Sandro Gozi, “Blair is right; the Green Deal is not enough. We need a pragmatic left that looks to the future.”

Interview published on Huffington Post, 1/05/2025

The MEP, who is close to Emmanuel Macron, partly agrees with the former Labour prime minister’s criticism of Western green policies. However, he rejects the call to return to the past, stating: “We do not want to revive Blair’s Third Way, but certain elements of the left are irreconcilable with reformism.”

Sandro Gozi, a centrist and staunch supporter of nuclear power, partially agrees with the position expressed by Tony Blair in his introduction to the Tony Blair Institute report, The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change. While the former Labour leader rejected the goal of achieving a total reduction in fossil fuels by 2050, Gozi, the secretary-general of the European Democrats who is close to French President Emmanuel Macron, is more cautious: ‘I don’t think Blair is giving up on the environmental battle. The 2050 target remains for me, but something needs to be adjusted”. In short, Blair’s position does not stir any nostalgia for the past in the French MEP: ‘We do not want to revive Blair’s Third Way, and certain sections of the left are irreconcilable with reformism’.

Gozi’s criticism of Blair is clear: green policies as they stand do not work, and the net zero solution by 2050, like any ‘strategy for the gradual elimination of fossil fuels in the short term’, is doomed to fail. Is that the case?

I read the whole speech. I don’t think Blair is calling for us to give up the fight against climate change. Rather, he is asking for it to be updated in a concrete and sustainable way. In short, there is no denial of the ultimate goal, just an update. After all, without goals, there can be no consensus, and without consensus, there can be no change.

In an interview with the BBC, the former British Prime Minister was even more forthright. Mistakes have been made, haven’t they?

The former Commissioner’s approach was wrong: a punitive method that blacklists those who disagree. Politics must convince and adapt solutions. However, I maintain that the 2050 target remains. Not because I am sure we will achieve it, but because it galvanises action and provides industry with certainty. We know we are heading in that direction, but we need to review certain methods and make much greater use of technological innovation and artificial intelligence, as Blair says. We also need to make the process easier. Unlike Blair, we do not want to transition quickly from oil and gas to renewables and new-generation nuclear power for purely industrial reasons; we also want to become increasingly independent of Russia, the US and the Gulf countries for geopolitical reasons.

Blair is also disillusioned with the COP mechanism, which he says does not ‘produce change at the necessary speed’, and in which no leader wants to admit that the debate on green issues has become ‘irrational’. I continue to believe that the United Nations’ system of dialogue and governance is useful, despite internal clashes, because it forces regular confrontation. However, it has not yet managed to overcome the now obsolete opposition between the Global North and Global South.

Is the left forced to change its stance on green issues? Is there a new awareness?

The left has already criticised Blair, resorting to the familiar Pavlovian responses regarding Iraq and finance. During the last parliamentary term, the left was overwhelmed by Timmermans’ propaganda. Now, we need to shun emotional reflexes and embrace rationality and pragmatism. Over the past few years, however, we have laid the groundwork for a new European ecological and digital system. We haven’t done everything right, but we’ve certainly achieved a great deal. We need to identify what needs correcting and rebalanced, including eliminating methods and objectives that may have become too challenging or ambitious in light of recent geopolitical changes — starting with Donald Trump.

And what about the right?

Today, they applaud Blair, forgetting that the far right and the European People’s Party have always offered denialist narratives without proposing any real alternatives. I would like to add one more thing.

Please.

The EPP needs to get its act together. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the driving force behind the Green Deal, and she is popular. So why are they attacking that project so much? However, perhaps it is not fair to put giants like Blair and Antonio Tajani on the same level.

You are a centrist who has lived through and witnessed Blair’s Third Way, which also had significant repercussions here in Italy. Is the era of a left that was different from the maximalism embodied by Mélenchon over?

I am watching this debate from France, where it seems to me that the socialists are waking up. Figures such as Glucksmann and Hollande himself have realised that they must regain their autonomy and abandon the maximalist approach. As a centrist democrat, I see this as excellent news. There are irreconcilable left-wing factions: I’m thinking of Mélenchon and the reformists.

But isn’t it necessary to return to the policies of the past to do that?

We are no longer in the 1990s. Blair was an exceptional leader, but his successors failed to gain traction on the right. Today, everything has changed, and we need to move beyond the left-right divide. Like Macron, we are no longer proposing the Third Way. After all, Blair himself says that if he were 37 today, he wouldn’t do the same things because the world has changed. If he says so, we should take note.