Everyone is fed up. For more than a year, farmers across Europe have been rising in anger. Suffocating economic, legal and administrative constraints and the brutality of ecological breakdown leave them unable to live from their work. At the same time, the rise of supermarkets, together with inflation, have limited access to high quality healthy food. Eating in a way that does not cause environmental harm remains a choice that is not made by, or not possible for, too many people. working conditions in the food sector are alarming.
Meanwhile agribusiness – the industries that produce, process, sell and distribute agricultural goods – makes huge profit with the support of our governments. As a citizens’ movement for social and environmental justice, Code Rouge/Rood raises its voice alongside farmers’ in a call for action.
Farming has always been more than food production. Farmers have been caring for this complex relationship between land, biodiversity, climate, and human communities for ages. They have passed on this knowledge from generation to generation. And yet, over the past 70 years, intoxicated by the promise of industrialization and by the synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, GMOs, and fossil-dependent technology that made it all possible, governments and corporations have systematically sought to erase farmers from the picture. After people struggled to eat during war times, they tried to rapidly increase food production. This way agriculture was made into a business. Competition fosters unsustainable practices and chokes out farmer after farmer.
Competition feeds corporations. Farmers feed people. It’s time to take action. Agribusiness is making huge profits while killing farmers, ecosystems, and people with unhealthy food. We call for food sovereignty, we want people to take back the power over food. People have the right to: “healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through socially just, ecologically sound and sustainable methods”, and to collectively define “their own policies, strategies and systems for food production, distribution and consumption”.[1]
We refuse the narrative that pits farming against environmental justice. This division is created by politicians to protect the profits of multinationals. We met with farmers that are mobilizing. We talked with agroecological and conventional farmers, as well as trade unions and other advocates for farmers’ and workers’ rights. We denounce the precarious conditions of farmers and workers in the food sector in Belgium and elsewhere. We are united in our anger in the face of these injustices and in the belief that alternatives are possible.
This is why Code Rouge/Rood is calling for a mass action in support of the farmers, against the agribusiness. We are targeting corporations that influence food prices, advocate harmful free trade agreements like the EU-MERCOSUR agreement, and are responsible for numerous human rights and environmental violations. For now, we are keeping the exact target a secret.
Agribusiness: corporate greed fueled by a myth of productivity
Agribusiness is a system of mass agricultural production, services and retail, directed at making profit. It includes large industrial farms, suppliers of farming inputs (chemicals), and the corporations who transform, transport, trade and sell food and non-food products (like biofuels).
Agribusiness thrives on competition between farmers, a race for productivity that encourages limitless expansion, monocultures, and practices like chemical pesticides and deep plowing. These practices may produce a lot initially but are ultimately destructive for soils and biodiversity. Globally, agribusiness makes profit through the hyper-specialization of regions, which creates unequal global trade patterns. In this system, food is produced for its export value, instead of feeding local populations.
Farmers are extremely dependent on retailers (like supermarkets) and food traders, who use their market power to force small and medium producers to accept prices that are below or barely cover their costs of production. Agribusiness owns the seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and machines, and is buying up land at unfair prices. This gives them immense control over the farmers who depend on all of these. Agribusiness lobbies push for public policies that provide even more power to corporations, for example through subsidies based on farm size (like the CAP in Europe) or free trade agreements (like the EU-Mercosur deal), allowing them to import cheap, unhealthy and unsustainable food and push down prices, threatening the survival of farmers in Belgium and elsewhere.
Precarious working conditions in the agricultural sector especially touch the lives of migrant, undocumented and racialized people. They work in huge agricultural productions without any social protection and in conditions of extreme poverty, only to enrich bosses and shareholders of big distribution chains (Carrefour, Delhaize, Aldi, Lidl, Colruyt…).
Destroying our capitalist food system to build a new, social and ecological one, can only happen from a decolonial perspective. Globally, agribusiness makes profit through the hyper-specialization of regions, which creates unequal global trade patterns. This way, Western countries continue to extract resources and labor from the Global South. The most recent example is the EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement, which threatens European farmers by increasing competition from cheaper imports produced under weaker environmental and labor regulations. The agreement risks increased deforestation in MERCOSUR countries, particularly the Amazon, to expand agricultural land for export, contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss. Food should be produced to feed local populations, not for export value.
