By Mark Keenan
April 2, 2026
There is a growing belief that the political momentum behind climate policy may be starting to weaken. Rising costs, public fatigue, and shifting signals from the United States have led some to think the tide might be turning.
That may be true in parts of the world.
It is not true in Europe.
At a recent meeting in Oslo, former Czech President Václav Klaus made a point that cuts through a lot of wishful thinking. Nothing fundamental has changed in the European Union, he said, and no major shift should be expected any time soon.
That may sound stark, but it reflects how the European system actually works.
In the United States, policy direction can shift between administrations - as seen in the changes from Obama to Trump to Biden, where climate policy was expanded, rolled back, and then expanded again. In Europe, it tends to settle in - and stay there.
Over time, climate policy in the EU has become something more than a set of environmental measures. It now reaches into energy, industry, finance, and long-term investment. It shapes how decisions are made across the economy. Once policy operates at that level, it is no longer easy to unwind.
The Green Deal is a good example. It is often described as a policy program, but in practice it is more than that. It is tied into institutions, regulatory bodies, funding mechanisms, and political identity. People have built careers around it. Entire departments exist to advance it. Walking it back would not just mean changing direction - it would mean admitting that a central project has gone wrong.
Systems rarely do that quickly.
There is also a more practical problem. Much of Europe's climate approach works through mechanisms that sit somewhere between markets and administration. Emissions schemes, subsidies, and targets all push outcomes in particular directions, but not always in response to real demand or price signals.
Over time, that has consequences.
Energy becomes more expensive. Industrial activity comes under pressure. Some sectors shrink or move elsewhere. Investment follows policy rather than efficiency. None of this happens overnight, but it accumulates. And once it does, it becomes harder to reverse, because the system itself starts to depend on the interventions. Industries restructure around subsidies, governments start to rely on revenue from emissions schemes, and entire sectors grow up around compliance with the rules.
At that point, you are no longer just adjusting policy. You are trying to step out of a structure that has already been built.
That is why external political signals may not matter as much as people expect. Even if the tone changes elsewhere - even if there is a shift in the United States - Europe does not automatically follow. The institutional machinery in Brussels is slow, layered, and designed for continuity.
It absorbs pressure and rarely responds to it quickly.
That doesn't mean nothing will change. Pressures are clearly building - on costs, on industry, and on public tolerance. But pressure alone is not enough. It has to pass through institutions that are not set up to reverse themselves.
That is the real constraint.
So the question is not whether criticism of climate policy will increase. It almost certainly will.
The question is whether Europe is willing - or even able - to step back from a system it has spent years constructing.
So far, there is little sign that it will.
This article is part of a broader analysis developed in my book The AI Illusion which explores how systems are reshaping human freedom.