The EU’s punishing climate policies are facing an almighty public backlash.
In 2019, Green parties achieved their best ever European Parliament election results. They even topped the polls in some member states, including Germany. Europe’s cultural and political elites could barely conceal their delight at the time, viewing the rising support for the Greens as an endorsement of their own managerialist mission to tackle the so-called climate emergency. The EU’s technocrats seized their chance. Within months of this alleged ‘green wave’, Brussels pushed through its Green Deal, which committed all member states to Net Zero, or carbon neutrality, by 2050. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hailed the Green Deal at the time as ‘Europe’s man-on-the-moon moment’.
