Towards Ego-Ecology? Populist Environmental Agendas and the Sustainability Transition in Europe

ABSTRACT

The concept of Ego-Ecology captures environmental agendas that challenge a shared European environmental conscience in many respects. In fact, diverse populist actors such as the gilets jaunes movement and the extreme right of the Rassemblement National in France, or the right-wing populist party Fidesz in Hungary, do not reject environmental protection and climate action completely, but rather utilise them for their own agendas. The populist re-framing of environmental agendas challenges comprehensive problem-solving and supranational decision-making at the EU level. This potentially undermines a swift sustainability transition in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• populism
• sustainability transition
• climate policy
• Fidesz
• gilets jaunes

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Sebastian Oberthür and Jonas Schoenefeld as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

The authors acknowledge the UACES Research Network ‘The Role of Europe in Global Challenges: Climate Change and Sustainable Development’ for the organisation of a dedicated online workshop, and the co-editors for bringing this Special Issue to fruition. The Jean Monnet Network ‘Governing the EU’s climate and energy transition in turbulent times’ (GOVTRAN: www.govtran.eu), which is funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, deserves credit for additional support. Alliance Europa, which has funded the international research network on the ‘Governance of Sustainability in Europe’, has also supported the ideas put forward in this article through a number of workshops across Europe.

Notes

¹ Another good example is the Poujadist Movement of the 1950s, which embodied revolutionary-republican and conservative-nationalist tendencies under Pierre Poujarde: see Shields (2000). Stefan Kipfer (2019, 214) even links the gilets jaunes movement to the French Revolution of 1789.

² See for instance the initiative led by young professionals called Visegrád for Sustainability: https://www.v4sdg.com/#our-mission.

³ The climate law has been criticised for being watered down compared to the original proposal for declaring a national climate emergency. Moreover, some of the new measures, like the green government bonds, have been criticised as just another way to enrich “Orban’s cronies” (Darby 2020b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Hoerber

Thomas Hoerber is Professor of European Studies and Director of the EU*Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management, Angers, France.

Kristina Kurze

Kristina Kurze is Associate Professor of International and European Politics at Andrássy University Budapest (funded by the German Academic Exchange Service), Budapest, Hungary. Email: [email protected]

Joel Kuenzer

Joel Kuenzer is Consultant at FTI Consulting, Brussels, Belgium. Email: [email protected]