Seeing Products, Sparing Firms.The Digital Environmental State and the European Greenlash
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Since 2023, the EU has rolled back central parts of its Green Deal in the name of cutting red tape. Analysing the omnibus amendments and the political process behind them, we show that this 'greenlash' is highly selective. The Green Deal set out to rebuild the state's knowledge infrastructure, producing two forms of legibility: attributive legibility, which ties ecological harm to specific firms, and market-making legibility, which renders products transparent and opens circular markets without naming anyone responsible. The greenlash cuts the former, notably sustainability reporting and due diligence, while sparing the latter, notably the Digital Product Passport, because only market-making legibility reconciles the state's dependence on popular loyalty with its dependence on the confidence of capital. The question of who pays for ecological transformation, firms or households, is thus recast as a technical dispute over data, opening new paths of policy dismantling with implications for environmental statecraft beyond Europe.
Authors: Pietron, Dominik, Petras, Maximilian
Institution: Goethe University Frankfurt
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225176014