Is populism a challenge to European energy and climate policy? Empirical evidence across varieties of populism

The European Union’s international climate leadership: towards a grand climate strategy?

“…Although the targets have not necessarily fully reflected advancing scientific knowledge, they have consistently been the most ambitious among the major economies and have increasingly aligned towards mid-century climate neutrality (Torney & O'Gorman, 2020;von Homeyer et al, 2021). The progress in climate policy occurred in a turbulent internal context that featured the emergence of a strong East-West cleavage around 2010 (Bocquillon & Maltby, 2017;Skovgaard, 2014) as well as rising populism and Euroscepticism (Huber et al, 2021), and was balanced with public support and societal mobilization for action on climate change (see also Buzogány & Ćetković, 2021;Petri & Biedenkopf, 2021).…”

EU climate and energy governance in times of crisis: towards a new agenda

“…For example, East-West divisions featured prominently in several political conflicts over EU climate policy after 2000 (e.g., Bocquillon & Maltby, 2017). Furthermore, nationalist and right-wing populist parties have also tended to be climate-sceptic (e.g., Lockwood, 2018;Schaller & Carius, 2019), even though (our understanding of) the way in which the identity cleavage intersects with climate governance is still evolving (Huber et al, 2021;Jahn, 2021;Weko, 2021).…”

“…Concerning growing Socio-political Divisions, the contributions suggest that EU climate policy has so far defied the rise of populist parties, while the impact of regional East-West divisions appears to have been limited. The contributions by Huber et al (2021), Buzogány and Ćetković (2021), Jahn (2021), and Petri and Biedenkopf (2021) all show that right-wing populist parties, which have been increasingly well-represented in national parliaments/governments and in the EP, have regularly opposed more ambitious climate policies. Nevertheless, neither Huber et al (2021) nor Buzogány and Ćetković (2021) find compelling evidence that rising populism has obstructed EU climate and energy policy.…”

Weathering growing polarization? The European Parliament and EU foreign climate policy ambitions

“…Since, generally, most right-wing political parties are relatively sceptical towards climate change (Huber et al, 2021;Lockwood, 2018), the growing EP polarization could suggest a change of the overall EP's FCP ambition. Moreover, shares of Eurosceptic members have increased not only among left and right-wing but also within mainstream parties (Forchtner, 2019).…”

“…The European Union (EU) faces two parallel trends of growing polarization and fragmentation: At the international level, great power competition has re-emerged and multilateral cooperation has changed towards the increasing contestation of Western liberal norms (Ikenberry, 2018). Within the EU, the rise of Eurosceptic and right-wing political parties challenges traditional mainstream parties (Hodson & Puetter, 2019;Huber et al, 2021;von Homeyer et al, 2021). The European Parliament (EP) is at the intersection of both trends.…”