Elections for the European Parliament are taking place between 6-9 June, kicking off a process that will establish a new EU leadership.
Around 360 million EU citizens are eligible to vote. They will choose between representatives of national parties, each of which is affiliated with a broader political grouping at EU level, ranging from communists to the far-right.
The grouping or coalition with the most parliamentary seats will shape the leadership of the next European Commission – the EU’s executive branch – and help to determine the bloc’s overall direction of travel for the 2024-2029 term.
The balance of power in parliament, which is one of the EU’s legislative bodies, will also play a key role in determining whether or not ambitious new climate policies are voted through.
The elections come at a critical time for climate and energy policy across Europe. Amid geopolitical turmoil, EU member states face mounting pressure to provide secure energy supplies and compete with other major powers such as China and the US.
Meanwhile, there has been widespread reporting of a “green backlash” in many EU countries, exemplified by farmers protesting against perceived injustices that include environmental policies. (Based on recent EU-wide polling, the so-called backlash has been dismissed as “largely overblown”.)
The new European Parliament, the new Commission and member states must also agree in the coming months on an emissions target for 2040, a stepping stone on the bloc’s wider path to “climate neutrality” by 2050.
These decisions will be influenced by which parties triumph in the parliamentary elections.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by each of the main European Parliament groupings in their election manifestos, across a range of issues related to climate and energy. The parties covered are:
- European People’s Party (EPP): A centre-right group that currently holds the most seats in parliament, and to which current European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen belongs.
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D): A centre-left group that currently holds the second highest number of seats in parliament.
- Renew Europe Now: The liberal and centrist campaign platform for the European Democratic Party (EDP), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) – both of which also have their own manifestos – and France’s ruling Renaissance party.
- European Green Party: Representing green parties from across Europe, the Green Party is part of a parliamentary grouping with the European Free Alliance (EFA), which represents regionalist or separatist European groups. Volt Europa, a pro-European, federalist party, is also affiliated with the group.
- European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR): A parliamentary grouping of right-wing Eurosceptics. The far-right Identity and Democracy coalition, which split off from the ECR in 2019, has not released a manifesto.
- Party of the European Left (PEL): An association of democratic socialist and communist parties that sits in a parliament grouping known as The Left in the European Parliament.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from a manifesto document.
Climate targets
When the last European Parliament elections were held in 2019, a “green wave” saw climate-focused politicians winning seats across the continent. This was interpreted as a clear mandate to set ambitious, EU-wide climate targets and policies.
In the years that followed, the EU approved a European Green Deal, with goals to cut emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, and reach net-zero by 2050. It also passed a package of policies to help member states achieve these goals.
These measures have “significantly improved” the EU’s performance on tackling climate change, according to independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker. However, the group says that the bloc would need to implement further policies to align itself with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
With the 2024 election looming, forecasters predict a swing to the right in EU politics. A surge in far-right MEPs could result in a right-wing majority coalition within parliament.
This, in turn, could jeopardise the next phase of the EU’s climate ambitions, including negotiations over a European Commission proposal to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040.
For example, the right-wing ECR’s manifesto says that it will “prioritise the implementation of existing legislative requirements…before considering any new regulations”.
It also refers to “review[ing] the more problematic objectives” and “negative impacts” of “green” policies, implying it might support weakening existing climate goals.
The centre-right EPP says it is “clearly committed” to existing targets – which include the 2030 and 2050 goals – but it does not mention the mooted 2040 ambition.
There have been reports of internal disputes within the EPP over the 2040 target and broader environmental policies. An earlier draft of its manifesto illustrated these disputes, with a commitment to “rejecting” bans on any technologies and “revising” the 2035 ban on petrol and diesel cars. This language is missing from the final manifesto.
In contrast, parties that are further to the left have backed more ambitious emissions targets, as shown in the chart below.
The relatively centrist S&D and Renew Europe Now groupings support the proposed 90% goal for 2040. (While S&D only mentions achieving “strong” 2040 goals in its manifesto, elsewhere the party has voiced support for the target.)
