1 June 2019 | New Scientist | 5THE European Parliament
elections last weekend saw a
collapse in support for traditional
centrist parties, while that for
populists and greens grew.
For the first time ever, the
centre-right European People’s
Party and centre-left Progressive
Alliance of Socialists and
Democrats don’t control a
majority of the seats, meaning
they will now probably have to
partner with the liberal and green
alliances to pass measures.
As the world’s second largest
democracy (India, the largest,
just re-elected prime minister
Narendra Modi), the European
Union has a large role to play intackling climate change. The
EU’s green bloc is now in a good
position to force more drastic
action, having increased its seats
from 52 to 69, its highest-ever
result. There are a total of 751 seats
in the European Parliament.
The European Commission
aims to make the European Union
carbon neutral by 2050. This plan
will need to be approved by the
European Parliament, and that
now seems more likely to happen.
“We have begun to see that all
of our competitors are beginning
to speak about ecological policies
and green policies and so things
have changed,” Philippe Lamberts,
co-leader of the Greens-EuropeanFree Alliance in the European
Parliament, said in a statement.
However, populist parties,
which often vote against climate
policies in the parliament, also
saw success. In France, Marine
Le Pen’s National Rally party
narrowly beat president
Emmanuel Macron’s centrist
party into second place. Macron
is still feeling the heat from the
“gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests”
protests, which began partly as
a reaction to fuel taxes designed
to tackle climate change.
Meanwhile in the UK, the
Brexit Party surged to the top
of the polls. The party has no
official policies on climatechange and didn’t publish an
election manifesto, but its leader,
Nigel Farage, has previously
questioned the basis of climate
science, as have many of its newly
elected MEPs. These include the
former Conservative minister Ann
Widdecombe, who was previously
one of only five members of the
UK House of Commons to vote
against the UK’s 2008 Climate
Change Act.
Were the UK to leave the EU, the
country’s MEPs would have no say
in the EU’s climate policies. ❚More Green MEPs have been elected than ever before, but populist
parties may oppose EU climate action. Jacob Aron reportsClimate change swings seats
European electionsNews
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Philippe Lamberts and
Ska Keller, co-leaders
of Europe’s green bloc