The new European Parliament will be dominated by the same groups that have traditionally controlled power, but its fringes will be noisier than ever. One go-to explanation for the strength of radical-right parties in Europe is fatigue with the cost of climate policies. Data commissioned by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) suggest this is too simplistic – the real driver is a lack of faith in parties and institutions to get things done. It is to this, rather than the principle of climate action, that centrist parties should turn their attention now.
European voters went to the polls last week with several things on their minds: the cost-of-living crisis, the impact of climate policies and the question of migration, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine. The big question occupying politicians going into the election was what this unpropitious backdrop would mean for the political mainstream’s grip on power in Brussels.
Broadly, the centre has held. The centrist groups usually forming the “super grand” pro-European Union coalition – composed of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Renew Europe (RE) – are set to secure at least 400 seats combined (out of 720 seats).
Radical-right parties have, however, been the main winners in these elections. The populist radical right has come first or second in key countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. In France, the Rassemblement National came first, obtaining more than twice the number of seats of President Emmanuel Macron’s party and leading to a snap parliamentary election. In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished second and is set to get 15 seats, ahead of the parties in the governing coalition.
However, populist radical-right parties have not taken the European Parliament over. The centre still holds a majority. The question, though, is what it does next. How President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen – and also centre-left and centre-right parties across Europe – respond to the challenge posed by the radical right on immigration, on net zero and on the cost-of-living crisis will likely define the next few years.
One temptation will be to read the election results as a reduced mandate for climate action. In this interpretation, voters have signalled that they have other priorities and so any further commitment to greening Europe simply plays into the hands of the populist right. But this interpretation rests on mistaken assumptions about what is driving voters to turn away from the centre.
Ahead of the elections, working with YouGov, we surveyed more than 15,000 citizens across Europe to understand what would motivate their vote in last week’s poll for the European Parliament.
We found that a vote for the populist radical right was not a vote to resile from green policy. This graphic charts the level of climate concern among voters for more than 40 parties across the EU, organised by political groups at the European level.
Despite different political allegiances, most voters agree that climate matters
Source: YouGov for TBI
Some of the data is unsurprising – voters for green parties are, for example, the most concerned about climate change. Yet the supporters of parties in the Identity and Democracy and European Conservatives and Reformists groupings are simply not as “anti-green” as might be assumed amid reports anticipating a “greenlash” election.
Voters for Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (Fdl) party place themselves as a 6.6 out of 10 in their levels of concern about climate change. That is a higher level of concern than, for example, voters for the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) in Germany – who put themselves at an average of 6.2 on the same scale. Voters for the Rassemblement National (6.0) are not all that far behind supporters of the centre-right Les Républicains (6.9) or Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance (7.0) on this climate-change-concern scale.
In other words, most voters – whether those who stuck with the mainstream or those who looked elsewhere last week – actually agree that climate matters. Yet as our recent report on public opinion across Europe showed, they lack faith in political institutions to address the issue. It is this credibility gap that should concern the centrist parties.
While a majority support net zero, few think their government, the EU, large companies or China will get there by 2050
Source: YouGov for TBI. Note: Opinion of likelihood in the EU was only polled in member states. “Don't know” responses were excluded from this analysis. Belief in likelihood of reaching net zero by 2050 measured on a 0-10 scale. 0-4: not likely; 5: neither likely nor unlikely; 6-10: likely. Due to rounding of the polling data, the data visualisations may not add up to exactly 100%.
The elections have brought bad news for many progressive European leaders. The small bit of good news is that they can still claw back the upper hand on climate policy by demonstrating that they not only recognise voters’ concerns but have realistic, credible plans to address them. We at TBI have suggested some of the infrastructure, market reform and technology investment that can make a difference – and have proven these political arguments persuade the voters liable to abandon the centre.
The worst thing that the centre could do now – in national elections to come and in shaping the European Commission’s next mandate – is abandon its promise of progress. If political parties misread the results as an endorsement of an anti-climate agenda, they will be proven wrong at future elections. Then, the centre might prove unable to hold.