The 57-year-old politician grew to become a minister in 2022 after 15 years as director of an vitality business affiliation. Simply in April, he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote after he withheld details about the state of the nationwide energy grid from Denmark’s parliament.
“I believe it’s very clear that Lars Aagaard is and has been beneath plenty of strain,” mentioned Jens Mattias Clausen, EU director at Danish inexperienced assume tank Concito. “He positively wants to have the ability to present to parliament that he can ship on this.”
Forward of parliamentary elections subsequent 12 months, Aagaard’s centrist Moderates celebration is polling under 4 %.
Denmark, historically the EU’s foremost local weather champion, “is likely one of the few nations within the EU the place local weather as a political precedence nonetheless has plenty of weight,” Clausen added. “So in the event that they don’t ship a robust 2040 goal, fairly just a few of the events in opposition will use that as a political weapon within the home debate.”
Plus, at this 12 months’s U.N. summit in Brazil in November, the Danish minister will co-negotiate on behalf of the EU alongside the Fee — the senior-most position for a Dane at international local weather talks since a Copenhagen-hosted 2009 convention.
The 2009 convention is marked within the historical past books as one which collapsed in disarray. With “Copenhagen” now a byword for calamitous negotiations amongst local weather diplomats, Aagaard will likely be beneath strain to assist erase Denmark’s U.N. summit trauma with a greater efficiency in Brazil.
Aagaard downplayed his personal, home political stakes: “I’m there to serve Europe,” he mentioned. “That’s the one factor that’s on my thoughts.”
