The backtracking on climate measures saddens Europe's Greens March 2, 2025

French Green lawmaker Marie Toussaint says her party's defeats in last year's EU elections were a “shock” (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/AFP

By AFP - Agence France Presse

The backtracking on climate measures saddens Europe's Greens

Camille CAMDESSUS

After five years of progress in the fight against climate change, Europe's Greens are watching in dismay as Brussels undoes part of that legacy in the name of boosting growth - amid fears that this could be just the beginning.

“It's one of the worst scenarios you could imagine,” summed up Marie Toussaint, a French Green legislator in the European Parliament. “Emotionally, we're all wondering how we're going to get through this.”

Ursula von der Leyen's first term as head of the European Commission, from 2019 to 2024, was marked by the adoption of a historic environmental Green Deal, spurred on by youth marches demanding action against global warming.

And, in an important step, the 27-nation European Union agreed to ban the sale of new combustion engine vehicles by 2035, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Fast forward to the present and the contrast is stark.

The European Greens lost a quarter of their seats in last June's European elections - a contest marked by right-wing and far-right gains across the bloc.

The shift was most pronounced in powerhouses Germany and France, where Toussaint's list for the Greens barely reached the five percent threshold to qualify for seats in the EU parliament.

“It was a very serious shock,” the 37-year-old lawmaker told AFP.

Hostility to the EU's green agenda had been growing for months before the elections, with right-wing parties encouraging protests by farmers who denounced the weight of new environmental rules.

With US President Donald Trump now threatening a trade war, von der Leyen insists that the EU remains committed to its green goals, but has made it clear that the priority of her second term is to increase competitiveness.

This week, the commission proposed reducing environmental rules for companies - the ink has barely dried on some of them - to give European industry more room to compete with American and Chinese rivals.

- 'The best we've got'

“A lot of us had a bit of a shock,” said Denmark's Kira Peter-Hansen, who was elected as the youngest member of the European Parliament in 2019.

“I realized in September or October that the context had changed completely,” said the 27-year-old Dane, who regrets ‘not having appreciated the years 2019-2024 more, realizing ’Wow, that was the best we got'.

“Now the political situation is different,” she said. “As Greens, we're all trying to figure out whether we want to save what we can or whether we should be in opposition,” she said.

Reluctantly, she has so far chosen the first option: working with the EU's conservative majority, which seeks to balance economic and environmental goals.

- 'Adverse reaction'

The Greens' frustration is shared by environmental groups, who are being forced to adopt a much more defensive stance than five years ago.

“Looking at the political landscape in the Council (of EU member states) and in parliament, the prospect of us having ambitious environmental legislation is very slim,” said John Condon of ClientEarth.

For Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, of the Jacques Delors Institute, the worst may be yet to come for European environmentalists.

“There is a clear backlash against these issues,” he said.

Feeling the wind in their sails, industry leaders are calling on Brussels to roll back more climate measures deemed too costly for business.

In the EU parliament, the leader of the far-right Patriots for Europe party, Frenchman Jordan Bardella, is calling for the Green Deal to be repealed altogether.

“Some laws have fallen victim to the anti-green backlash,” admitted centrist EU lawmaker Pascal Canfin, who sits on the parliament's environment committee.

“But it's wrong to say that everything will be undone,” said Canfin - who, unlike some Green colleagues, insists that he is not ‘depressed’ by the turn of events.

“We need to convince people that making the green transition is in our economic interest and keep fighting,” he said.

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