Europe Faces a Less Ambitious Environmental Agenda

(INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images)

Solar panels on Aug. 9, 2023, in Neuss, Germany.

Growing resistance to environmental initiatives in Europe will likely continue beyond the 2024 EU elections amid the rising popularity of right-wing parties, portending less ambitious climate targets and greater economic protectionism through the end of the decade. EU member states and conservative lawmakers in the European Parliament are reportedly slowing and weakening new EU environmental legislation, most recently trying to undermine rules that would slash the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture. The Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation, which would force EU countries to collectively halve the use and potential toxicity of chemical pesticides in agriculture by 2030 and promote more environmentally sustainable farming practices, faces opposition from both the center-right European People's Party in the European Parliament and from a number of EU countries including Austria, Hungary and Poland. EU countries effectively stalled negotiations at the council while conservative lawmakers delayed a July vote in the parliament's agriculture committee until October, significantly reducing the chances of the law being adopted before the next EU elections in 2024. The European Parliament also recently watered down other flagship Green Deal proposals, such as the EU's Nature Restoration Act, which calls for the European Union to restore at least 20% of its degraded areas by the end of the decade, and a proposed revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive, which aims to reduce livestock methane and ammonia emissions.

The European Green Deal, a package of policy initiatives launched by the European Commission in December 2019, aims to set the European Union on the path to climate neutrality by 2050.
National governments and European People's Party lawmakers oppose the pesticide reduction law for its potential negative implications for European food security and farmers' livelihoods, pushing for the commission to drop binding national reduction targets, arguably the most contentious element of the law.
Meanwhile, the Nature Restoration Act narrowly survived a European People's Party-led attempt at killing it in July, but was significantly weakened before passages, as restoration targets for wetlands were scrapped. Similarly, European lawmakers removed new rules for livestock farm emissions from the Industrial Emissions Directive.

The recent backlash against EU climate legislation comes on the back of greater coordination between right-wing parties and farming lobbies and a growing opposition to measures seen as aggravating the Continent's cost-of-living crisis. Resistance from industrial, agricultural and farming lobbies that feel directly threatened by new environmental regulations is growing in Europe. Farmers are becoming particularly vocal in opposition to Brussels' green agenda, pushing back against proposals that would effectively reduce their usable land and productivity (thus increasing costs and hurting margins) without offering clear business incentives. Despite being a relatively small constituency, farmer groups wield significant political influence in Europe and are increasingly attracting sympathy from voters outside rural areas. This became evident in recent local and national elections in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, in which opposition to emissions reduction and nature restoration measures played a central role. Europe's conservative and nationalist parties seek to capitalize on this discontent, positioning themselves as champions of rural interests ahead of the upcoming European Parliament election in June 2024 and reinforcing their opposition to elements of the Green Deal targeting agriculture and affecting rural communities. This adds to their traditional alignment with the interests of the automotive or steel industries, for example, for which they typically seek to resist or slow ever-stricter emission limits. The European People's Party has also recently pushed back against other climate measures, like those aimed at making buildings more energy efficient, citing concerns about potential high costs for households, particularly in the context of the cost-of-living crisis linked to the war in Ukraine. As a result, political support for more environmental rules is dwindling in the European Union, and it is getting harder to pass new legislation, with opposition within both the European Parliament and the Council translating into thinner majorities and watered-down packages.

Voters in the above elections largely viewed Brussels' efforts to impose a fast and costly transition at a time of low growth and high inflation as excessive. In the Netherlands, the nascent Farmer Citizen Movement won the most votes during the last provincial elections in March, campaigning against government plans to shut farms to curb the sector's nitrous oxide emissions. The Farmer Citizen Movement's local electoral triumph resulted in the Dutch government pausing the program.
Outside of the European Parliament, pushback against climate legislation has also been visible at the member-state level, with several EU leaders, including centrists like French President Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, calling for a regulatory "pause" from new green legislation.
Unlike in the United States, mainstream conservative parties in the European Union do not reject combating climate change out of hand and largely back the bloc's 2050 climate neutrality target. They do, however, increasingly contest Brussels' proposals for achieving these goals, seeking to water down costly measures for politically influential lobbies and constituencies or rejecting them altogether. Far-right parties, by contrast, tend to combine outright skepticism on climate change with strong criticism of decisions taken by unelected technocrats in Brussels.

