a very concrete response to floods, droughts, and heatwaves. We are struggling with these things today, and they will only get worse in the time to come. So, climate action is also security. Climate action is hope. Climate action is something we cannot forget. We cannot say we will wait for a better time. On the contrary: now we are experiencing the consequences of not having been quick enough. It is not that we have done nothing—that is not true. We have done a lot. The problem is that we still need to do much more. That is why we need to count on a new Climate Adaptation Law, backed by dedicated financing in the next European budgets. It must be our common answer to these increasingly urgent realities, and this is what we are proposing and will fight for in the coming months. We have also taken significant steps to break free from fossil fuel dependence, investing in affordable clean power for all, electrifying our energy systems, and building them differently—thinking them differently. It is a great challenge, too. We do it because we believe it makes sense in climate terms, as I said, but not only: it also makes sense in business terms. In today’s global landscape, countries still relying heavily on foreign fossil fuels are vulnerable to political and economic pressures beyond their control. And those relying on national fossil fuels do not do better either. They miss the race for innovation and the smart use of resources. They miss the opportunity to build prosperity without compromising environment and security. In 2023, the European Union alone imported over €400 billion worth of fossil fuels. This is an amount that we did not invest in education, health, research, defence, critical infrastructure, affordable housing, development, and so on. Burnt capital. In contrast, since 1990, as I said, we have improved our figures and reduced these dependencies. Modern grids, interconnections, and storage are key to succeed and to make sure clean and affordable energy reaches every single household. We must bet on a new generation of industrial solutions, ensuring a lower dependency from abroad. At the very same time, we know that we need to make sure all our efforts create opportunities for everyone. Such a deep transformation, in such a short period of time, cannot be achieved if it is not supported by everybody. It cannot be handled unfairly. It cannot come without social policies that anticipate where there may be an unfair situation deserving the attention of institutions. We cannot make policies against “losers” just to provide opportunities for a few “winners.” On the contrary: we need to think of the social impact in terms of pricing. We need to think of the risk of enhanced poverty in certain households. We need to think of the skills that may be required by labour markets. We need to think of what it means in terms of different approaches to land use. These are all good reasons why I say there is a need for Europe—because it could be easier if we manage to facilitate, at the continental scale, the responses we need to build. It will require heavy investments. The European Union and its member states can go a long way in footing the bill. The European Investment Bank can and will step in. We are a wealthy continent. How do we use our savings? How do we decide on investments? How do we assess risk, cost, worth, and value? We can do better—much better. We need to think of the public side of this accountability, through the Multiannual Financial Framework. But we may also create opportunities to ensure that we mobilise private capital—what we could call the “patient investors,” those that bet on the mid to long run. We can think of how a Union, a banking union, a savings and investments union, may lower the cost of capital. We should think of how we can play with these needs and assessments to partner with other people in other geographies. We need to think about what the complementarities may be, in terms of how we develop partnerships with other colleagues. In fact, one of my requests to you is this: please, do not accept anyone saying that the green transition is a burden. It is not. What is a heavy burden is not being ready—accepting that, whatever happens, we will be unprepared. Yes, it is a challenge. Yes, it has difficulties and risks. We need to pay attention to too many things at the same time. But the real burden, the real cost, would be to forget that it is something we must face, something we cannot avoid. And it is better to do it in the smartest possible way. The European Union could not be what it is if we do not look beyond our borders—especially in these times when others close their own. Yesterday, the College of Commissioners adopted the legal framework for the partnership agreement with Mercosur. More than 20 years of negotiations. And I know there are concerns being expressed by farmers for a very long time, and we need to address those concerns. But we cannot take more than 20 years to agree on how, based on the rule of law, we can build prosperity between two continents that share values, that bet on democracy, law, and human rights. Whatever difficulty we may find, it is always better to be honest, to identify and shape the difficulty, and to try to solve it, than to hide the difficulties or renounce our principles, standards, and values. It was also the day when we backed the modernisation of the strategic partnership with Mexico. Think of Mexico. Think of this very integrated market in the North American region—Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Think about the 40 million Mexicans living in the States. Think about what it means when you have counted on such a great partner to build such an important and strategic relation, and suddenly you find yourself with no clue on how to proceed. So we should think not against anyone, but about how we may be able to stand up and identify the way forward, without renouncing our principles and values. Again, this will be challenging. But please—stand up. Do not say, “We renounce, this is useless, let’s stop trying.” No. We must identify how we can overcome difficulties, by standing up and improving our answers to the challenges. So I could say: in this rhetoric of cowards, the diplomacy of friendship—tough, firm, coherent, grounded in values, but friendship—should win. That is the dream of Europe I referred to in the beginning. These arguments go beyond trade. They contain elements of economic security, climate change, access to raw materials, and global governance. My sense is that this is going to be a hard time. But again, we should be thinking: do we support chaos, each one on his or her own, or do we try to modernise the tools and instruments that were conceived in a previous context, but were created to facilitate these answers? As I leave here, after a short stopover in Brussels, I will head to Ethiopia—to Addis Ababa—for the Africa Climate Summit. Again, what do I say to the African ministers dealing with climate? That we have no time for climate action right now? That the UN system does not deliver anymore? That we don’t trust the institutions in Europe? That we don’t care about the rest of the world? That we think the rule of law is old-fashioned? That our market is fragmented and closed, only for Europeans? No. Of course not. I am not going to do that. That is not what I think. That is not what I am accountable for. That is not what we, as Europeans, have learned to appreciate since we first started shaping responses to the great challenge of how to build prosperity and peace after the Second World War. So: energy, climate, biodiversity, trade, peace, security, governance—there are many things to talk about when we talk about Europe, when we talk about climate. And throughout the academic year, you will be identifying what challenges are most relevant for you, and how you can contribute insights and relevant thoughts to address them and their answers. We will be very, very happy to count on you—and on your answers. Watch the video : [https://youtu.be/vKtfO7ZZIRU](https://youtu.be/vKtfO7ZZIRU) ### Thématique `#Europe` `#Environnement` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)