Green Deal Under Threat After E.U. Elections

After the June elec­tions, the new bal­ance of power in the European Parliament sug­gests that cli­mate change is no longer a top pri­or­ity for European cit­i­zens amid the ris­ing cost of liv­ing on the con­ti­nent, migra­tion and the ongo­ing Russo-Ukrainian war.

The European Greens, a polit­i­cal party rep­re­sent­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ist and pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal forces from the E.U.’s 27 mem­ber states, has suf­fered exten­sive losses in the elec­tions. The party earned only 51 par­lia­men­tary seats, down from 71 seats in 2019.

On the other hand, the parliament’s far right, con­sist­ing of Eurosceptic and pop­ulist par­ties such as the French National Rally, has made sig­nif­i­cant gains. The con­ser­v­a­tive cen­ter-right European People’s Party (EPP) has remained the largest group in the European Parliament, grab­bing 189 seats (13 more than in the 2019 elec­tions).

The European Parliament com­prises 720 directly elected mem­bers (or seats). While only the European Commission can ini­ti­ate leg­is­la­tion in the European Union, the par­lia­ment acts as a co-leg­is­la­tor by adopt­ing and amend­ing the commission’s leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als.

“In pre­vi­ous European par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, cli­mate protests had pushed envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns to the fore­front of the polit­i­cal agenda across most of the E.U.,” Jessica Haak, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Hamburg University in Germany, told The Guardian. ​“Although vot­ers in some Western European coun­tries still con­sider cli­mate issues impor­tant, they pri­or­i­tized eco­nomic con­cerns, migra­tion and war.”

According to some experts, the losses of Europe’s cli­mate change-minded par­ties could even shake the foun­da­tions of the E.U.’s ambi­tious poli­cies.

“Kiss good­bye to the European Green Deal,” Simon Hix, a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, told the Financial Times about the E.U.’s 2050 zero-emis­sions tar­get.

The European Union has long been a strong advo­cate of fight­ing cli­mate change, intro­duc­ing numer­ous poli­cies under the land­mark Green Deal ini­tia­tive.

The bloc’s green agenda, approved in 2020, is to achieve cli­mate neu­tral­ity by 2050 by decar­boniz­ing Europe’s energy and trans­port sys­tems.

Others, how­ever, asserted that with more seats than ever for the far right, which has tra­di­tion­ally opposed cli­mate action, the shift to the right in the European Parliament is unlikely to unravel the bloc’s green poli­cies.

“Despite a lot of the atten­tion going to the far-right gains, a vast major­ity of Europeans still voted for par­ties in the polit­i­cal cen­ter,” Vincent Hurkens, the lead on E.U. pol­i­tics at the cli­mate think tank E3G, told The Guardian.

“It is up to the cen­ter-right, lib­er­als and social democ­rats [to decide] how much power and influ­ence they allow the far right, and their ideas, to have on the future of the European Green Deal,” Hurkens added.

Nonetheless, some of the E.U.‘s cli­mate change ini­tia­tives have already been tar­geted, with the German Manfred Weber, the leader of the EPP par­lia­men­tary group, call­ing the ban on sales of inter­nal com­bus­tion engine cars planned to apply in the bloc in 2035 ​“a mis­take” to be reviewed in ​“upcom­ing days.”

European farm­ers are also affected by mea­sures from the bloc’s green agenda, requir­ing them to direct more resources than ever to green agri­cul­tural prac­tices and new envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions.

In January, a wave of farmer protests rocked Europe. Demonstrators called on Brussels to ease the admin­is­tra­tive bur­dens and envi­ron­men­tal man­dates for the farm­ing sec­tor, influ­enc­ing European cit­i­zens’ vot­ing for the new European Parliament.

“The protests, I think, have been sig­nif­i­cant in mak­ing politi­cians and the gen­eral pub­lic aware of the impor­tance of tak­ing into account the farmer per­spec­tive in set­ting all these reg­u­la­tions,” Trevor Donnellan, head of eco­nom­ics at the Irish Rural Economy Research Center, told Drovers.

However, after the European elec­tions, farm­ers are unlikely to see any imme­di­ate change in their work in the fields.

“Farmers already have a lot to do under the E.U.’s green direc­tives, and I do not expect things to change much with the new par­lia­men­tary com­po­si­tion,” Dimitris Mavroidis, the head of the Livanates agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion in cen­tral Greece, told Olive Oil Times.

“For instance, pre­ci­sion agri­cul­tural prac­tices such as using only the required amount of water and fer­til­iz­ers in the olive groves will remain in place,” he added. ​“While these mea­sures pos­i­tively impact the envi­ron­ment, they also have an under­ly­ing cost of mea­sur­ing and cal­cu­lat­ing quan­ti­ties. Other require­ments such as the crop rota­tion and the land restora­tion law, on the other hand, will likely be revoked or mod­i­fied.”

Mavroidis also noted that some of the E.U.’s mea­sures in place are still unclear to farm­ers.

“Olive farm­ers have to embark on an eco-scheme to get the full Common Agricultural Policy sub­si­dies,” he said.

“However, we still don’t know whether some of the work in the fields already done, such as installing new traps for the olive fruit fly, will be eli­gi­ble for a sub­sidy under the new scheme, which would mean that we have ful­filled part of the require­ments for becom­ing greener in our busi­ness,” Mavroidis added.

While the European Parliament has lost its green hue, much will be decided about the bloc’s green tran­si­tion and farm­ing poli­cies when the E.U.’s top jobs are filled.

The German cen­ter-right politi­cian Ursula von der Leyen, who cham­pi­oned the Green Deal, is the favorite for a sec­ond five-year term as the pres­i­dent of the European Commission.

• Financial Times
• The Guardian
• Drovers