With right-wing parties skeptical of overly ambitious EU climate targets polling strongly ahead of the 2024 EU elections, conservative parties will push to water down or reject new climate legislation in the buildup to the vote and beyond. Recent polls for the European Parliament election suggest right-wing parties will gain seats at the expense of pro-environment centrists and green parties. The two largest mainstream EU parties, the European People's Party and the center-left Socialists and Democrats, are losing ground but are still polling first and second, respectively. This means they will probably win enough seats to repeat their current grand coalition and stay in control of the Parliament. The nationalist right represented by the European Conservatives and Reformists group — traditionally skeptical of overly ambitious EU climate targets particularly when they come against national economic interests — is gaining momentum, however, largely at the expense of the more moderate European People's Party. This may prompt the latter to adopt an increasingly hawkish strategy and rhetoric against Green Deal legislation to remain competitive. This means the party will likely continue to oppose new environmental legislation in the run-up to the election, seeking to increase its popularity among key conservative constituencies opposing the EU green agenda. Finally, polls suggest that support for the Green party is decreasing across Europe, speaking volumes about the Continent's emerging green fatigue.

According to Politico research published Aug. 9, if elections for the European Parliament were held today, the European People's Party would obtain 158 seats (down from 177 currently), followed by the Socialists and Democrats with 145 seats (up from 143 currently). Notably, the European Conservatives and Reformists would rise from 66 to 81 seats while the liberal Renew Europe would drop from 101 seats to 86 seats and the Greens would drop from 72 seats to 44 seats.

As key EU institutions shift further to the right and grow less committed to Green Deal legislation, the bloc's diminished interest in environmental protection could last until the end of the decade, pointing to less ambitious climate targets and greater economic protectionism. Current political trends across the European Union mean that completing the remaining climate legislation on the current European Commission's agenda will prove difficult in the months leading to the European Parliamentary elections, and some proposals may end up stalled or significantly diluted. After the elections, the ideological composition of the European Parliament will likely shift further to the right, including in terms of climate policy preferences. A more conservative parliament would also produce a like-minded European Commission, which would likely be less ambitious on climate than the current one. This will not result in the complete disruption of current EU climate policies through 2030, but rather in greater attention to protecting the traditional farming, agriculture, steel and automotive sectors and less to cutting emissions and investing in the swift decarbonization of industrial processes. As a result, the European Union would likely implement climate legislation at a slower pace than currently envisioned and looser emission reduction and nature restoration targets while increasing subsidies to industries, farmers and citizens to reduce the costs associated with the net-zero transition.

Prospects for the European Parliament to adopt its position on the pesticide reduction law before the 2024 elections are fading, which increases the possibility that the next parliament will decide to send the proposal back to the commission for redrafting from scratch. Other legislations within the current commission's green agenda that still need to be completed include a proposal to green the bloc's corporate fleets that would ban sales of new corporate cars and vans running on fossil fuels by 2030, one to increase the energy efficiency of buildings, which sets out mandatory renovation targets to fully decarbonizing the sector by 2050, and one on sustainable food systems that aims to "make sustainability central to all food-related policies." All are likely to face some resistance in the current European Parliament and among EU member states.
The European Union has recently relaxed its state-aid rules to allow member states to provide financial support to their industries as they move away from fossil fuels, but has so far refused to create ad hoc common financing tools to fund industrial subsidies across the bloc. This may change under a more conservative and protectionist European Commission, while pressure from agricultural and farming lobbies may also lead to increased funding under the Common Agricultural Policy in exchange for cutting emissions and land usage in the sector.
While a more conservative European Parliament and commission is the most likely outcome emerging from the 2024 EU elections, alternative scenarios are possible. A less likely scenario would see a high degree of continuity with the reelection of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission under a European Parliament similar in makeup to the existing one. An even less likely scenario would see even greater ambitions in pursuing the bloc's climate goals thanks to an even more climate-focused European Commission supported by an enlarged grand coalition that also includes the Greens. The least likely scenario would see an even more drastic shift to the right for the European Parliament, with the European People's Party and far-right groups allying to back a commission with a diminished interest in combating climate change. This last scenario, however, is highly unlikely due to significant differences on a number of fundamental issues between far-right parties in Europe.