EU's waffling on climate goals is allowing far-right to piggyback to power - EURACTIV

EU’s waffling on climate goals is allowing far-right to piggyback to power - Euractiv
By Isabel Schatzschneider Est. 6min 13-02-2024 Content-Type: Opinion Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data. While carnage broke out near the EU’s headquarters, with its halls of democracy blockaded by destructive protests, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen caved by saying “administrative burdens” on farming will be eased. [Photo credit : Alexandros Michailidis/shutterstock.com] Euractiv is part of the Trust Project >>> Print Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram To stop the far-right piggybacking to power this year, the EU must stop giving ground on hard-won climate rules, writes Isabel Schatzschneider. Isabel Schatzschneider is a Research Associate at the Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nüremberg. She is an environmental activist and commentator on EU environment policy. Europe is now facing the depressing sight of the far-right hitching a ride to power – on the back of a tractor, ridden by a raging farmer. Populist parties such as France’s National Rally and the Alternative for Germany are on the rise as they piggyback on farmer protests gripping Brussels ahead of an EU-wide election in June. The right wingers have hitched their climate change-denying wagons to farmers’ violent protests over excessive costs, environmental policies and what they see as excessive bureaucracy – successfully bellowing that climate change policy is antithetical and poses a threat to the European concept of liberty. After all, this is what sells. From Italy to Sweden, figures show the far-right is dominating thanks to its traditional playbook: using hot-potato issues including migration to sow a malicious agenda that burrows into its growing bases’ unfounded fears, which then blossom into brutally harmful misinformation and hatreds. Opposition to immigration, Islam, and the EU were what united Europe’s far-right parties for decades – but now new causes have emerged for them to capitalise on, from the culture wars to minority rights and now the EU’s farming crisis. Their nonsense rhetoric is spreading as far as the US, which went wild over false claims Ireland would slaughter 200,000 cows to meet its climate goals. It was once the political left who backed the agricultural community, but it has unfortunately lost its roots there, with the radical, diehard protest movement ‘Farmers’ Defence Force’ is now firmly established and strongly locked in with the right – who are set to sweep through upcoming EU elections helped by the bloc’s estimate nine million farmers. Pew Research Center analysis of data from Parlgov says populists have been grabbing larger shares of the vote in recent legislative elections. And a new survey carried out by the European Council on Foreign Relations has shown right-wingers placing first in nine EU countries, while expanding their number of seats in the European Parliament. But the knock-on effect of the far-right’s tie-in with Europe’s raging farmers means decades of work reversing climate denialism and hard-won climate policy hangs in balance alongside the looming threat of a populist surge that could infect the rest of the West. And so far, the EU is simply weakly making concessions. Following days of chaotic tractor blockades across the continent – which saw farmers fling manure and flaming missiles at riot police – the bloc’s leaders handed a victory to the demonstrators, and effectively their far-right backers. While carnage broke out near the EU’s headquarters, with its halls of democracy blockaded by destructive protests, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen caved by saying “administrative burdens” on farming will be eased. The flares of rage and rioting carried echoes of Donald Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. – rabid with rage over false news the 2020 election he lost was rigged. Yet the EU continues to bend. It has further responded by watering down new laws on industrial pollution and cutting pesticide use. Even some of the individual targets in the European Commission’s battle to slash its net greenhouse gas pollution by 90% by 2040 were scrapped at the eleventh hour amid the farmers’ protests. The final document, officially released on 6 February, no longer refers to cutting agricultural emissions of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas belched by cows – or nitrogen, a pollutant in fertiliser and manure that reacts to form heat-trapping gases. This is a costly – and potentially deadly – mistake. The formerly abstract idea of our planet on fire is now far closer to reality as the EU’s climate service has just announced that – for the first time – global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year. It’s a figure filled with significance for environmental campaigners. At the COP21 in France in 2015, countries struck the historic Paris Agreement – to limit warming ideally to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, in a battle to fend off worsening floods, drought and heat from global warming. This first year-long breach of 1.5C announced this week does not break that landmark Paris agreement – but it does shove the world closer to doing it in the long-term. Last year’s COP28 in Dubai pushed through its historic deal that got nearly 200 nations to agree to “transition away” from fossil fuels – in the first such commitment in the 28 years of COP summits. The conference’s president, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, has said the “fundamental challenges of the energy transition” are to balance the growth of economies, as well as energy security with “putting the brakes on emissions”. But meeting these goals, which offer a blueprint to exiting the climate crisis, and include the promise to triple renewable capacity by 2030 – crucial to successfully implementing sustainable systems – will be all but impossible if Europe continues to let the far-right wreak havoc on its climate agenda. It’s time for the concessions to stop as giving ground when it comes to Europe going green is having the domino effect of supercharging the appeal of populist parties, who don’t care if the world burns. Facing down the aggravated agri-protestors in the EU and their extremist backers is not only about making a final stand against climate change, but also about the protection of European democracy itself. Print Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Topics Energy & Environment EU climate law EU elections 2024 European Green Deal farmer protests