Philippe Lamberts and Ska Keller, co-leaders of Europe’s green bloc TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty

The European Parliament elections last weekend saw a collapse in support for traditional centrist parties, while that for populists and greens grew.

For the first time ever, the centre-right European People’s Party and centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats don’t control a majority of the seats, meaning they will now probably have to partner with the liberal and green alliances to pass measures.

As the world’s second largest democracy (India, the largest, just re-elected prime minister Narendra Modi), the European Union has a large role to play in tackling climate change. The EU’s green bloc is now in a good position to force more drastic action, having increased its seats from 52 to 69, its highest-ever result. There are a total of 751 seats in the European Parliament.


The European Commission aims to make the European Union carbon neutral by 2050. This plan will need to be approved by the European Parliament, and that now seems more likely to happen.

“We have begun to see that all of our competitors are beginning to speak about ecological policies and green policies and so things have changed,” Philippe Lamberts, co-leader of the Greens-European Free Alliance in the European Parliament, said in a statement.

However, populist parties, which often vote against climate policies in the parliament, also saw success. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party narrowly beat president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party into second place. Macron is still feeling the heat from the “gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests” protests, which began partly as a reaction to fuel taxes designed to tackle climate change.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Brexit Party surged to the top of the polls. The party has no official policies on climate change and didn’t publish an election manifesto, but its leader, Nigel Farage, has previously questioned the basis of climate science, as have many of its newly elected MEPs. These include the former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe, who was previously one of only five members of the UK House of Commons to vote against the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act.

Were the UK to leave the EU, the country’s MEPs would have no say in the EU’s climate policies.