Meanwhile, other parties have gone even further. The European Green Party has proposed a “revised EU climate law” with a 2030 target that goes “beyond” the current 55% goal and achieves net-zero by 2040. The Left specifies a 65% reduction by 2030 and net-zero by 2035.
All the major parties with manifestos broadly support the European Green Deal, with the ECR stating it backs it “in principle” while noting its concerns about a “centralised top-down approach”. (Identity and Democracy, which has not released a manifesto, broadly opposes the green deal and includes many climate sceptics in its ranks.)
Some groups appear to go further. Both S&D and the Greens mention the creation of a new “Green and Social Deal”, with a greater emphasis on affordable energy, social protections and jobs in low-carbon sectors.
In a piece reflecting on the need for a left-wing vision to combat the growing “anti-green backlash”, Politico argued that, with virtually every party emphasising the need for a “just transition”, it was “not clear” what the S&D’s new deal was “supposed to be”.
Of the major parties, only the Green party includes a target for “phasing out” fossil fuels in its manifesto. (At COP28 last year, the EU and other parties to the Paris climate regime agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels.) The Greens target a 2030 phaseout of coal, with all fossil fuels phases out by 2040.
Farmers’ demands
From France to Romania, EU farmers have been engaging in often dramatic protests in recent months.
While their demands have been wide-ranging, many have focused on climate and environmental issues. This follows anger from farming communities about cuts to fuel subsidies and efforts to curb the use of fertilisers and pesticides.
All of the manifestos speak directly to these ongoing issues, with some calling for major reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – the EU’s flagship farming policy. Others try to strike a balance between supporting farmers and maintaining strong climate ambitions.
Agriculture is responsible for one-tenth of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is the only major sector that is expected to see almost no progress in emissions cuts in the coming decades.
The EPP says climate policies can be achieved “only with and not against farmers” and says more funding for agriculture will be vital to support their environmental efforts. Liberals in Renew Europe Now say they have proposals to “simplify farmer’s lives” because they “want to focus on farming, not filling out forms”.
The ECR, meanwhile, says it “reject[s] unfettered green ideology” in agriculture.
S&D says its members “fundamentally disagree with the conservatives’ approach that sustainability is the enemy of farmers”. Like the EPP, it emphasises the need for more financial support to help farmers transition to “environmentally friendly” practices.
Boosting clean energy industries
Many of the manifestos focus on promoting the EU’s economic success and competitiveness, particularly in relation to the US and China, as well as ensuring it is not reliant on other nations for resources.
This comes amid a period of instability, triggered partly by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which threatened the bloc’s energy security due to its reliance on Russian gas.
Often, parties explicitly make the link between these wider geopolitical struggles and the need to scale up low-carbon industries. This is exemplified by the EPP when it states:
“We are developing the home market for our clean-tech industries. We are decarbonising and revitalising our energy-intensive industries to sell clean products worldwide. Thus, we are increasing our energy independence and overall sovereignty and resilience.”
Both S&D and the Greens focus on the need for investment across industrial sectors, in order to maintain the EU’s competitive edge. ALDE, the main party in Renew Europe Now, emphasises “cross-border” public investment in order to “achieve the economies of scale that the single market offers”.
Right-wing and liberal parties stress the need for “technology neutrality” in their plans.
Greens and left-wing parties, on the other hand, either explicitly reject nuclear power or do not mention it. They also place more emphasis on developing public transport options, including improved rail networks, alongside investment in electric vehicle infrastructure.
The post EU election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
EU election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.
It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.
The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.
The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”.
The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.
One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.
The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.
Measuring climate actions
The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change.
Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change.
In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.
To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:
| Experiment | What they did |
| Survey one | Participants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity. |
| Survey two | Participants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint. |
| Survey three | Participants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people. |
| Surveys four and five | Participants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. |
The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.
The perception gap
The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours.
For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.
Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%.
The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors.
The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots).
They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.
In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.
The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations.
For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.
The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.
Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate.
In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group.
However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.
Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”.
However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action.
‘Pluralistic ignorance’
Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.
For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says.
However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors.
Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex.
It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.
“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds.
The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.
Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”.
However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life.
As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.
‘Targeted’ communication strategies
The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.
They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions.
The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support.
They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.
Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z
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The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
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