Beat to the vote in Germany, in decline also in other countries of the continent and to the Brussels Parliament, the environmental movement lives its crisis. More than the proclamations of Greta Thunberg, the voters evaluate the costs of an ecological transition that only some classes can be afforded.
In January 2023, the village of Lützerath, German Land of the North-Westphalia, was besieged by a Tesse Molte Environmental event to prevent the entire small municipality, inhabited by a few hundred people, was razed to the ground to make room for a new coal mine. Again: in Plattling, in Bavaria, a ruined paper mill had to close two years ago, leaving 500 people without work: a victim of the high production costs, and a symbol of Germany’s “deindustrialization”, which the conservatives have attributed directly to the Greens.
These are two episodes that have bare the contradictions within the Grünen partydecisive component in the former Berlin executive. Promises on the ecological transition disregarded by the harsh reality of the government in a great industrial nation. The result was the flop at the recent German elections of the environmental party (from almost 15 to about 12 percent of the votes, with the leader and former Annana BaertBock Foreign Minister who will no longer be the party group leader). Because, as Hannah Corsini from the Department of International Political Analysis of the University of Cambridge says to Panorama, “being a member in the government coalition at the time of an election corresponds, at least to a decrease of 1.6 percent in the vote share of a green party”.
On the other hand, in recent months, the Greens have been ousted from the government in Austria, Belgium and Ireland. Nor will they enter the coalition to which the Christian Democratic Friederich Merz works in Germany, despite having obtained a guarantee of one hundred billion euros in investments for the climate in the next 12 years, in the face of the change of the Constitution that will allow you to debt to the new chancellor. It did not go better in the Netherlands to the former commissioner at Green Deal, the hyper-environmentalist Frans Timmermans, defeated by the ultra-decay of Geert Wilders. But also in the European elections last June, the ecological formation, after that of the Liberali group of Renews, is the one that went worse than the 2019 vote. The Greens went from fourth to sixth force in the EU Parliament, leaving the place to the far -right coalitions. It is the young people – the engine of the ascent of the formation – which now seem the most disillusioned by the too many failures of an ideological and not very pragmatic movement (always in the last German elections, the young people who voted for the Grünen were 11 percent against the 24th of the previous vote).
Proof of this is also the progressive disengagement of an icon of the movement, Greta Thunberg, founder of the Friday for Future, today twenty -two years old. Since the climate of the climate graduated, it seems to have lost its voice. His last appearance dates back to April 6, 2024, in Holland, where he was also stopped by the police.
But the President of the European Green Vula TSETSI with Panorama claims that his movement still represents the future for young people: «It is worrying to see how the far -right parties use social networks to make their way among young people. And Elon Musk’s relationship with this European political tendency certainly has a weight. Our ambition is to return to tune with a younger electorate. Attention to climate and social policies such as rent and housing construction shows that we are the most worried political movement for their future ».
There is no doubt that, compared to four or five years ago, the world has had an acceleration and the error of the Greens was not to understand that the priorities of the Europeans have become others. The success of the Destre throughout the old continent is also explained, as Markus Kollberg, polytologist at the Humboldt University of Berlin claims: «The left voters are mainly interested in the environmental aspects of development. Those who vote for conservative discharge worries the prices of energy, the safety of it and its impact on economic growth “.
The climate descends to fourth place in the list of “strong” topics, according to the last survey of the Eurobarometer late 2024. And it is also for this reason that, as Tarik Abu Shadi, researcher of political economy at the University of Oxford says, the environmental question seems to have become a theme of a manner or, worse, in fashion: «The income is strongly connected to opinions on the climatic crisis. Support for action is convinced not only among those who belong to higher social groups. Even people in precarious economic conditions and in poverty are worried about the climatic emergency. But the action on this must be connected to policies that improve people’s lives. Otherwise he immediately loses interest ».
In recent years, the European Union has established itself as the most ambitious border in the fight against global warming. It did so through a “road map” of objectives to reduce emissions, prepare for the abandonment of combustion engines, the push for the recovery of degraded natural areas and the reduction of the impact of agriculture on the environment. Measures judged excessively ideological and that now the Commission intends to review completely. In this new staircase of importance, the green attraction force has very weakened or, worse, makes them appear out of the world. For many voters, the Greens are citizens of an elite that ignore the costs of the transition towards a less harmful lifestyle for the climate.
And in Italy? The Greens have always been a very large and incisive movement, except for some limited exceptions. According to the Study Center, here are Climate, two out of three Italians consider political leaders (national and local) unreliable when they talk about the environment. The Greens in our country have been a political formation since 1987, the year of their first participation in the elections (collecting almost a million votes). At the beginning of the 2000s, 12 deputies and as many senators could count; Now Europe Verde by Angelo Bonelli can count on six deputies and a senator (in 2022 the green party with the left reached 3.5 percent). In reality, the Italian case is more representative than it appears at first sight. “Often considered as a laboratory that experiences innovative political offers in Europe, Italy suggests the future of green parties in the face of the immense challenge of the ecological transition” explains the researcher Hanna Corsini. “The current situation of the Greens in the country is the one that probably awaits the movement on the continent: political irrelevance”.
