The Green Party, which had been riding high in Europe, is now facing its biggest crisis: after a poor showing in the European elections in June, the party has also disappointed its supporters in recent local elections in its home country of Germany. The chairman of the German Green Party and the head of its youth organization have resigned. Behind the decline of the greens, “Out of touch with reality” is what the media and analysts refer to most. Some academics say the decline of the Green Party could prompt some European countries to adopt a more pragmatic foreign policy. At the same time, this will also lead to the EU’s environmental cause of obstruction.
The greens are behind Europe’s decline
“The German Green Party is facing its most serious crisis in its 44-year history,” the German voice and other media reported recently, after a series of electoral defeats, the two chairmen of the party and the head of its youth organization have resigned. In recent elections in three eastern German states, the Greens received just 3.2% of the vote in Thuringia ? Thüringen?Land, 5.1% in Saxony ? Sachsen?Land and 4.1% in Brandenburg?Land. The party entered the state legislature only in Saxony ? Sachsen?Land. This contrasts with the results of the 2021 Bundestag of Germany election, when the Greens won a record 14.75 per cent of the vote and became part of the ruling coalition. After the general election of that year, the party was awarded five ministerial posts in the German coalition government, including two key posts of foreign minister and Economy Minister.
On September 25th Omid Nooripur and Rickard Lang, co-chairmen of the German Green Party, announced their resignations, with a new chairman to be elected at the party congress in mid-november. On the same day, members of the Executive Committee of the party’s youth organization, the Green Party Youth, also announced their collective resignation and wanted to leave the party altogether. In a letter to the leadership of the Green Party and its parliamentary group, they said it was impossible, in the long run, “To be part of a political party but to propagate a different policy from that pursued by the party”. On October 19th The Green Youth Federal Congress elected a new executive committee, with Djet Nizard and Jacob Brassell as new chairmen.
On September 25, Omid Nooripur (left) and Rekada Long announced their resignations.
Although the Green Party performed well in the recent elections in northern European countries such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and made progress in southern and Eastern European countries such as Italy and Spain, at the European level as a whole, support for the Greens is falling. “The Green Party is going through a difficult time,” the German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and other media reported that voters had punished the party in this year’s European parliamentary elections. The Greens won just 11.9% of the vote, down from 20.5% in 2019. The Greens European Liberty Union Party lost 21 seats to finish sixth out of seven in the European Parliament. In both France and Austria, support for the Greens has fallen. Young people in EU countries are also less supportive of the party. Only 11 per cent of all young voters aged 16 to 24 voted for the Greens in the European Parliament elections in June. Compared with the last election in 2019, the Green Party’s support among this group fell by 23% .
From the bloom moments of 2019 and 2021 to the current quandary, why has the Green Party gone into decline in just a few years? Some recall a few years ago, when green girls’ “Friday for the future” campaign swept across Europe in 2019, gaining support for the Green Party. Kleinert, a German professor of social sciences, said the heating law was a big mistake by the country’s Green Party. According to reports in the European times and other media, the German government passed the Green Party’s Building Energy Law last year, which stipulates that from the 2024, all new buildings in new development zones in Germany require heating systems that run on at least 65% renewable energy, including heat pumps and solar power, or a hybrid system of heat pumps and gas. Despite government subsidies, heat pump systems are expensive. Some even think a family needs to earn $100,000 a year to afford a heat pump.
Immigration policy is also an important reason for the Green Party’s declining popularity in Germany. A survey shows that three of the four issues that Germans are most worried about at present are related to immigration, while the Green Party holds a moderate position on the issue of immigration and does not support the policy of expelling refugees, that has left it struggling to match the support of hardline parties such as AFD.
The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s analysis of the reasons for the Green Party’s failure in many European countries says that its claims on climate change are no longer attractive and that they can point to the consequences of climate change, but there is no convincing solution. The New York Times said there were many explanations for the Green Party’s loss in European elections at all levels, such as the centrist party’s inclusion of the Green Party’s zero agenda in its policy agenda, eat into the support of the Green Party and so on. But there is also a broader trend against the Greens in Europe, where opposition to climate change policy is gaining momentum as part of a broader culture war. In many places, the nationalist agenda of far-right parties has been strengthened by populist appeals to the economically disadvantaged. The far right has singled out the Greens as a political force unsuited to protecting poorer working groups in a rapidly changing society. For many voters, some of the policies proposed by the greens are expensive, anti-growth policies that will hurt the poorest the most.
In the eyes of many media and analysts, this disconnect is a major factor in the decline of the Greens in Germany and other European countries. Appuhn and others, former chairman of the Green Party youth, wrote in the Frankfurt daily newspaper that many now believe the party is interested in progressive issues such as climate, immigration and feminism, but not interested in people’s normal lives. According to the New York Times, people in Europe are anxious about the Russian-ukrainian conflict and its impact on national defense and the economy. The covid-19-induced cost-of-living crisis continues to plague core EU member states. Restrictions on immigration have become a focus of voters’ attention. In this new set of priorities, the appeal of the Greens seems to have faded. To make matters worse, they seem out of touch with reality.
The decline of the Green Party shows a greater disconnect between the movement’s ambitions and the reality of its potential supporters, according to POLITICO Europe. In the European elections, many voters were particularly dismayed that some of the Green Party’s measures raised the cost of living without providing enough support for those in need. If the Greens continue to focus on lofty goals without addressing the real economic problems facing many voters, they risk further electoral defeat and a decline in green ideals.
