Unless the political dial can be turned, this year’s European Parliament elections will put the environment on the line.
‘If there is one area where the world needs our leadership, it is in protecting our climate. This is an existential issue for Europe—and for the world.’
These words came from Ursula von der Leyen, when she became president of the European commission in 2019 after the previous elections to the European Parliament. At the centre of her programme then was climate and the environment, especially the European Green Deal, which von der Leyen called Europe’s ‘man on the moon moment’.
Setting the agenda
Times change and in the interim mass protests by farmers have emerged across the bloc, far-right parties have dominated in national elections and military conflict has increased across the globe. Meanwhile, the existential threat of climate change is aggravated all over the continent, with droughts affecting nearly 17 per cent of the European Union’s area. Yet while 2019 was called by some the first ‘green’ parliamentary election, ‘security’ and ‘migration’ are setting the agenda this time around.
The polls anticipate a right-wing victory in June, the consequences of which would be catastrophic for Europe’s environmental future. The far-right Identity and Democracy group could enlarge to nearly 100 seats in the European Parliament while the Greens/EFA could shrink to between 40 and 60, depending on the poll. ID, which includes the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid(Party for Freedom) and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, could not be more explicit in its goals: end the ‘green crusade’ and slash transition programmes.
The largest political group to emerge is still likely to be the European People’s Party, with von der Leyen its candidate to continue as commission president. The EPP has conventionally been described as comprising Europe’s centre-right parties and has in the past made compromises with the centre-left Socialists and Democrats political family. But a recent shift has seen it reject such accommodations and lean instead towards the right—despite political theorists warning that such a strategy often strengthens the far right, rather than halting its advance.
This has been especially evident in the EPP’s increasingly anti-environmental stance. It sought to kill the EU Nature Restoration Law, successfully blocked efforts to reduce pesticide use and has pledged to reverse the future ban on internal-combustion engines.
Citizens’ priorities
A Eurobarometer survey published six months before the parliamentary elections made clear that EU citizens are still concerned about the environmental emergency. Action against climate change was the third priority cited by respondents—just behind poverty and social exclusion and public health. Migration and asylum, by contrast, came ninth, despite its dominance of the headlines and election coverage.
Two recent reports highlight that climate action is more urgent than ever. One from the European Environmental Agency shows that Europe is woefully unprepared for the consequences of climate change. It says Europe is the fastest warming continent and, without immediate action, catastrophic results are rapidly approaching.
The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change has meanwhile assessed how the EU is doing in terms of meeting its climate-neutrality obligations. While it reports some accomplishments, the EU is far away from where it needs to be.
Renewed austerity
Europe will not be able to prepare for the gathering climate risks nor finance a just green transition without ambitious public funding. Yet, while bragging about the transformative power of public investment, the commission has insisted on maintaining fiscal rules (albeit revised) that would force much of the EU to implement renewed austerity.
Under the debt-and-deficit rules, the vast majority of member states will not be able to fund the programmes the climate crisis requires. The constraints on public investment will also result in underinvestment in the new jobs and reskilling needed to ensure that energy-intensive industries and their workers can be supported to be part of the future.
The EU has lost nearly a million manufacturing jobs in the past four years and there are fears it might lose half of its steel capacity. Meanwhile, millions of EU citizens are experiencing a falling standard of living, with stagnant wages amid painful inflation.
Honesty needed
For those pushing for a just transition, there will have to be honesty on what this means for the average European citizen. This has been made painfully clear through the gilets jaunes movement in France and the more recent farmers’ protests. These cannot be understood as simple hostility to the energy transition: they represent an outcry against the unjust consequences for livelihoods of neoliberal policies—reduced taxation of wealth in France, ‘free trade’ in agricultural products at EU level—and a policy agenda of sanction and punishment, rather than support.
There must be an acknowledgement of the pressure the green transition puts on workers—especially in high-emissions industries—and farmers. Rather than see these communities as in opposition to the transition, their voices must be heard and they must be supported financially and culturally throughout.
This must be a learning moment for European policy-makers. Policies such as support for low-income households to insulate their homes better—through meaningful subsidies and public initiatives—can provide tangible improvements in living standards and garner support for the just transition. Market-based responses to escalating climate risks, by contrast, will exacerbate the pressures on already struggling workers by reducing real incomes .
The time is too urgent to get this wrong. Unless there is a meaningful and effective shift in the political terms of trade in the coming months, the June elections could usher in a parliament with a majority catastrophically opposed to a just transition.
This is part of our series on a progressive ‘manifesto’ for the European Parliament elections
