The European green wave, which has surged across the continent since 2019, finally came to a halt yesterday, dying on the dry sands of public opinion. The results of the European elections spell an end to the greenest EU parliament ever seen. The Green grouping — elected five years ago amid the emergence of Greta Thunberg, school climate strikes and Extinction Rebellion protests — was knocked back as support swelled for the far right.
The Green/European Free Alliance grouping, which had helped steer ambitious environmental policies into law in recent years, fell from 74 to 53 MEPs. The respected journal Foreign Policy predicted it would be a key moment, warning: “Europe’s Green moment is over”. The grouping slipped from fourth to sixth in parliament. As Amelia Hadfield, head of politics at the University of Surrey, put it, this “[makes] them far less of a policy leader than previously, despite the extreme climate crisis facing Europe”. In Germany the Greens, who came second in 2019 with 20.5 per cent, were knocked down to fourth place with 12.8 per cent.
While dramatic — with Emmanuel Macron calling a snap French election in the wake of the results — analysts say this does not represent a complete rollback. The EU spent the last five years putting a wide-ranging package of climate laws into place, including the Green Deal legislation designed to rival the US Inflation Reduction Act, rules to phase out petrol and diesel and ambitious net-zero targets. Those rules will be hard for the new right-wing grouping to undo. The political centre, led by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has held on, though it is on shakier ground. The next five years could be beset by a new battle over net-zero laws, and how to finance them, at exactly the time climate scientists say the laws are most needed.
It is tempting to draw parallels between the European situation and that in the UK. After all, our own net-zero laws were passed in 2019, amid the same green surge that swept across Europe. Those laws passed through parliament without a single squeak of opposition. Later that year Boris Johnson, arguably the most environmentally-minded prime minister Britain has had in recent years, was elected with a huge majority.
Those days of climate consensus have gone. Rishi Sunak has turned climate change into a wedge issue at this election, and Nigel Farage’s Reform looks set to crowbar that gap even wider. With many green-leaning Tories standing down, including Theresa May, Sir Alok Sharma, Michael Gove and Chris Skidmore, is Britain set to face the same anti-green backlash seen on the continent?