We don’t need mass food production for food security. In the world, around one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted each year[2], and just a fourth of that would be enough to end world hunger[3]. Contrary to the common narrative, trying to solve the problem of decent incomes for farmers by increasing productivity only makes the problem worse. It leads to overproduction, which means more waste, more poisoning of our soils, water, and bodies, and lower prices leaving farmers unable to make ends meet. In Belgium, even though we have enough fertile land to feed all of our population, nearly 5% of the population has to resort to food aid[4]and nearly 20% of farmers are living below the poverty rate[5]. Belgium exports more agricultural products than it imports and hosts profitable agribusinesses earning millions or even billions of euros each year.
The focus on productivity distracts from the bigger issues: the unfair distribution of profits and the alarming decline of small-scale farmers and peasants. Since 1980 the number of farms decreased while farms got bigger[6]. This is a human and ecological drama. There are extremely high rates of suicides among farmers[7], they are losing family and cultural heritage, including important knowledge about local ecosystems. The average age of farmers is now 55 years old. Few will be able to pass on their farms to their children – either because they are in debt, or because there is no interest in taking up an activity where one has to struggle so much with so little recognition from society. And as land ownership gets more concentrated and speculation drives up prices, access to land for new farmers is near impossible[8]. To survive, many make investments and contracts that lock them into even more dependency.
Resisting social and ecological destruction
A huge part of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture: 11% just from production, and 30% if we count the entire food system (including transport, transformation, retail, etc.). But who is really responsible?
Agribusiness maintains a farming system based on the overuse of natural resources and on chemicals and technology that are energy intensive. They push farmers to overproduce cheap food, that has incredibly high social, health, and environmental costs. This system has destroyed important carbon sinks, like nutrient-rich soils and forests, which in turn intensifies climate change[9]. Moreover, agribusiness fosters a race towards high-tech solutions (drones, trackers, smart tractors) in order to increase production. These technologies are extremely costly, force farmers to incur even more debt and accelerates the disappearance of peasants. Farmers are the first to suffer from the ongoing ecological collapse. They face water scarcity, loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, extreme weather events, changing seasons, and more, that harm their crops and animals. This is an economic risk that is putting even more of them in debt and affects their mental wellbeing. On the other hand, sustainable small and medium-scale agriculture, and agroecology, has a major role to play in reversing this carnage and giving us all a future. It can restore biodiversity, naturally absorb greenhouse gases, and feed the world with healthy food. We can’t leave farmers alone to take up this challenge: to take action to support fair incomes, sustainable practices, and to finally stop the death march of agribusiness and its concentration of land ownership and wealth.
Let’s rise up in defense of social and environmental justice, and to unite with farmers who demand a better life and a better future.
Support farmers, not multinationals
We need to dismantle agribusinessin order to make a long lasting change towards ecological agriculture and food sovereignty. This means targeting its infrastructures as well as the institutions that support this system . It could not exist without animal feed production factories, chemical plants, industrial ports, a large part of the road and canal network, etc. We have got to this point because our laws and policies seek to accelerate capital accumulation through ever-increasing production and trade. Changing these institutions requires a revolution led by workers and farmers.
We don’t believe in “wallet democracy”, which puts all the responsibility on consumers. The antisocial measures pushed upon us by the new federal government will increase financial stress and throw more people into precarity. This shows us once again that making just, sustainable and healthy decisions is impossible in a broken system.
Everyone should have access to good food and decent wages. This is possible if we institute food social security. Social justice movements have been advocating this in many European countries including Belgium. Local authorities should guarantee a purchase price for good quality food, produced as locally as possible and in fair conditions. They should ensure that everyone can access it by regulating the profit margins made by actors across the value chain. This would allow us to decide collectively which kind of food we want to eat, and ensures that those producing it can live well. Let’s reclaim food sovereignty now.
Instead of being suffocated with bureaucracy, farmers should be supported to change their practices. For that, we need to reform the CAP: more economic and technical support for installations and smaller farms, more support for agro-ecological practices such as reduced chemical inputs, more diversification and plant varieties adapted to local conditions. Meanwhile, the EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement threatens European farmers by increasing competition from cheaper imports produced under weaker environmental and labor regulations. Also, the agreement risks increased deforestation in MERCOSUR countries, particularly the Amazon, to expand agricultural land for export, contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss.
