Europe in an age of competing transitions: Climate, technology and geopolitics
Europe in an age of competing transitions: Climate, technology and geopolitics
Publish Date: 2026-02-22 12:09:00
Source Domain: www.ekathimerini.com
This month, Greece announced a new offshore natural gas exploration deal with Chevron, covering areas south of the Peloponnese and Crete. At the European level, the agreement met no notable pushback, even as renewed fossil fuel exploration sits uneasily alongside the European Union’s climate commitments. This contradiction is often framed as policy “tension.” Yet it increasingly looks like a defining test for a continent that has pledged climate neutrality by 2050.
Europe does not face a simple tension. It faces a moment of reckoning.
In Brussels, the word most often used is “balance.” A balance between climate ambition and industrial competitiveness, between strategic autonomy and open markets and between energy security and decarbonization. It sounds measured, responsible, technocratic.
But what we are witnessing is not merely tension. It is a lack of directional clarity at a time when clarity is precisely what is required.
The EU has staked its global identity on the green transition. Electrification of transport was not only an environmental necessity; it was presented as Europe’s industrial renaissance. Batteries, electric vehicles, grid infrastructure, critical minerals, hydrogen. This was to be the new engine of European growth and sovereignty. Climate policy became industrial policy. Industrial policy became geopolitical strategy.
Yet reality has been less forgiving.
The EU has staked its global identity on the green transition, but China has moved faster and deeper across the supply chain, from mining and processing critical minerals to battery manufacturing and electric vehicle scale
China has moved faster and deeper across the supply chain, from mining and processing critical minerals to battery manufacturing and electric vehicle scale. The transatlantic relationship with the United States has been progressively hollowed out. Across administrations, Washington has moved toward an explicit prioritization of domestic economic power and…
