Ctrl-Left Delete
The Green party gets a clear message in the European Parliamentary elections.
“Ideology is like breath: You never smell your own.” – Joan Robinson
After World War II, Europe outsourced its defense to the U.S. under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In what became known as Europe’s Golden Age (from 1950 – 1969) Europe’s annual GDP growth exceeded that of the United States. Western European nations embarked on a new form of “social democracy,” shifting spending heavily toward a wide variety of social programs.
The European welfare state was predicated on two basic assumptions, one economic and the other demographic. The first assumed continued economic growth, the second that birth rates would remain above the replacement rate (i.e., the birth rate necessary to keep population level, ~2.1 births per fertile woman in the advanced world).
Across Europe’s largest economies, birth rates were already declining in the late 1960s. Germany’s declined to the replacement rate in the early 1970s. In France and Italy this occurred around 1975, and in Spain about 1980.
When birth rates plummeted in the 1990s, European nations realized the situation threatened future funding for retirement obligations and social programs (too few babies = not enough tax donkeys). European leaders embraced immigration as a way out of a demographic problem they had failed to anticipate. Sold to European citizens as “multiculturalism,” it is impossible to say how much of the policy motivation was actually economic and how much was altruistic.
Immigration certainly played a role in the outcome of the European Union (EU) Parliamentary elections that concluded June 9th, though how much we leave to those with expertise and interest assessing such factors. Whatever the role, immigration became intentional policy in Europe years ago.
Immigration is a too convenient rationalization for attributing the outcome predominately to populist boogeymen labeled “far right” or “alt-right.” Whatever role the small percentage of actual boogeymen that exist may have played fails to completely explain the outcome.
The farmer protests in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Greece in 2023 and 2024 have nothing to do with immigration. Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action getting accosted at a ferry dock didn’t either.
Crushing inflation, nosebleed electricity and high fuel prices, energy security-driven geopolitical fears, Germany’s rapid deindustrialization, and forcing subjects citizens to purchase electric vehicles (EVs) are unrelated to immigration. The election outcome reflected all of these.
What happened in Europe’s recent Parliamentary elections? How is the outcome being portrayed for the future of the EU’s Green Deal energy and environmental policies? And what might the usual legacy media and pundits be downplaying, missing, or a bit too optimistic about?
We begin with a brief review of the election outcome. The center-right European’s People Party (EPP) finished first, with the left-leaning Progressive Alliance of European Socialists and Democrats (S&D) finishing second, maintaining their respective order in the outgoing EU Parliament. EPP gained 12 seats in the 720-seat body, while S&D lost 3 seats.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) finished third, knocking the more liberal Renew Europe party to fourth place.
The real story is that the Green party (Greens/European Free Alliance), who made the largest percentage gains in the 2019 European parliamentary elections, was crushed, falling from 4th largest share of seats in the outgoing parliament to 6th. Among seven officially recognized parties, the Green Party (6th) and The Left (European United Left/Nordic Green Left; a more left-leaning party than the Greens, which actually gained two seats) are now dead last in the new EU Parliament.
While the balance between the two major parties – EPP and S&D – did not change, the most central planning/Green-oriented parties lost 45 seats net, while conservative and populist parties increased their total by 35 seats. Interestingly, newly elected members not allied to any of the existing political groups and “nonattached” members increased from 62 to 87.
In the provisional results below (as of June 27), note that in the EU, “conservative” and “populist” parties are denoted in dark blue. Leftist, Socialist and EcoStatist parties are denoted in red/green (leave “watermelon” jokes in comments) and liberal leaning in light blue (Renew Europe).
Change in EU Parliament Seats by Major Party - 2019 vs. 2024
The veneer of relief emanating from European Charlaticians™, legacy media and the usual political pundits is that “the center held” and “existing Green policies will remain.” This ignores the fact that Left and Green parties took a beating in the EU’s three largest economies and didn’t fare much better in the fourth – Spain - where the center right People’s Party beat the left wing Spanish Socialist Workers Party.
One of the downsides of a parliamentary system of government is that small, but highly vocal minorities wield a disproportionate share of influence relative to the number of votes they actually receive. The European Green Party used that position as a source of outsized leverage over the last five to ten years. But that ability took a serious hit in the recent EU Parliamentary elections, a reflection of the fact that the chickens from Green policies came home to roost. The party’s self-inflicted beatings are likely not over yet.
In terms of energy, environmental and economic policy, western European voters appear to be finally realizing Green central planning manifests as force, control, loss of freedom, and a reduction in living standards unavoidably associated with higher costs (a regressive tax on those with the least). Freed from Soviet central planning and diktats, with populations getting wealthier and achieving better standards of living, the former East Bloc countries are more conservative and capitalist-oriented. They saw Brussels Green bureaucrats ruining it for them much sooner. Worker’s or planetary “paradise”, Communism or EcoSocialism, the end result of Statism is always the same, and you only have to see that movie once (especially if you lived in it).
