It was once set to be Ursula von der Leyen’s political legacy. Now the Green Deal is so politically toxic that her own party made its support for a Parliament text conditional on stripping out those two words.

Lawmakers from the center-right European People’s Party — which counts the Commission president among its members — demanded that all mentions of the European Green Deal be deleted from the European Parliament’s recent report on water resilience, two MEPs involved in the negotiations told POLITICO.

The move to disown the Green Deal reflects a sharp shift toward the right for the EPP, which has aligned itself closely with the agriculture sector since farmers took to the streets last year to protest against EU environmental rules. Agriculture is both the top user and polluter of water in Europe.

Michal Wiezik, an MEP with centrist Renew Europe who led the agriculture committee’s work on the water report, and Greens MEP Christina Guarda, who sits on the agriculture committee and was involved in negotiations, both said the EPP had made the demand during discussions on the report.

“For the EPP, the biggest party in the room, it was a red line to have the Green Deal mentioned in the text — you won’t find it in there,” Wiezik said, referring to negotiations on the water report in the agriculture committee.

Wiezik said he had been surprised by the EPP’s position. “There’s a lot of enemies of the Green Deal in this house right now,” he said.

Guarda corroborated Wiezik’s account. “They completely deleted every reference to the Green Deal,” she told POLITICO, adding the position had been supported by far-right groups.

The amended text confirms that mentions of the Green Deal were deleted.

The report, which lays out the Parliament’s position on EU water policy, is intended to influence the European Commission’s upcoming Water Resilience Strategy, a sweeping plan to protect the EU’s water supply from drought, pollution and overuse.

EPP lawmaker Esther Herranz García, who represented her party in the agriculture committee negotiations on the report, told POLITICO in a written statement that the effect the Green Deal had “had on productivity and abandonment of farms makes us think that new times have come.”

“It is not a question of giving up the Green Deal but of giving farmers more time to achieve its goals while ensuring the sector’s competitiveness,” she said.

From hero to zero

EPP member von der Leyen personally launched the European Green Deal in December 2019 on a wave of popular demand for climate action; it later became the flagship policy of her first term.

“Humanity faces an existential threat — the whole world is beginning to see. Forests burn from America to Australia. Deserts are advancing across Africa and Asia. Rising sea levels threaten our European cities as well as Pacific islands,” von der Leyen said at the time.

The Green Deal included dozens of laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity, minimize waste and force companies to report on their impact on the environment. Its aim was to make Europe “the first climate-neutral continent” — a goal that has since been superseded by defense, economic and trade concerns.

The original European Parliament water report in February called for “a full implementation of EU Green Deal legislation in order to build a resilient Europe, mitigate climate change, halt biodiversity loss and limit resource use, including water.”

The amended line removes mention of the Green Deal, and balances environmental goals with the goal to “build a resilient and competitive Europe, ensure adequate and regular water resources for agriculture, and to ensure food security and sovereignty in the EU.”