Survey rates parties on Green Deal - from 'pro' to 'prehistoric'
Robert Hodgson
The voting patterns of MEPs over the past ve years have con rmed a clear party political division over climate action and nature protection, revealing in addition to a predictable gulf between the positions of the Greens and the far-right a clear fault line running through the political centre.
Five of the largest Brussels based environmental NGOs analysed 30 key pieces of environmental legislation and ascribed scores from zero to 100 based on whether lawmakers supported or rejected the more ambitious action and targets the groups have been advocating, tagging the latter as 'prehistoric'.
The Greens/EFA group came top with an overall score of 92, while the far-right nationalist ID, which has routinely proposed the outright rejection of green legislation, earned just six points.
But the survey, published today (15 April), also showed wide divergence between the centreleft Socialists & Democrats who scored 70, and the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which rated just 25 despite being the political home of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who placed the Green Deal at the centre of the EU executive’s political programme.
The liberal Renew scored 56, a re ection of frequent splits within the group when it came to votes on environmental and climate policy proposals. The results show similar splits within other groups, often based on the national party a liation of their constituent MEPs.
The data reveals another clear voting pattern that can be seen when environment policy is subdivided into climate action, nature protection and pollution prevention. Broadly speaking, if a political party takes opposes setting the most ambitious measures to tackle climate action, it will take a similar stance in the other two broad areas.
It is nature protection legislation, which has recently seen a forceful pushback from the EPP amid widespread farmers' protests across Europe, where the political divide is the widest, with the Greens and the Left group on 94 and 87 respectively, while the EPP and conservative ECR group rate 19 and 13 respectively.
Speaking at an event in Brus