Increasing numbers connect Green policies to the inflation crushing average Europeans with high food, electricity and fuel costs, the deindustrialization of Germany, and the fact that energy insecurity is a threat to national security. They have good reason.
Last November, a court struck down a back door attempt by German politicians to redirect unutilized Covid-19(84) funds to climate programs, sending them scrambling to fill a $65 billion funding gap. Naturally, when that failed, they started searching the couch cushions for change and went after agricultural diesel, which had been exempt from German CO2 taxation schemes. Of course, the legacy media spun this as “dropping subsidies”.
In early January, angry German farmers blocked Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck from disembarking from a ferry returning from the island of Hooge. Several protesters attempted to board the vessel but were held back by local police using pepper spray.
Two weeks later, German farmers took a cue from their brethren in the Netherlands, who mobilized in 2022 and 2023 over EU green regulations aimed at reducing nitrogen from farming. German farmers drove hordes of tractors into Berlin and blocked the Brandenburg Gate. In early February, they used tractors to blockade the Frankfurt airport, Germany’s largest.
The German government backed off temporarily, delaying the policy by staggering its implementation over multiple years. The protests had nothing to do with immigration.
In the June 9th EU Parliamentary elections, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ Social Democrat party (SPD) suffered a humiliating defeat, finishing third, with 14% of the votes, less than half of the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) total of 30%, even finishing below the “far right” Alternative for Deutschland (AfD, who received 16%). Tellingly, the German Green party lost almost 43% of its seats in the European Parliament, falling from holding almost 22% of Germany’s 96 seats in the chamber to 12.5%.
Germany’s economy shrank in 2023 (GDP down -0.3%). No shortage of ink has been spilled documenting the deindustrialization of Europe’s largest economy and manufacturing leader. High energy costs are the obvious culprit, not immigration.
German national elections are scheduled for fall 2025. Judging by the outcome of the recent EU Parliamentary elections, Robert Habeck’s early political posturing last fall for the role of the Green party’s next Chancellor candidate seems somewhere on the spectrum between obtuse and demented.
In January, French farmers channeled their Dutch, Belgian, and German brethren, blocking major highways into Paris with tractors over similar economic and environmental regulatory grievances. Some even dumped manure in front of government buildings. In retrospect, French farmers were kind. A month later, Belgian farmers sprayed it at Brussels police.
In this month’s EU Parliament elections in France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party spanked its largest two competitors, scoring >31% of the vote totals, only two years after finishing 3rd with 18% of votes in the 2022 French national elections. President Manuel Macron’s Socialist Democrat Renaissance party received <15%. The Green Party could only muster 5.5% of the vote, a drop of ~60% (detecting a pattern yet?).
The next general elections were scheduled to be held in France in 2027, but the country’s Constitution gives the President the power to dissolve the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) with consent. Based on French voting in the EU Parliament contest, Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called snap national elections. The hastily called two-round process begins today.
Macron’s decision is a gamble hoping that a short turnaround will make it difficult for National Rally and other opposing parties to field enough candidates capable of winning. If the gamble fails, his ability to govern and help advance EU’s Green Deal will surely be compromised.
In a snap election held in September 2022, a center-right coalition led by current Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won an outright majority of Italian Parliament. In the recent EU Parliamentary elections, Meloni’s party garnered the most votes (~29%), with the Democratic Party coming in second (24%). The Green Party couldn’t garner 7%.
Right-leaning parties now control the majority of the Italian seats in European Parliament. Like France, the next Italian general elections are scheduled for fall 2027 but the Italian system also allows for earlier snap elections.
Spain has the fourth most seats in European Parliament. There, the center right People’s Party (36%) leapfrogged the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (33%). With the national conservative Vox party gaining almost 10% of the vote, right-leaning/conservative/populist parties now make up about 46% of the Spanish seats in EU Parliament. The Green Party coalition in Spain received only 6.5% of the vote (vs. 10% in the 2019 contest), and in the new EU Parliament drops from six seats to four.
These four European nations – Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – account for 314 of the 720 members of the new European Parliament (~44%). The political winds in each are hard to mistake.
How does the EU Parliamentary election outcome affect the EU’s “Green Deal” and “net zero by 2050” aspirations? The prevailing wisdom and punditry goes something like this: “the center held”, and while elements like 100% EVs by 2035 and increased taxes on agricultural diesel may be tougher (read: impossible) to implement, the key policies in place that make up the core of the EU’s Green Deal have broad appeal within said “center”. As the theory goes, these policies are in the legislative books already, and their inertia makes them impossible to overcome by the new EU Parliament.
While that is likely true in the short term, we believe those views are overly simplistic and optimistic looking out two to four years. At least three realities weigh against them.
First, the environmental and energy policies which created these conditions are all still in place, their consequences are still harming people, and will continue to do so. We believe the effects of these policies are just now at the early stage of being more widely understood by European electorates. Because they are designed to necessarily become more restrictive over time, support will likely further erode in each nation as the effects (energy cost, inflation in everything, currency debasement via money printing, deindustrialization) of trying to achieve “net zero by 2050” get more severe.
