The far right’s climate power grab

“They really messed up,” said Lena Schilling, who leads the 2040 target negotiations for the Greens. “There was a bidding process among the coordinators, and the EPP had the chance to go higher than the Patriots did.” 

Peter Liese, the EPP’s environmental spokesperson who took part in Tuesday’s meeting, rejected the allegation, saying that other groups had stayed in the bidding process longer than him and could therefore have outbid the Patriots. 

Yet the Patriots were only able to bid competitively because the Parliament’s political balance has shifted sharply to the right after last year’s election. The group, founded last year, is the assembly’s third-largest faction, with 85 MEPs, and puts opposition to the Green Deal at the center of its political platform. 

On Tuesday, the Patriots’ leadership celebrated the group’s first anniversary while griping about the EU’s climate ambitions. 

“It was exactly one year ago, exactly this day, that patriot forces from across the continent joined to form the Patriots for Europe group and became the third-largest group,” said Vice Chair Kinga Gál, speaking alongside Bardella. 

“This was,” she added, “a clear refusal [of] the Commission’s disastrous policies in the previous term, including the failed migration pact [and] the harmful policies of the Green Deal.”