We demand that companies that process, trade, and sell food:
- Stop importing food that does not respect our health and that destroys our ecosystems.
- Respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) and stop violating human rights of workers, farmers and indigenous communities here and around the world.
- Pay farmers a fair prices that are sufficient to cover their costs of production and make a living in a medium farm while working no more than 38 hours a week.
We demand that Belgian governments and the EU:
- Immediately cancel the EU-Mercosur agreement and all other free trade agreements that benefit multinationals at the expense of farmers’ livelihoods, our health, and our ecosystems.
- Redirect CAP subsidies to support the installation of new farmers, smaller-scale farming, and agro-ecological practices.
- Stop speculation on land prices, and enable access to land for new farmers.
- Support the transmission of farms for farmers nearing retirement and fund more education on agro-ecology and food systems.
- Implement food social security, as advocated by the Collective for SSA, to guarantee the right to healthy, fair, and sustainable food.
- Welcome and regularize all migrants to end exploitative working conditions, including in farms and the food sector.
- Implement compensation schemes for farmers who already suffer the effects of environmental degradation.
- Take much more ambitious action to prevent climate change and biodiversity loss, which threaten the viability of farms (see our previous demands about the fossil industry ;))
With three mass actions in the past two years, Code Rouge/Rood has brought together thousands of people to raise their voices against the fossil fuel and aviation industries. These industries are key pillars of the extractive, exploitative and polluting capitalist system. To abolish injustices and maintain a livable planet for generations to come, this system needs to change NOW. It is time to put the fossil fuel era behind us and build a socially just and sustainable future together.
Time is running out and still, real actions fall short. Each one of us can already see the consequences of the climate crisis in our daily lives. For the most privileged, it seems this is just at the beginning. For people who have lost their loved ones to heatwaves, their homes to floods and their crops to drought… the damage is already here.
The industries who benefit from burning fossil fuels have been using their economic and political power to avoid taking responsibility. But the climate crisis will catch up with us all. We can’t allow them to keep looking the other way and continue business as usual, that’s why we are back.
TotalEnergies, Engie, aviation industry,
you better be ready.
OUR TARGETS
Climate scientists have been telling us for decades that we must stop using fossil fuels now, to reduce the social and environmental damages caused by climate change. Yet all three of our previous targets are still expanding their activities, hungry for more super-profits :
- TotalEnergies is still massively investing in increasing the production of oil & gas by 3% in the next 5 years.[1][2][3]
- Engie is still planning the construction of new fossil gas plants here in Belgium.[4]
- The airports of Liège and Antwerp are growing in order to carry out not only more commercial flights, but also more cargo and private flights than ever before.[5][6]
In Belgium, citizens are directly paying the price for these harmful activities. We are paying, not only by suffering the environmental and health consequences, but also through generous subsidies and tax breaks offered by our governments. Many people today, facing skyrocketing prices, struggle to pay the bills at the end of the month. In the meantime, the fossil fuel industry is making record profits without paying the costs for their destruction :
- TotalEnergies made a record profit of 19.8 billion euros in 2023, with oil and gas remaining the main sources of revenue.[7][8]
- Engie is aiming to more than double its net profit in 2024, up to 5,6 billion euros.[9]
- Belgium is losing out on up to 700 Million Euros per year due to poor aviation taxation.[10]
TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry claim to be committed to reducing their emissions, but their actions reveal that this is pure and simple greenwashing. They have taken control of the energy transition, dictating its pace and blocking any climate action in order to continue exploiting fossil fuels for as long as possible.[11]
It is futile to expect our targets to make a real shift away from fossil fuels under current conditions, regardless of the good or bad will of their executives, or their personal views on the climate crisis. All the economic, political and legal signals encourage them to maintain the business as usual.
We are targeting TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry, not because of the people who use them or work in or with them. We target them because they are drivers of a destructive capitalist system. In this system, the people who benefit the least suffer the most. Industry profits do not even go to the workers, they go to the 1% who own big shares in these companies. What we want is to democratize the workplace, to regain power over our lives and decide collectively on our future. Trade unions and workers must be closely involved in the development of qualitative retraining plans for workers in polluting industries that will disappear. We need fair jobs for all in a low-carbon economy.
