Greens are drubbed in EU elections, leaving climate policies in jeopardy

BRUSSELS — There is no sugarcoating it: Losing one-third of their seats in the European Parliament elections last week, the Greens tanked.

The European Union has in recent years emerged as the world’s most ambitious frontier in fighting climate change. It did so through major policy shifts such as setting high targets to cut emissions, preparing to ditch combustion engines, pushing for nature restoration and curbing the effect of farming on the environment. Green parties across the 27 EU member states have successfully driven that agenda. But over the past few years, something has clearly snapped in much of the European electorate.

European voters are anxious about the war in Ukraine and its effect on defense and the economy. A cost-of-living crisis fueled by the coronavirus pandemic is still gripping core EU members. Curbing immigration has emerged as a voter preoccupation. In this new set of priorities, the Greens’ appeal seems to have faded — or worse, made them appear out of touch.

“Europe really did a lot on climate action,” Bas Eickhout, a prominent Green politician from the Netherlands who serves as the European Greens’ vice president, said in an interview. “But especially after the war in Ukraine and the inflation that has caused the cost-of-living crisis, I think there are a lot of people concerned now and asking, ‘OK, can we afford this?’”

A number of explanations are emerging as to why the Greens did badly electorally.

Centrist parties nibbled away at the Greens’ support by incorporating much of their agenda into their own policies. Yet, the Greens’ own identity failed to evolve sufficiently. That made the Greens seem too narrowly focused on an issue — the climate — that has slipped down in the ranks of voters’ priorities.

But there is also a broader trend at play that does not favor Europe’s Greens. A backlash against climate change policies as part of broader culture wars has gained momentum. In many places, the nationalist agendas of far-right parties have been augmented by populist appeals to economically strained citizens. The right surged among voters by targeting the Greens specifically, painting them as unfit to protect poorer working people in rapidly changing societies.

For many voters, Green parties failed to show that their proposals were not just expensive, anti-growth policies that would hurt the poorest the most. And some view them as elitist urbanites who brush aside the costs of the transition to a less climate-harming way of life.

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