If nothing else, Europe (and the UK) proved over the last two years that overreliance on “renewables” drives up energy costs and invites energy insecurity, and that both chase away industry. These are all features - not bugs - of Europe’s Green Deal policies. The “center that held” in the new EU Parliament will now spend the next five years defending them, against growing unpopularity.
The inertia of existing EU green legislation is, as such, likely to be more a curse than a salvation for Green party and European EcoLeftists, and eventually the EU Green Deal and “net zero by 2050” as well. The same energy and environmental policies that paid for Russian tanks and invited the invasion of Ukraine, made Europe energy dependent, drove up electricity and fuel prices across the bloc, resulted in the deindustrialization of Germany, lit the inflation fire, and pissed off farmers just for good measure are all still in force, with too few votes to overturn them under the new EU Parliament. For now.
Second, while the EU Commission sets policy for the bloc, it depends on the cooperation of each national government to actually pass national laws that help implement EU-wide legislation like the Green Deal. If the political momentum of the last year in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe turns out to be the start of a wider and more structural political change, not a 2024 blip as some would hope, that cooperation will be harder to come by, if not politically impossible in some countries. In that event, it seems more likely the EU’s Green Deal will get a serious haircut.
Third, as we noted in our last post, the cost of reaching “net zero CO2 emissions by 2050” – the cornerstone goal of the EU Green Deal – puts the ambition squarely out of reach:
It is very simple. “Net zero by 2050” will not happen because governments, consumers, businesses, and financial institutions of the G7 nations (or any other western nation) do not have the money to spend 22 – 34% of their GDP annually for this cause for the next 25 years.
After the recent rebuke of the Green party in the EU Parliamentary elections, who really believes the three European G7 nations - Germany, France, and Italy - will sign their citizens up to increase spending to even half those levels on the European Green Deal? Practically speaking, the chances are Slim and none. (And Slim took the 6:25 train to Prague.)
If asked to design a plan that would result in more farm tractors blocking highways, more manure sprayed on government buildings, more European subjects citizens suffering under the regressive taxes of high inflation, electricity and fuel prices, and more electoral losses for Green candidates, pushing ahead with the attempt to reach net zero by 2050 would be about as good as any we could conceive.
We close by quoting from a recent Doomberg post titled Apart at the Seams, which (as usual) captures the big picture succinctly (emphasis added):
“..the so-called green energy agenda is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. There is no denying that a shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy necessitates deep cuts in standards of living, lower standards of living are unpopular, and democratic elections are popularity contests. Unable to achieve popular support for proactive energy martyrdom, the ruling class turns to force, which only drives down their popularity further.”
An important but underreported element Doomberg’s post notes is that the tension the EU Green Deal sets up between nations puts the entire European Union experiment at risk. We agree with this view, and believe it explains the outcome of the recent EU Parliamentary elections far better than immigration.
European “leaders” and the new EU Parliament are in a pinch of sorts. They are legislatively bound to press ahead ratcheting up the EU’s Green Deal and “net zero by 2050”. The “center that held” in the recent elections does not have the votes to change course. It will defend the status quo because it has to, for now.
The EU’s structure requires the cooperation of the member nations to pass the necessary domestic legislation to implement the bloc’s policies. But in the EU’s four largest economies (including the three European members of the G7) the Green Ctrl-Left™ was just told to fuck off in a rather clear way. And political opinion in those nations is not trending in their favor.
The “center that held” in the recent EU Parliamentary elections will have to try and defend increasingly unpopular Green policies, while the consequences of the policies they are defending continue to eat into the wallets and intrude on the daily lives of citizens, constrain businesses, and cause critical industries to leave. We can think of few things more capable of ultimately causing a breakup of the European Union.
All signs suggest this is the beginning of a big Green Ctrl-Left Delete correction. On the other side of it, nuclear power plants go up, Spinning Green Crucifixes™ come down, and a reasoned, adult discussion about trade-offs and physics at the intersection of energy, environmental and economic policy prevails. This is a learning moment for America, Canada, Australia, and Japan if we are lucid and honest enough to grasp it. We should all be grateful to Europe for running the experiment first.
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"This is a learning moment for America, Canada, Australia, and Japan if we are lucid and honest enough to grasp it. We should all be grateful to Europe for running the experiment first."
I would dearly like to see the US & Cdn press report more on what is going on in Europe but fear that the NAmer populace (& govt leaders) are still too myopic to get the import of the damage being wrought in Europe.
Love that quote at the top, saved into my folder.
All this is happening because the lies are becoming clear. Europeans were told that the green deal would make them richer, electricity “too cheap to meter”, lies constantly told from the start but you cannot hide the dropping standard of living.
The Trudeau Liberals followed the playbook here in canada and if an election were held today they would be wiped out, a historic victory for the center-right conservatives.
Narrative control is in full fight mode though, doing everything they can to try to save them, same as with the demented Biden admin down south.