EU horse-trading goes green

Young voters in the EU’s west went green — although that wasn’t mirrored in the east.

Aggressive policies on tackling climate change turned out to be a vote-winner in the European election — at least in the west of the Continent.

Because of that, climate policy may play a big role in the horse-trading that’s now starting over the key jobs in the EU.

“I would expect that the Green wave that we had in many countries, not in all, will have a strong impact on the program of the next Commission president,” European Commission Secretary-General Martin Selmayr said at a POLITICO post-election event on Monday.

The Green group in the European Parliament looks set to be the fourth biggest with 69 MEPs, gaining 17 seats compared to 2014 thanks to a strong showing in Western and Northern countries such as Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, France and Belgium; however, aside from the Baltics, not a single Green was elected east of Berlin.

“Climate change was one of the top concerns of the EU citizens that went to vote. And this is reflected in the results,” said Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, head of the Jacques Delors Energy Center.

It’s not just the Green party that took climate seriously. Frans Timmermans, the lead candidate of the Socialists, proclaimed it would be his top priority if he becomes the next Commission president.

The issue already looked set to feature prominently on the agenda of the incoming Parliament and the Commission: EU leaders are debating the bloc’s long-term climate strategy, and pressure is building on the bloc to back a goal of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050. That’s something the outgoing Commission proposed in November and, so far, is backed by an alliance of largely Western and Northern members.

Selmayr said he expects the Greens to “dedicate all their resources” to “make sure there’s as much of their program” included in the portfolio of the next Commission chief and would support candidates based on this premise.

The conservative European People’s Party, which remains the largest group in the assembly with 180 seats but incurred significant losses, is scrambling to recover after placing climate as a low priority during the election. The group is hunting for support among other parties to secure the Commission president post for their candidate — Manfred Weber — which means it may have to give ground on climate policy.

“We’ve got to change course … on climate policy,” Peter Liese, a German MEP from the Christian Democratic Union and the outgoing environmental coordinator for the EPP — who was reelected — said Monday.

The Greens, who have no chance of securing the top Commission job and are instead aiming to get a commissioner, are already positioning themselves as Parliament’s kingmakers and key for any future political alliances.

They’re competing with the assembly’s third biggest group, the new liberal ALDE plus Renaissance plus USR Plus alliance, which also says the fight against climate change is one of its priorities.

Continental climate concerns

The concern about climate change showed up in voting behavior across much of Western Europe.

In Germany, the big election winners were the Greens, taking second place with an estimated 21 seats, and pushing the Social Democrats into third place. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc still came out top, but lost ground compared to the previous election.

The results show German mainstream parties “really need to become green if they want to have a political future,” said Pellerin-Carlin.

Polling data published by German broadcaster ZDF showed that over 30 percent of voters under 30 voted for the Greens, compared with 13 percent for the conservative bloc.

Both German mainstream parties — which form the country’s governing coalition — have grudgingly conceded that failure to take on climate change contributed to their poor results.

Climate change has “for some reason become a global issue,” Armin Laschet, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, said Sunday evening on German television.

Other leading conservative politicians are now pledging to carve out a clearer position on climate policy plans. The head of the Christian Democratic Union, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said the leadership will discuss climate policy at an upcoming session.

But the Green surge petered out in most of eastern Germany, with the exception of a few urban strongholds like Berlin. Instead the right-wing and climate skeptic AfD did much better.

Belgian regional elections showed a surge of support for far-right and anti-immigrant parties in Dutch-speaking Flanders, but the Greens did well in Brussels and French-speaking Wallonia.

In France, young people similarly flocked to the Greens, with more than a quarter of voters under 34 supporting the party. President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party picked up support from the right, according to exit polls, but hemorrhaged voters to the Greens, something the government has noticed and is likely tied to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s effort to push for an ambitious environmental policy at the EU and national level.

There was “a European green wave tonight that we contributed to,” Yannick Jadot, lead candidate for the French Greens, said Sunday. “Europeans want ecology to be at the heart of their lives.”

The east isn’t green

Those kinds of concerns aren’t likely to find much favor with the nationalist and populist parties that did well in Italy and across much of Central and Eastern Europe.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s League, greeted his party’s strong result — it won 28 seats — as a mandate to push policies on migration and cutting taxes. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his victorious Fidesz party talked of stopping migration, defending nation states and Europe’s Christian culture.

In Poland, one of the candidates from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party was Grzegorz Tobiszowski, the deputy energy minister in charge of restructuring the hard coal industry.

“In the European Parliament there is a need for a stronger voice with arguments in favor of Poland’s energy mix — where there is place for coal as well as [renewables],” he told Polish media during the campaign.

Poland still generates about 80 percent of its electricity from coal, and tangled with the Commission and other countries over its go-slow approach to cutting emissions and phasing out coal.

In Poland, younger voters skewed right rather than green, with 47 percent of those under 30 supporting either Law and Justice or the far-right Konfederacja.

This article has been updated to include Finland as a country where the Greens did well.