Melanie Safka, who lives in Munich, Germany, does not support the Greens. She calculated with a global times correspondent that the family of four needed about 1,300 euros a year for heating before and nearly 3,000 euros after the conflict, electricity costs about 1,200 euros a year, compared with 2,500 euros today, and food costs have increased considerably, from 0.8 euros for a loaf of bread to 0.2 Euros. Melanie Safka says meat is sometimes even a luxury. She believes that the Green Party since the outbreak of the conflict in Russia and Ukraine to adopt policies led to a lack of energy in Germany, and production problems, and ultimately make the people can not afford to live.
Could European foreign policy be more pragmatic?
“The Green Party originated in the social movement of the 1960s,” according to a previous paper by the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think-tank, these included student protests and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Their environmental concerns began with opposition to nuclear power and have since spread to concerns about climate change, pollution and industrial agriculture. In 1980, the Greens ran for office in the Germany, then became the country’s main political party. In 1998, the Greens made a bigger leap in Germany, forming a coalition government with the centre-left Social Democrats. In 2021, the Greens achieved their best results in Germany’s federal and state elections. Der Spiegel, ahead of the Bundestag elections of the year, said there were more than 120,000 greens, almost double the number in 2017.
While the Green Party is growing in Germany, it is also growing in other countries, especially in Europe. In the 1990s, the Greens campaigned at national and local level across Europe, often winning. In the 21st century, the Green Party has increasingly entered the mainstream of European political life. In 2004, the world had its first national leader from the Green Party, Prime Minister of Latvia Amsis. It has also entered the governments of Belgium, France, Italy and other countries. As it has grown, the Green Party’s enormous clout has exposed its internal divisions over non-violence, energy policy and the economy.
As for the decline of the Green Party in Germany, Xu Ruojie, an assistant researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences European Institute, told the Global Times, this shows that the German people have lost confidence in the Green Party’s post-modern ideas of environmentalism, multiculturalism, welcoming refugees and so on. Economic Security and Social Security were the two areas of greatest concern in German society and that trend would be difficult to change in the short term, he said. The strong rise of the far right, represented by the afd, is likely to push social policy in Germany towards conservatism, such as tougher immigration restrictions and strict immigration controls.
Xu Ruojie believes that the German Green Party in the field of foreign policy, many ideas are also out of touch with reality. The party is more focused on values and ideology in its foreign policy, but the security pressures brought about by the Russian-ukrainian conflict have led the German government and people to pay more attention to geopolitical and military security issues. Against the backdrop of the Greens’ setbacks, foreign policy in European countries such as Germany is likely to become more pragmatic, with ideological and value overtones likely to fade.
According to a previous report by Deutsche Welle, the ruling German coalition government since the end of 2021 has established a“Values-driven” foreign policy through an agreement. The Greens’ German foreign minister, Gerhard Berk, places“Democracy” and“Human Rights” at the heart of his foreign policy, but these values are not always aligned with Germany’s national interests. Precht, a German philosopher and best-selling author, said bluntly in a podcast interview on German television channel 2 that Belberg’s value-oriented diplomacy was in fact “Confrontation-oriented diplomacy”.
In an interview with the Global Times, Zheng Chunrong, director of the Tongji University German research center, said that in both Germany and the European Union, the impact of the recent losses of the Green Party in European elections has been enormous, the contradiction between practical interests and values principles will become more apparent. When it comes to refugees, for example, they want to project a moral image but think it is Operability. This may force them to adopt more pragmatic policies and lower their standards of values.
Eu ‘Green ambition to wane over next five years’
Oliver Fox, a berlin-based European political scientist, told the global times that the experience of the Greens in Germany and Europe, it also reflects the European Commission President von der Leyen’s first term of the core policy of the“Green New Deal” encounter. The tide has turned, and the term“Green New Deal” is barely mentioned by von der Leyen and national governments. It has been replaced in content by industrial policy ideas.
“The failure of the Greens raises questions about whether Germany, as Europe’s largest economy, can make progress on its ambitious climate goals,” the New York Times said in an earlier article. In response, Fox said the Greens’ policies would be more attractive in peacetime and that with Europe in crisis, the party must face reality or risk splintering into new parties such as the left. Both Germany and the European Union are now considering how to restore their competitiveness, Zheng said, adding that economic costs will be taken more into account when moving forward with the green transition or reducing climate emissions.
The setback for the Green Party in the European parliamentary elections is unlikely to lead to a large-scale rollback of EU climate policy, but certainly means less green ambition over the next five years, according to an analysis by the financial times, the impact will be felt far beyond Europe. The expansion of the hard right in the European Parliament and the more cautious European People’s Party of von der Leyen’s centre-right caucus will dent the prospects for Green policy over the next five years, these policies are critical to the EU’s ability to meet its 2030 climate change targets. Environmental laws already passed by the EU are hard to repeal, but some, including phasing out sales of new petrol or diesel cars by 2035, will be reviewed and may be weakened. A less climate-friendly European Parliament could make it harder to meet Brussels’ legal target of reducing net emissions by 90 per cent by 2040 from 1990 levels.
“The Green Party and the future of the energy transition — crisis as opportunity,” German political magazine Cicero reported on Sept. 30, saying the party was losing support among voters, that is why they must now reinvent themselves with pragmatism, or the environment will lose momentum. ‘there is no lack of knowledge in Europe, ‘ it said. ‘there is a lack of implementation — and that is more urgent than ever. ‘ . On the issue of energy transition, the magazine made three recommendations to the EU, including lowering energy prices, making more investment and embracing new pragmatism, “More than 40 years after the establishment of the Green Party, we need to think [ about ] that in the 21st century, climate protection and competitiveness are inextricably linked.”.