We are also targeting our political representatives, as they have always supported and are still supporting these industries to this day. With money, infrastructure, permits, influence… they play a huge role in making sure these industries have the possibility to act in destructive ways. It makes them complicit. We therefore urge them to make different choices.
FIGHTING FOR CHANGE
We want to live in a world where we care more about collective well-being and ecosystem health, than about endless economic growth and consumption. So let’s raise our voices once more, for a society in which we:
- Honor planetary boundaries and human rights, instead of disgracing them.
- Choose long-term resilience, over short term profits.
- Use taxes for good, not to sabotage our own future
- Meet everyone’s right to a dignified life and we are guided by solidarity, justice and peace.
Code Rouge/Rood consciously chooses civil disobedience as our action method, because we feel that we have depleted all legal action methods. Deliberately breaking the law is our means of last resort.
Great changes in history often took place after massive acts of resistance. Ordinary people have chosen to resist and organize, to break the law, to demand change. Think about the impact of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., fighting against racial segregation. Or about the Dutch Climate movement that got the government to stop funding oil and gas projects abroad in 2021 thanks to the repeated highway blockades. Or about the Sudanese uprising in 2019, where women, desperate for justice and peace, organized demonstrations that brought thousands of people together to demand a democratic future. It has worked in the past, and it will work for us now.
Systems are not set in stone, they are constructed. With imagination, willpower, hope and collective action, we can change them.
STANDING UP AGAINST A GLOBAL CAPITALIST SYSTEM
The system in which TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry operate is built on oppression that reaches far beyond borders. It is fueling war and human rights violations throughout the world. Although ordinary people living in Western societies are not to blame for all global problems, we do bear (historic) responsibility. Our political elite and multinationals created this system of inequality and oppression during the colonial period, and are still sustaining it today. We have to acknowledge its existence and actively resist if we want to see real change in this world.
To tackle this global system we need a global movement that is willing to fight back. We have to reach out, listen and learn from people and communities in our own streets and on the other side of the planet. We are all connected. We are the many. They are the few. We are allies. Let’s us act like allies. In a society that uses violence as an mean to control and oppress people, it is a privilege to be able to stand up. With Code Rouge, we do not want to take this privilege for granted.
So, we stand up against a global system, as part of a global movement, to fight oppression here, there, and around the whole world.
To TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry we say: It’s time to stop your destruction. We are back. We are not backing down.
And to you:
We need you, join us.
[1] https://totalenergies.com/company/ambition/strategy
[2] https://totalenergies.com/sites/g/files/nytnzq121/files/documents/2024-07/totalenergies_factbook-2023_2024_en_pdf.pdf (p5)
[3] https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/total/
[4] https://corporate.engie.be/en/energy/gas
[5] https://gresea.be/Boom-du-fret-aerien-lie-au-e-commerce-Liege-Airport-en-premiere-ligne-malgre
[6] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/10/27/vlaanderen-subsidieert-de-vakantievluchten-van-de-rijken/
[7] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2024/02/07/totalenergies-makes-its-biggest-profit-ever_6501210_114.html
[8] https://totalenergies.com/sites/g/files/nytnzq121/files/documents/2024-02/TotalEnergies_PR_4Q23_Results.pdf
[9] https://www.brusselstimes.com/1166696/engie-posts-net-profit-of-e1-9-billion-in-first-half-of-2024
[10] https://www.transportenvironment.org/uploads/files/tax_gap_report_July_2023-1.pdf
[11] https://gresea.be/Les-multinationales-vertes-demasquees
Code Red versus the aviation industry: Don’t crash the planet
This time Code Red will target aviation! Why? While it’s not a secret for anybody that aviation is disastrous for the climate, maintains precarious working conditions, and has a harmful impact on nature, agriculture and health, the industry still benefits from numerous tax breaks and receives millions in subsidies. As a result, the industry keeps growing beyond planetary boundaries for the enjoyment of the 1% responsible for over half of passenger flight emissions. Yet it is the global majority of marginalised, financially precarious and racialised communities that pay the price. It is high time to start curbing down the aviation industry and make it undergo a radical turn, putting people and the planet first.
