One week until the election that could derail EU climate policy

Europe's right wing is closing in on taking control of the European Parliament, and they have the EU Green Deal in the crosshairs.

We are now entering the final days of the 2024 EU election campaign, with voting beginning on Thursday in some countries and finishing on Sunday. But when the results come in on Sunday night, it will be the beginning of a process rather than the end of one. Once it is clear what the new composition of the parliament will be, it will be time for the most uncertain and tumultuous coalition formation process the European Parliament has ever seen. With polls suggesting that far-right MEPs could be more numerous than the center-right European Peoples Party (EPP), the parliament’s largest group, it is looking like the coalition of center-left and center-right that has governed the parliament since its founding may be coming to an end. And that, say experts, will put the EU Green Deal in grave jeopardy.

The two far-right groups in the European Parliament, Marine Le Pen’s Identity & Democracy (ID) and Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) are predicted to maintain their rising trajectory of the past two decades. This year, they are expected to cross a threshold that could give them power they’ve never had before. ID and ECR are predicted to together win 144 seats, which if they united as Le Pen has been lobbying for, would make them the second-largest group in the parliament after the EPP, which is projected to win 170 seats. Add in the far-right parties that currently aren’t sitting in any group, such as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz and Germany’s AfD which Le Pen just expelled from the ID, and it now looks likely they will outnumber the center-right, which has been the largest force in the parliament since 1999.

Following the election, all eyes will be on Giorgia Meloni, to see whether she chooses to lean toward the center and form an alliance with President von der Leyen’s EPP, or to lean toward the right and unite her group with Le Pen’s. It could be both. A united ECR and ID could then form a coalition with the EPP to form a right-wing governing majority in the parliament. If the lawmakers in this coalition follow through on their campaign promises, they will immediately get to work on dismantling the EU climate legislation that has been passed over the past five years as part of von der Leyen’s Green Deal.

Last week the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) published a survey of sustainable development experts which found that the majority of experts (67%) are expecting Sunday’s election outcome to result in a dismantling of EU climate policy. The result, they warn, could erode or undermine much of the hard work done over the past five years.