Public lecture “The contentious politics of climate change mitigation: Evidence from the European Parliament”

📍Tartu, Lossi 36-305

The event will be held in English.

Anyone interested is welcome to attend!

Climate change mitigation policies impose concentrated and immediate costs in exchange for diffuse and future benefits, which may discourage elected representatives to promote them. The strong electoral performance of the populist radical right (PRR) and its politicization of environmental issues may reinforce this political challenge.

Between 2019 and 2024, the European Commission has proposed several far-reaching mitigation measures linked to the European Green Deal. However, since the 2024 European election, many of the flagship policies have been weakened or delayed. This makes the European Parliament (EP) an excellent setting for examining the legislative politics of de-carbonization. It allows us to track how MEPs from a large variety of national political backgrounds vote on the same set of diverse proposals. Statistical analysis of these roll-call votes is complemented with qualitative evidence from interviews with MEPs and parliamentary assistants.

For the 2019-2024 period, we find that, beyond national party ideology and European party group influences, stronger national-level competition from the PRR is moderately associated with reduced support for green policies. In the current EP, support of the roll-back is notably also driven by economically liberal and Euroskeptic views. In both periods, we find evidence for country-level influences that vary across votes.

The talk is based on an on-going joint project with Mihail Chiru (University of Oxford).

This lecture is moderated by Martin Mölder (Associate Professor of Political Science, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies)

In case of questions, please contact Kristel Vits (kristel.vits@ut.ee).

Estonian Doctoral School for Social Sciences.