The Greens are dead. Long live the Greens!

There is no sugarcoating it: The Greens lost a third of their seats in last week’s European elections and plummeted.

The European Union has become the world’s most ambitious actor in the fight against climate change in recent years. It has done so through fundamental policy changes such as setting high emissions targets, preparing to phase out combustion engines, driving forward nature restoration and curbing the environmental impact of agriculture. Green parties across the 27 EU member states have successfully pushed this agenda forward.

But in recent years there has clearly been a split in the mood among large sections of the European electorate.

European voters are concerned about the war in Ukraine and its impact on defense and the economy. The cost of living crisis fueled by the coronavirus pandemic still has the core European Union states in its grip. Curbing immigration has become a key voter concern. Given these new priorities, the Greens’ appeal seems to have waned – or worse, they seem to have lost touch with reality.

“Europe has really done a lot on climate protection,” said Bas Eickhout, a prominent Green politician from the Netherlands and vice president of the European Greens, in an interview. “But especially after the war in Ukraine and the inflation that caused the cost of living crisis, many people are now worried and asking themselves: ‘Okay, can we afford this?'”

autopsy

There are various explanations for the Greens’ poor election result.

The centrist parties have undermined the Greens’ support by incorporating much of their agenda into their own policies. However, the Greens’ identity itself has not developed sufficiently. As a result, the Greens have seemed to focus too much on an issue – climate – that has slipped down voters’ priority list.

But there is also a broader trend that is not benefiting the European Greens: the backlash against climate policy as part of a broader culture war has gained momentum.

In many places, the nationalist agendas of far-right parties were complemented by populist appeals to economically disadvantaged citizens. The right was able to win votes by targeting the Greens and portraying them as unsuitable to protect poorer workers in rapidly changing societies.

Many voters failed to show the Greens that their proposals were not just costly, growth-stifling measures that would hit the poorest. And some see them as elitist city dwellers who brush aside the costs of transitioning to a less climate-damaging lifestyle.

Mr Eickhout said this line of attack against his party had caught on. “They portray this transition as a very elitist transition that is only for the ‘Tesla people,'” he said. “And I can tell you, Tesla no longer has a good image.”

And then there are the European farmers who have protested fiercely against green policies over the past two years, particularly those who wanted to restrict the use of chemicals in agriculture and introduce conservation measures that would destroy farmland. The protests frightened moderate voters and politicians.

In Europe, the Greens perform particularly poorly in the countries where they are part of the government – ​​especially in Germany.

The enormous youth movement that helped the Greens win one in five elections in Germany five years ago has been weakened by their participation in government. “The party cannot please the younger progressive voters it wants to attract into its ranks while at the same time appeasing the wealthier moderate voters,” says Sudha David-Wilp, regional director at the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund.

Since Germany is the most populous country in the European Union and therefore has the most seats in the 720-seat European Parliament, the poor performance of the Greens there triggered widespread reactions.

Green shoots

Things are not looking bleak for the Greens everywhere. In Nordic countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, the Greens are doing very well. One possible reason for this is the higher level of prosperity and the longer debates about climate change.

And they achieved surprising successes in Eastern and Southern Europe, including Italy and Spain, countries where green parties are traditionally weak and in some cases no green MPs have even been elected to the European Parliament.

Perhaps the most complex political picture emerged for the Greens in the Netherlands, a country with a particularly powerful climate movement, a uniquely organised and strong farmers’ movement and a highly successful far-right movement that won the national elections late last year.

There, the Greens officially ran together with the Social Democratic Workers’ Party and won the election, relegating the far-right party to second place.

For the Greens, this type of successful cooperation could be a model for coalitions in the upcoming local and national elections in other parts of the European Union, said Eickhout.

“It is absolutely crucial that the Greens have broader credibility, not just on climate,” he said, adding that working with social democratic parties could help create a compelling progressive alternative to conservatives and the far right while staying true to the Greens’ climate roots.

Who pays?

The Greens’ poor performance sparked a chorus of complaints that the European Union’s Green Deal – the set of policies the Union has adopted to combat climate change and limit its own contribution to it – is dead.

Experts consider these fears to be unrealistic: many of the measures designed to achieve ambitious targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are already enshrined in law.

But delaying and watering down measures due to the loss of green momentum are very real risks, warns Simone Tagliapietra, an expert on EU climate policy at Bruegel, a major Brussels think tank.

And cutting funding for the Green Deal measures could also undermine their effectiveness. To prevent this, he added, the European Union should push for a common budget to invest in the green transition and protect the poorest from the economic consequences.

“The radical transformation of the Green Deal raises difficult questions about who will pay for it,” said Tagliapietra. “If these costs end up being disproportionately passed on to ordinary workers – not to mention the poorest and most vulnerable populations – the transformation will exacerbate inequality and become socially and politically unsustainable,” he added. “That is not an option.”

Christopher F. Schuetze He contributed with reporting from Berlin.