Why the Dutch election result spells trouble for Europe’s climate efforts

 

Why the Dutch election result spells trouble for Europe’s climate efforts

 

Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party wants to undo the green transition.

 

BY ZIA WEISE

NOVEMBER 23, 2023 9:21 PM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-dutch-election-result-spells-trouble-for-europes-climate-efforts/

 

The far-right party that surged to victory in Wednesday’s Dutch election wants to ditch all efforts to stop climate change.

 

About a quarter of Dutch voters backed Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), whose platform includes exiting the Paris climate accord, dismantling domestic green legislation, and scrapping measures to reduce planet-warming emissions.

 

While right-wing politicians from Scandinavia to Italy have won big over the past year, this is the first time a party openly calling for an end to the green transition has won a national election in the European Union.

 

To govern, Wilders needs to convince several other parties to join the PVV in a coalition, and even if he succeeds, he may still not end up as prime minister. But whether in government or as the loudest opposition block, Wilders and the PVV will have significant influence on setting climate policy in the Netherlands — a country that has prided itself on being among Europe’s most ambitious in tackling global warming.

 

Coming just ahead of the EU elections next summer, the PVV’s victory also reflects a wider shift that may spell trouble for Europe's climate efforts in the coming years.

 

What exactly happened?

Running on an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim platform, the PVV scored a surprise election victory, winning 37 of 150 parliamentary seats, according to preliminary results.

 

The second-placed Labor-Green alliance, led by former EU climate chief Frans Timmermans, is far behind on 25 seats, while the liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing PM Mark Rutte is projected to come third with 24 seats.

 

What does the PVV say about climate change?

“The climate is always changing,” the PVV asserts in its election manifesto, disregarding the current rapid warming trend driven by humanity’s fossil fuel consumption. “When conditions change we adapt … by raising dikes when necessary.”

 

In general, the party wants to “stop the hysterical reduction of CO2,” which it considers unnecessary and a waste of money.

 

The PVV wants to rip up the Dutch Climate Act, which enshrines the country’s climate targets in law. It also wants to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

 

“The Climate Act, the [global] climate accord and all other climate measures go straight into the shredder,” the party manifesto says.

 

The PVV wants to build more nuclear power plants, but opposes wind energy and large-scale solar parks. Its demands include keeping coal and gas power plants open and stepping up oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. A new €35 billion climate fund should be scrapped, the party says.

 

Did that play a role in the election? 

With the campaign dominated by immigration issues, voters might not have backed the PVV because of its anti-green stance.

 

“But at minimum, they were okay with it, provided they were going to deliver on stuff they did care about — like immigrants, health care, law and order,” said Pieter de Pous, who focuses on the green transition at think tank E3G.

 

Isn’t the country sinking?

The low-lying country is at high risk of rising sea levels and flooding, while also grappling with growing water scarcity and drought in recent years.

 

The PVV acknowledges that’s a problem, but says the country can just adapt to those changes by building higher dikes and restoring river plains. “We should no longer allow ourselves to be frightened. The Netherlands is a smart country: we have the best water engineers in the world,” the PVV manifesto states.

 

It’s a common view, de Pous said. “Many Dutch feel like they can handle the floods, because we handled it in the past, we’re clever engineers, that sort of stuff. That’s getting in the way of realizing that there are limits to adaptation.”

 

Will all this become government policy?

Definitely not all. The PVV will need coalition partners to govern. Wilders said that he might try to build a coalition with the VVD, the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), and the right-wing populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).

 

While there’s some overlap — the NSC, too, wants to scrap the climate fund — the other parties are more moderate on energy and climate. But as that’s the case with most policy issues, parties willing to join the PVV in a coalition need to pick their battles, and whether they’ll fight for better green policies is an open question.

 

With the campaign dominated by immigration issues, voters might not have backed the PVV because of its anti-green stance | Carl Court/Getty Images

The centrist parties might also drop the PVV and try to build a left-leaning coalition with the Labor-Green alliance, although Timmermans has hinted that he sees himself joining the opposition benches.

 

What does that mean on the EU level?

The Netherlands has in recent years emerged as one of the most ambitious EU countries on climate change. That’s likely to change under a coalition government involving the PVV.

 

“It’s likely that it will join the other side of the member state groupings, that are a bit more of a brake on climate ambition,” said de Pous. “That, I think, is a serious risk.”

 

Does this reflect a wider trend?

Many far-right parties in Europe hold skeptical or even outright denialist views on climate change, but there’s also been considerable backsliding on green issues among European center-right parties this year. Polling indicates that the next European Parliament will lean more conservative.

 

That’s a stark shift from the previous EU election in 2019, when green-minded parties made gains, spurred on by massive climate protests like the Fridays for Future school strikes.

 

No. Polling this summer showed that 77 percent of EU citizens see climate change as a very serious problem — in the Netherlands, it was even ranked as the most serious problem facing the world.

 

But other issues appear more urgent to many voters. This time around, concerns over cost of living, immigration and conflicts encircling the Continent have overtaken climate change in voters’ rankings of the most pressing problems.

 

Immigration, in particular, surged past climate in the most recent Eurobarometer survey.

 

One lesson from the Dutch election is that “as long as migration in Europe is seen as primarily a problem and a threat, [far-right] parties will do really well,” de Pous said. “And on the back of it, they will also be an obstacle to the green transition.”