Europe Decides

An election which spans a whole continent will take place over the course of the next few days. Beginning on Thursday, 04 June 2009, Europe will vote to elect the members of the European Parliament. The last time Europe voted as a continent was in 2004. Among the many issues being discussed in the run-up to this election has been the possible improvement in performance for the pan-European Green movement. In the midst of what some would consider a record low point for the public’s faith in mainstream parties, the chances are that parties from outside the usual selection will perform better than they might otherwise have expected. Green parties are among those expected to profit from the situation.

In 2004, European Green parties took 42 seats from a possible 732. This year, there are a further four seats available. While the green share of the vote was low last time around, that happened during a period of relative economic strength during which, in general, the governments of Europe were largely popular in their own countries. With the credit crunch and ensuing recession knocking much of Europe into turmoil, the level of dissatisfaction with national governments will be high – and the opportunity to depose them will in some cases not arrive for a year or two. The next best thing is to give them a reminder at the European Election of the fate that awaits them if they don’t smarten up their act.

One particularly interesting place to look at is the United Kingdom. The sitting Labour government is at its absolute low point from a point of view of popularity. Their natural opposition is the Conservative party. However, the last two months have seen one of the most dominating and enduring political scandals to befall the United Kingdom Parliament in recent years, which has seen MPs fiddling their expenses and – this is the part that’s new – getting caught. Both Labour and Conservative MPs have come under pressure for this behaviour, and the third party, the Liberal Democrats, have also come in for criticism. The British public is looking for a way to punish the mainstream parties – even more so than the other European populations – and this may well work out for the United Kingdom’s Green parties. They face some challenge from the United Kingdom Independence Party (who wish Britain to leave the European Union completely) and the extreme right-wing British National Party. Recent polls suggest that the Greens will finish behind UKIP and ahead of the BNP.

Any increase in the number of European seats for Green parties would represent a massive piece of progress at a key time for environmental policy Europe-wide. The battle between mindsets which feel that renewable energy sources need to take a back seat, and those who believe that this recession means renewables are needed more than ever, will be an exceptionally fraught one. By Sunday evening (June 7^th) we will know a little more about who is winning the battle. Fingers crossed that the Greens will have made some gains.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 10:36 am and is filed under Global Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.