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‘Sunday for Future’: Germany’s Greens celebrate double-digit score in EU vote

With a double-digit score across Europe's biggest countries including a stunning 20 percent in Germany, the Greens bagged record gains in European elections on Sunday with younger voters leading calls for action to halt global warming.

'Sunday for Future':  Germany's Greens celebrate double-digit score in EU vote
The Greens' Henrike Hahn, top candidate for the European elections in Bavaria, celebrating on Sunday. Photo: DPA

The environmental party was on course to double their score in Germany from  the last EU elections in 2014, knocking the Social Democrats off their traditional second place.

In France, the Greens was set to win 12-12.7 percent of the EU vote, up from 8.9 percent in 2014. Likewise in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands, the environmental party were on course to garner more than 10 percent.

With the two main traditional EU blocs – the conservative EPP and the centre left Social Democrats projected to lose ground, the Greens could end up as kingmaker in the European Parliament.

“This is a Sunday for Future,” said the Greens' lead candidate in Germany Sven Giegold, in a nod to the “Fridays for Future” school strikes by students sounding the alarm on the climate crisis.

His counterpart in France, Yannick Jadot,  also hailed it as a “green wave in which we are the main players.”

France's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe acknowledged the “message about the ecologic emergency”.

“Everywhere in Europe, our citizens and in particular the youngest are asking us to act with determination and that's what we'll do in France and in Europe,” he said.

READ ALSO: Greens surge amid heavy losses for Germany's ruling parties in EU elections

'Prove you mean business'

The momentum for the Green surge had been building up over months as the strikes started last November by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 16, not only refused to lose steam but caught the imagination of youth across the world.

In a major mobilization on Friday, tens of thousands of students rallied, with some calling on their parents to tick the box for the environment at European polls this week.

Cheering Sunday's results, a leading student activist in Germany Luisa Neubauer wrote: “The European elections show that we're not only bringing the climate crisis to the streets but also to the ballot boxes. This should give food for thought to those who have in the last month laughed at 'youth engagement'.”

Under the 2015 Paris deal to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the 28-nation EU has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030, compared to 1990.

But many scientists and climate activists say Europe and all other major economies must sharply raise their ambition.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change warned in October that warming is currently on track towards a catastrophic 3C or 4C rise.

READ ALSO: Meet the east German Green candidate offering another alternative

Greens chairman Robert Habeck embraces top candidate Maike Scháfer in Bremen. Photo: DPA

Biggest challenge

In Germany, the climate crisis has exposed a generational split, with adults and the elderly accused of hanging on to their polluting diesels while youngsters are urging change by going on school strikes.

Stunned by the Greens surge, the parties in Germany's governing coalition vowed to take on the challenge.

Markus Söder, who heads Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies CSU, declared the environmental party as its main competitor.

“The biggest challenge of the future is the intensive debate with the Greens,” he said, adding that “old measures that we had before, are no longer valid”.

Underlining that his party is struggling to win over young voters, he added that “we must work to be younger, cooler and more open”.

READ ALSO: 'Brexit will hinder AfD success': What you need to know about the EU elections in Germany

In the days running up to Sunday's vote, Merkel's party had also come under fire from prominent YouTuber Rezo whose blistering online attack over climate policy went viral.

The CDU struggled for days to find a response before finally on Thursday seeking dialogue with him.

Raising the ante, Rezo, along with 70 other influential YouTubers, instead published an open letter urging people to shun the CDU, the SPD and the AfD at the polls.

According to ZDF's exit poll, 33 percent of under 30s voted Green, while only 13 percent picked the CDU in Sunday's EU vote.

Another poll by Infratest found that one in three first-time voters gave their vote to the Greens.

By Hui Min Neo

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EUROPEAN UNION

Norway flirts with the idea of a ‘mini Brexit’ in election campaign

On paper, Norway's election on Monday looks like it could cool Oslo's relationship with the European Union but analysts say that appearances may be deceiving.

Norway flirts with the idea of a 'mini Brexit' in election campaign
The Centre Party's leader Slagsvold Vedum has called for Norway's relationship with the European Union to be renegotiated. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB / AFP

After eight years of a pro-European centre-right government, polls suggest the Scandinavian country is headed for a change of administration.

A left-green coalition in some shape or form is expected to emerge victorious, with the main opposition Labour Party relying on the backing of several eurosceptic parties to obtain a majority in parliament.

In its remote corner of Europe, Norway is not a member of the EU but it is closely linked to the bloc through the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement.

The deal gives Norway access to the common market in exchange for the adoption of most European directives.

Both the Centre Party and the Socialist Left — the Labour Party’s closest allies, which together have around 20 percent of voter support — have called for the marriage of convenience to be dissolved.

“The problem with the agreement we have today is that we gradually transfer more and more power from the Storting (Norway’s parliament), from Norwegian lawmakers to the bureaucrats in Brussels who are not accountable,” Centre Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said in a recent televised debate.

READ ALSO: 

Defending the interests of its rural base, the Centre Party wants to replace the EEA with trade and cooperation agreements.

However, Labour leader Jonas Gahr Store, who is expected to become the next prime minister, does not want to jeopardise the country’s ties to the EU, by far Norway’s biggest trading partner.

“If I go to my wife and say ‘Look, we’ve been married for years and things are pretty good, but now I want to look around to see if there are any other options out there’… Nobody (in Brussels) is going to pick up the phone” and be willing to renegotiate the terms, Gahr Store said in the same debate.

Running with the same metaphor, Slagsvold Vedum snapped back: “If your wife were riding roughshod over you every day, maybe you would react.”

EU a ‘tough negotiating partner’

Initially, Brexit gave Norwegian eurosceptics a whiff of hope. But the difficulties in untangling British-EU ties put a damper on things.

“In Norway, we saw that the EU is a very tough negotiating partner and even a big country like Britain did not manage to win very much in its negotiations,” said Ulf Sverdrup, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

While Norwegians have rejected EU membership twice, in referendums in 1972 and 1994, a majority are in favour of the current EEA agreement.

During the election campaign, the EU issue has gradually been pushed to the back burner as the Centre Party — which briefly led in the polls — has seen its support deflate.

The nature of Norway’s relationship to the bloc will depend on the distribution of seats in parliament, but experts generally agree that little is likely to change.

“The Labour Party will surely be firm about the need to maintain the EEA agreement,” said Johannes Bergh, political scientist at the Institute for Social Research, “even if that means making concessions to the other parties in other areas”.

Closer cooperation over climate?

It’s possible that common issues, like the fight against climate change, could in fact bring Norway and the EU even closer.

“Cooperation with the EU will very likely become stronger because of the climate issue” which “could become a source of friction” within the next coalition, Sverdrup suggested.

“Even though the past 25 years have been a period of increasingly close cooperation, and though we can therefore expect that it will probably continue, there are still question marks” surrounding Norway’s future ties to the EU, he said.

These likely include the inclusion and strength of eurosceptics within the future government as well as the ability of coalition partners to agree on all EU-related issues.

Meanwhile, Brussels is looking on cautiously. The EEA agreement is “fundamental” for relations between the EU and its
partners Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, according to EU spokesman Peter Stano.

But when it comes to the rest, “we do not speculate on possible election outcomes nor do we comment on different party positions.”

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