The aviation industry disrupts the climate…
Aviation is one of the transportation modes with the biggest climate impact. Airplanes don’t only emit CO2 – accounting for about 2.5% of global emissions – but also nitrogen oxides (NOx), black carbon, vapor trails and soot, which contribute twice as much to global warming as CO2 emissions. As a result, the climate impact of a flight can be up to 80 times higher than that of a train ride for the same route. And that climate impact is increasing year after year. Emissions from the airline industry are growing faster than any other mode of transportation, with projections showing that emissions will triple by 2050 if the industry doesn’t change course soon. That would represent a quarter of the global carbon budget left for a 1.5° C scenario. Although science clearly states that reducing flights is the only valid short-term solution, the industry continues to grow and sell green lies of “sustainable” aviation fuels and electric planes which provide no short term emission reductions.
…and is inherently unjust and largely unnecessary.
The problem are private jets, unnecessary cargo flights and excessive touristic flights. 80% of the world’s population has never flown, while 1% is responsible for more than half of the total emissions of passenger air travel. That includes leisurely flights and private flights. As to cargo flights, they serve high-speed transportation including online orders of low-quality goods such as fast fashion – a polluting practice linked to global capitalism that encourages overproduction and overconsumption, local job loss, and has a climate impact 100 times higher than that of shipping freight per ton of transported goods.
Commercial passenger flights are also on the rise, thanks in part to low-cost airlines using tax breaks and bad working conditions, thereby deepening the price discrepancy that forces people onto planes rather than the pricey trains for short distance travel. In the meantime, more private jets are flying than ever before, doubling their emissions between 2021 and 2022. While only the super-rich enjoy their jets, the global majority bears the consequences – from emissions-related illnesses to noise pollution, and of course increasingly extreme weather conditions, making it an outrageous violation of the principle of climate and social justice. While aviation can have some benefits in specific sectors and is indispensable for diasporas and displaced peoples to connect with their communities, most of the industry’s activities are unnecessary and inherently unjust.
Aviation thrives thanks to our subsidies and tax breaks…
Despite its disastrous climate impact, the aviation industry enjoys preferential treatment over other modes of transportation worldwide. Airline companies pay no taxes on kerosene and no VAT on airline tickets – unlike all other means of transportation such as cars and trains. As a result, Belgium misses out on as much as 700 million euros a year in taxes from aviation. Not only does aviation escape taxation: the sector is also hugely financed by public money – thus ultimately by citizens. Regional airports, for instance, benefit from millions in subsidies that allow low-cost airlines to reap huge profits. Airlines were also saved from bankruptcy by State aid during the corona pandemic. Finally, governments invest millions in infrastructure around airports. All this with taxpayers’ money that would be better spent on alternative public transport (such as trains), education, healthcare, loss and damage finance, reparations, or the energy revolution, at a time when so many people struggle to feed and heat themselves.
…at the expense of food security and health…
Aviation is not just airplanes: it requires cumbersome infrastructure such as airports that not only eats out a lot of space, but also locks us in this transportation system for decades. In a small country like Belgium, there is simply no room – nor need – for six international airports. On the over 2500 hectares now occupied by airports, we could feed over a thousand people each year, or capture over 20,000 tons of CO2 annually. Instead, airports are being extended onto agricultural lands which are essential for our food sovereignty. The continuing disappearing of natural and agricultural areas under concrete makes us vulnerable to extreme weather events, as the 2021 floods made clear.
The concentration of airports in this densely populated country constitutes a public health hazard. Well over half a million people living around airports are exposed to increased concentrations of ultrafine particles and disruption of their sleep (due to night flights), with an enormous impact on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, resulting in asthma, heart disease and high blood pressure. Women are especially adversely affected by such air pollution. Residents around airports include marginalised and racialised communities in financial precarity who often have no choice but to live there due to the high cost of housing elsewhere, and see the number of flights and consequent pollution increase year on year. What’s more, it is not inconceivable that a plane could crash in a residential neighbourhood in Belgium, like at the Amsterdam Bijlmermeer.
