Big businesses and national governments are heaping pressure on Brussels to cut back its sustainability agenda amid fierce debate about the impact of Donald Trump’s deregulation drive on the EU.
The latest call for reform of rules that companies say are choking investment came from US oil and gas group ExxonMobil. Europe president Philippe Ducom said “very little” of the €30bn it had earmarked for investment in technologies, such as hydrogen and carbon capture, would come to Europe as a result of its “frivolous, excessive and expensive regulation”.
“A lot of what Europe is doing is trying to do the right thing but doing it the wrong way,” Ducom told the Financial Times.