Greens gain, but centre-right dominates, in EU elections
Brussels, 11 June: The European Greens have heralded their increase in seats in last week’s European Parliament elections, but with the centre-right parties as the dominant players, it looks unlikely that Europe’s politicians will emerge with a stronger line on climate change in time for the UN’s Copenhagen summit on climate change in December.

The Green-European Freedom Alliance bloc captured 53 of the Parliament's 736 seats, compared with 43 in the last 785-seat assembly.

The biggest increase in seats came from France where Europe Ecologie, a party formed especially for the European elections and led by former 1968 rebel Daniel Cohn-Bendit, anti-capitalist campaigner José Bové and former anti-corruption judge Eva Joly, won 16% of the national vote.

Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland have also voted in more Green MEPs than last time and Greece has elected a Green MEP for the first time.

Austrian Green MEP Ulrike Lunacek said: “We will fight hard for a Green New Deal that would create 5 million green collar jobs in five years and help fight climate change as €500 billion ($700 billion) of public and private funds would be invested in renewables, energy efficiency and other future-oriented technologies.”

Some have suggested, however, that the unexpected success of Europe Ecologie had less to do with a deep-seated move to green politics by the French, but the strength of the party’s personalities and the showing of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Home documentary just ahead of the European elections.

The documentary, which shows the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate and sounds the alarm about the need to stop further depletion of natural resources, attracted 8.3 million viewers in France.  

And despite the gains made by the Greens, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) will remain the biggest bloc in the parliament and has “further strengthened its pivotal role in the new assembly, as no viable coalition appears possible without it to produce consistent legislation and consensual decisions”, said the European Policy Centre (EPC) think-tank.

Several members of this group, notably French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose parties both performed strongly in the European elections, have indicated that European industry must be protected during the global economic downturn.

Sarkozy and Merkel issued a joint statement last month warning that they are "determined to take steps to protect European industry" if international partners fail to commit to climate goals comparable with the EU’s commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2020.

The first plenary session of the assembly is scheduled for 14-16 July when it should become clearer where the climate will sit in the European Parliament’s list of priorities.