…and maintaining difficult working conditions
Aviation is a major source of employment, but many of these jobs are carried out in increasingly precarious and difficult working conditions. Baggage handlers, warehouse storekeepers and ramp attendants often have to do dangerous, back-breaking work, which is often compounded by dubious practices on the part of employers, such as short-term and freelance contracts, under-staffing and night work. Even relatively valued professions such as cabin crew or pilots are now subject to social dumping, encouraged in particular by the rise of low-cost airlines.
These jobs come with significant costs to the community in terms of subsidies, investments and climate impact, and many low-skilled jobs are highly sensitive to outsourcing and automation. As aviation will have to degrow radically to ensure a livable future on the planet, many of these jobs will also disappear, making them particularly precarious. Conversely, a re-localisation of needed production-chains associated with a collective reduction in working hours could create new job opportunities at home in better working conditions. It is thus high time to invest all these public resources in the development of truly high-quality, meaningful and socially just jobs.
Time for action
While scientists agree that aviation must shrink in the short term to ensure a livable future on Earth, this industry continues to grow beyond planetary boundaries. Meanwhile, nuisances and health problems for local residents also grow, and people worldwide are terrorized by ever increasing extreme weather events. This disproportionately affects the people who contribute least to the problem – people living in financial precarity, and marginalised, and racialised communities here in Belgium and around the globe. This growth is driven by mass and luxury consumption, as well as by the many tax breaks and subsidies the sector continues to enjoy. The sector misuses public resources and space that we desperately need for the ecological and economic revolution. That’s why Code Red demands: an immediate end to aviation subsidies, a ban on private jets and the radical degrowth of the aviation sector.
From 15 to 17 December, we embark on a mass action for social and climate justice, against the aviation industry. Join us.
Why?
Extreme weather, floods, soil erosion, rising fuel and energy bills and rising prices for basic necessities. Our dependence on fossil fuels is taking its toll, to say the least. Oil, gas and coal are directly implicated in human rights abuses in the South and fuels numerous conflicts and wars around the world.
The climate, energy, social and economic crisis is driving the working and middle classes into poverty. The most vulnerable become even poorer because of huge energy bills. Meanwhile, big fossil companies like TotalEnergies make enormous profits. These multinationals are key players in the history of the current climate crisis. This history is one of land grabbing, persecution and colonialism. For years, they have worked to influence our societies with their poisonous green propaganda and crony capitalism. Their climate-destroying actions are even rewarded by our politicians through financial bonuses and various subsidies. The workers in this sector, who depend on their jobs for income, are kept in the dark about their future.
Time is running out and the challenge is enormous, but a viable future is still possible. That is what we are fighting for. For a society where the big polluters are held accountable for their actions, where everyone has fair access to energy and where citizens and workers are supported to move away from fossil fuels. A society that relies on renewable energy, combats pollution, makes us independent from dubious regimes and creates more peace. A society where the climate transition is not made on the back of the working class and with opportunities for paid work for all. A society with a better distribution of wealth, fundamental rights for all, lower energy bills, a better quality of life and a good future for our children.
Why Engie?
Engie is poisoning the climate
The company is planning to build up to three new fossil gas power plants in Belgium, even though climate scientists are clear that there is no room for new fossil infrastructure. Taking into account the entire chain of production, gas is just as polluting as coal, while its extraction worldwide has led to the destruction of biodiversity and serious human rights violations, especially in Latin American and African countries. We call for a ban on all fossil fuels.
Climate change is certainly not the only problem. Global water health, food security, eroding of democracy, armed conflicts, and the crossing of several planetary boundaries are at stake. By 2035, all electricity in Europe will have to be produced without fossil fuels if climate targets are to be met, which would prevent devastation. Currently, only one third of Europe’s electricity is renewable. Building new power plants today that will continue to burn fossil gas until 2050 is a conscious decision to make our planet unlivable. All the investments we make now must be devoted to energy saving and locally produced renewable energies, not to the development of fossil fuels.
Engie is lining their pockets with our money
In the midst of the energy crisis, the French company has paid 3.4 billion in dividends to its shareholders in 2022! Meanwhile, a huge number of people were living in the cold and fearing that they wouldn’t be able to pay their astronomical bills. On top of that, the company not only benefit from public subsidies and premiums that allow them to pay the bills, but they also receive subsidies to build their gas-powered power plant in Flémalle, which is disastrous for the climate. We demand affordable energy for all.
