Greens pay for cost of net zero at the ballot box

It was the night that Europe turned its back on net zero and embraced the Right.

The European Greens experienced the second largest decline of all parties, dropping to just 7 per cent after Sunday’s European Parliament elections.

The gains the Greens had made in 2019, when it secured its highest ever vote share off the back of Greta Thunberg’s mass climate protests, had been effectively eradicated overnight.

Terry Reintke, German MEP and president of the Greens, said: “We know that the gains made by the far Right in some countries, particularly France, Germany and Austria, will be extremely concerning for all of us who fight for democracy and freedom.”

It was a pattern mirrored across the EU.

In the fourteen countries with Greens elected in the previous election, 10 saw a decline or stalemate in support.

In France, the Ecologist party saw the number of MEPs elected fall from 13 to just five.

In Germany, the Grunes, previously the second largest party in its EU parliamentary crop, fell to third place, its MEPs falling from 21 to just 13.

Belgium, Portugal, Austria and Finland reported similar declines.

It wasn’t only the Greens who suffered. Emmanuel Macron, the leader of the country where the Paris agreement on climate change was struck, was humiliated.

His centrist Renew group had seen its MEPs decline by 23 seats. Its overall share in parliament had fallen from 15 per cent to 11 per cent.

In France, his drubbing at the hands of the hard-Right Marine Le Pen, who has backed farmers in their fight against EU climate rules, saw his party fall into third place as the hard-right took pole position.

Renew and the Greens both champion liberal and climate conscious values that have increasingly fallen out of favour with the electorate.

Young voters, traditionally among the most concerned over climate change, have been flocking to the hard-Right.

In France, the green Ecologistes saw its support amongst young voters, aged 18 to 24, collapse from 23 per cent, to just seven per cent.

According to the final Ifop poll before the election, there was a surge in young adults supporting the hard-Right National Rally, increasing from 14 per cent in the previous election to 39 per cent this year.

In Germany, exit polls from Infratest dimap, suggested that one in six of young voters supported the AfD, up 11 points from the previous election.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said: “The centre is holding,” in response to the EU Parliament election results.

For the Greens and Renew, it can’t have felt that way. But Mrs von der Leyen’s centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP) was the largest party in the parliament once the votes were counted.

Pawel Zerka, of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said: “The EPP is a silent winner, maintaining its seats and remaining the largest political group.”

The EPP turned against net zero as it became a European election battleground. It moved to water down new biodiversity laws and strict protections for the wolf. It has vowed to oppose an EU ban on petrol engines in cars.

Spooked by the farmers’ protests across Europe, the EPP echoed their arguments that green rules were too burdensome and expensive during the cost of living crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

As tractors rolled into Brussels earlier this year, Mrs von der Leyen ditched planned EU legislation to cut agricultural emissions and reduce pesticide use.

Bart Dickens, a Belgian beef farmer, said: “The people see what is happening,” before decrying the Left as being about nothing more than “flower power”.

“It still makes me angry sometimes,” he added.

It was a significant U-turn for a woman who had made the EU net zero goal of 2050 a flagship policy.

Mrs von der Leyen on Monday said that she hoped to build a majority of pro-EU and pro-Ukraine parties after the election to support her second term,

She mentioned climate change as one of the challenges facing the EU but she doesn’t need the Greens and its 53 seats, a loss of 18 MEPs, to hold the balance of power.

She will have a comfortable majority to pass and amend EU law by relying on the EPP, the centre-Left Socialists and Democrats and Renew alone.

And the EPP will also be tempted to vote with the net zero sceptic European Conservatives and Reformists, which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy in a Right-wing coalition, if necessary. The ECR saw its vote share increase to a gain of about 20 MEPs, thanks largely to Ms Meloni’s triumph.

According to the Eurobarometer, a regular survey of European citizens’ views, climate change has fallen from the second most important issue facing Europeans in 2019 to the fifth most important in the run-up to this election.

At a time where the cost of living, which ranks highest amongst voters for importance, has been increasing , political expediency could triumph over green idealism, especially when the eurosceptic hard-Right made such big gains.

This election will not make the climate and nature crisis any less existential. Flooding, droughts and heatwaves will only get worse, said Ariadna Rodrigo, of Greenpeace EU.

Although the anti-EU, hard-Right and climate sceptic Identity and Democracy will be shut out from real parliamentary influence, it has already succeeded in dragging the European centre to the Right on issues like net zero and migration.

Since the last election, petrol prices in France have increased by 21 per cent and the EU has been forced to make difficult – and expensive – pan-European decisions on energy prices in light of the war in Ukraine.

Prof Frank Furedi, of the MCC Brussels think tank, said: “If you look back over the last 15 years, year after year, the main concern of Europeans are economic, to do with the cost of living, whether your child is going to get a job or fears about your old-age pension.

“That’s number one and migration is number two, and that’s validated by every single survey I’ve seen.”

Immigration is still considered to be, after the cost of living, the most important issue for voters.

Hard-Right parties, including France’s National Rally and Germany’s Alternative for Germany, placed immigration at the heart of their campaigns.

The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Spain all rank in the top 10 of nations most concerned with immigration. All experienced surges in their support for the far-Right parliaments, with the Alternative for Germany and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party finishing second and the Freedom Party of Austria winning.

The decline of the centre and green parties does not necessarily mean voters have shifted to the hard-Right en masse.

Hard-Right parties made ground in just under half of all countries.

Whilst France’s National Rally and Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland made eye-catching gains, some of the largest increases happened in other countries.

Romania saw the Alliance for the Union of Romanians gain a fifth of all seats, the largest jump on the continent. The party has been sceptical of the War in Ukraine.

Poland’s Confederation party, Spain’s Vox and Salf groups and Portugal’s Chega were smaller parties which made noticeable gains on the right.

But if half the countries saw gains in the far-Right, the other half didn’t.

Finland’s Finn Party halved its representation. In Italy, the Brother’s of Italy rise was superseded by a 19-MEP drop in Lega.

The hard-Right has been contained but will certainly be harder to ignore.