BRUSSELS — A specter is haunting the European Union: the specter of the Green Deal. And Europe’s Socialists are running scared.
Over the past year, an alliance has formed to exorcise this specter: Populists and conservatives, nationalists and farmers, French centrists and German liberals — all preaching to voters’ concerns that green policies will drive people to financial ruin without a safety net.
Unable to get a word in? Europe’s chief champions of that safety net: the Socialists.
It seems like a contradiction. At a time when many want more government aid to help them survive a changing world, the Socialists can’t gain ground. Not even half of Europeans think that a net-zero future will be affordable for all, yet the parties triumphing on those anxieties are mostly right-wing or centrist. Meanwhile, the European Greens and parts of the far left are capturing those seeking even greater climate ambition.