Engie’s shareholders have won the jackpot. The multinational company has pledged to return 65% of their profits to shareholders under any circumstances. We, the citizens, on the other hand, have to pay the bill for failed energy policies five times over: first, through the energy bill we receive in our mailboxes. Second, through the public subsidies granted during the crisis to Engie to pay for overbilling, subsidies amounting to 3.5 billion euros for the year 2022 alone. Third, we are paying for the subsidies for the construction of the new fossil gas power plants (1 billion euros in total, shared between Engie and Luminus). Fourth, we will soon have to pay for the shared operation of Engie’s nuclear power plants and for the storage of radioactive nuclear waste. Finally, the costs of environmental destruction and climate change – adaptation costs, additional health costs, etc – will also come out of our wallets, here but first and foremost in the countries that are victims of Engie’s neo-colonial policy.
Engie puts lives at risk
The company keeps largely obsolete nuclear reactors in operation, and passes on the problem of radioactive nuclear waste to future generations, which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. The consequences of a nuclear accident in Doel or Tihange, in the middle of densely populated areas, would be catastrophic. Nuclear power is the most expensive way to produce electricity and makes us dependent on countries with dictatorial political regimes as well as fuelling a neo-colonial industry to source uranium and other materials. We demand safe energy without dictators.
The nuclear power plants of Tihange and Doel were built in the 1980s and are now completely obsolete. By keeping the reactors operational longer, the government and Engie are playing with the lives of millions of Belgians living in Antwerp, Liège and other densely populated areas, in the shadow of the nuclear plants. Fukushima, Chernobyl and Zaporijia show that nuclear power plants are never 100% safe. Moreover, protecting nuclear power plants requires a country to have a large military apparatus. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of years of radioactive waste for which there is no solution. We are leaving this heavy legacy to future generations. If you include all the costs of safety, decommissioning and storage of nuclear waste, it is the most expensive energy of all.
Nuclear power is the opposite of locally produced, cheap energy over which citizens have a say. Uranium – which is a finite resource – comes mainly from dictatorships like Russia and Kazakhstan. The fuels used by Engie to produce electricity come from repressive regimes such as Qatar and Kazakhstan, which reinforce their dominance through revenues from the extractivist economy. Engie even contributes to Russia’s war chest by using Russian uranium in its nuclear power plants.
Engie blocks the energy revolution
Less energy for rich, polluting consumers and enough clean energy for what really matters to us: everyday life, public transport, sustainable agriculture, healthcare, and other essential public sectors. This is the recipe for the energy revolution we want to see. Engie relies on dirty energy sources and wants to continue to increase their production capacity ad infinitum, including with fossil fuels. Engie, who can never have enough, is blocking the energy revolution.We want an energy system that is no longer owned by multinationals but democratically managed. One in which, there is enough clean energy for everyone, and where the over-consumption of the rich and highly-polluting industriesaredrastically reduced.
We can do without new gas and nuclear power plants if we distribute the available energy more fairly, while reducing polluting activities and over-consumption. The Belgian industrial sector accounts for almost half of our energy consumption. These are companies whose production often goes far beyond the limits of our planet. Some of this production will have to be stopped, after a democratic consideration of collective social interests. As a publically listed company, Engie has no interest in the necessary reduction of energy consumption. Worse still, the more energy is consumed, the more profit the company makes. This is exactly why Engie has no place in the future energy system.
Bye bye Engie
Clean, cheap, and reliable energy is not a luxury; it is a basic need! Energy is too important of a common good to be left to shareholders and speculators. We want the energy sector to be taken out of private ownership and democratically-managed by energy users and employees.Only then can we regain control of energy production and distribution and meet the needs of all in a fair and sustainable way, while preparing for resource scarcity. The system of capitalist overproduction and the waste that accompanies it must end. We must produce and consume for the needs of all, not for the profits of a few. With this action, we announce the end of Engie! We need a just retraining plan for the workers of Engie and other polluting industries, driven by trade unions and workers. We need meaningful jobs in a decarbonised economy.