Made in Germany

The Green moment and a Hungarian divorce

Germany’s Greens, Europe’s most mature (in every sense) environmentalist party, were made for this moment.

An anti-capitalist protest movement that has been forced over 40 years to broaden its offer well beyond ecology finds itself in a federal coalition just as climate change gets real. Even better, one of their own – Robert Habeck – is vice-chancellor and minister for climate action. Best of all, he has a budget and broad political support to do - and not just think - the unthinkable. Since 2019, the EU’s overarching policy priority has been to manage the energy transition and, thanks to Covid-19, there is actual public money behind the warm, green words.

Yet even this would have been close to more of the same without the outbreak of a European land war between fuel and food superpowers coinciding with a global inflationary surge following a once-in-a-century pandemic. The Greens have long argued for ratcheting up the price of carbon to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. But what’s happened since the “traffic-light coalition” of Social Democrats (SPD), liberals (FDP) and Greens took office just eight months ago is the stuff of eco-fantasy: the price of oil is up 30% and the price of coal and gas up 250%. And it’s not even temporary; a prolonged war, sticky sanctions and desperation to escape Russian energy dependency means these prices will have to stay high to curtail demand and encourage fuel substitution.

That’s just the Greens’ environmental gift. In the 23 years since Joschka Fischer broke the news to his party’s pacifists that their government was enthusiastically engaged in a NATO-led air war, the Greens have turned into Germany’s most reliably hawkish party. Compassion fatigue is setting in as the bills land but German public consensus is still closest to the Greens’ positions on sanctions, military spending, and heavy-weapons shipments to Ukraine. By contrast, the two perceived Russophile parties – the SPD and Die Linke – have been leaking support since the invasion.

Unusually and unlike the SPD and the FDP, the Greens are benefiting from incumbency. Green ministers have the top three approval ratings for the cabinet: Habeck first, then Annalena Baerbock (foreign affairs) and Cem Özdemir (agriculture). The Pollytix weighted polling average places them second nationally at 23%, four points ahead of the SPD and four behind the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU). However – and this is what got my attention this week – the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen monthly Politbarometer for ZDF (conducted 9-11 August) had the Greens and CDU/CSU neck and neck at 26% with the SPD at 19%.

As this Politbarometer chart shows, the Greens’ support has grown threefold since they first entered federal office in 1998 under he who must not be named. Since then, their electoral coalition has broadened so far that, as a recent survey found, 53% of their voters (alone among the parties’ supporters) favoured military intervention to resolve conflicts. This compared to just 36% of Christian Democrats and 24% of Social Democrats and is an amazing transformation from the 1980s peaceniks.

This is now the party of Fischer and Dany Cohn-Bendit, who was asked in July where the Greens’ pacifism had gone. “This reversal came years ago. I was in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s arguing for intervention against Serbia. The majority of the Greens were against it. But, after Srebrenica, they understood that sometimes you have to go to war to protect or save people. It is therefore logical that we want to support Ukraine today, with all the weapons they need, so they don’t have to live under Putin's rule. It is their right to fight for their freedom. It is our duty to support them”. Both are former left-wing revolutionaries who reclaimed the German militant democratic tradition. These old street fighters are clear about what 24/2 and the consequent eastward expansion of the EU will mean. “This enlargement process will change the EU into a geopolitical player and Russia’s main adversary on the continent,” Fischer wrote in June “The war will definitively change the EU’s character … Europe’s only real choice is to pursue prudent alliances, develop its own power, and build up its deterrence capabilities. A coherent strategy to survive the new ideational conflict must replace lingering illusions. Europe must accept that it is living in a dangerous neighbourhood”.

Since the end of the first Cold War, the export of Islamist terrorism to the US and Europe, and the birth of Kremlin-backed authoritarian conservativism, a cohort of voters in mature democracies have felt politically homeless. Internationally and environmentally minded but still citizens of somewhere, committed to market economics with an active state, socially liberal but willing to use force to protect and even extend recently won freedoms. The future isn’t Andrew Yang’s embarrassing Forward party. Through a quarter-century of trial, error and extraordinary luck, it’s possible Die Grünen have stumbled across an exportable new offer for a new electoral coalition.

Can’t touch me

Karl Loewenstein’s concept of “militant democracy” – a readiness to use illiberal means (temporarily) to ensure the survival of liberal democracy – is, by definition, uncomfortable for many small-l liberals. But, as the EU is tested at its borders by Russia and internally by the rise of avowedly illiberal governments in Hungary and Poland, it is the liberal and (German) Green movements that are proving the most militant in resistance. As Signe Larsen wrote last year …

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán added to his endless testing of the EU’s patience this week with confirmation of a side-deal with the Russians to provide an extra 2.6 million cubic metres a day of gas through the TurkStream pipeline. This provoked Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and leader of the European Parliament's liberals from 2009-19, to rage-tweet …

Why does Orbán keep prodding? The Hungarian opposition says he intends to keep provoking battles with Brussels until he’s softened up public opinion enough to trigger a parliamentary super-majority decision leading to Huxit. To get ahead of this, Jobbik leader Márton Gyöngyösi submitted a referendum initiative to the national election commission this week. But this, in my view, is the heart of the problem with Hungary: less Orbán and more his electorate. It’s true that Fidesz controls much of the media, operates classic budgetary clientelism, and rewrote the electoral law in its favour more than once. Nevertheless, in April - against a united opposition - Fidesz won 53% of the popular vote with another 6% going to Our Homeland, a party to its nationalist right. At the same time, 87% of these voters told Eurobarometer they had a positive or neutral view of the EU, 81% considered themselves European citizens, and 61% favoured a single currency throughout the union.

Too many Hungarians believe there are no consequences for Orbán’s behaviour. Another poll, published by Publicus in March, found 89% of Hungarians were ready to vote against Huxit in a referendum and even Fidesz voters wanted to stay by 65/22%. But, critically, while voters for all other parties believed there was a risk that the EU could expel them, a majority of Fidesz voters (52%) didn’t.

Technically, Fidesz voters are right. While there is a legal procedure for voluntary departure (the famous Article 50), there is no expulsion mechanism. If the opposition is wrong - and I suspect it is - and Orbán wants to stay, then Hungary stays. The only option if continued membership of an illiberal state becomes untenable for the other governments would be the creation of a new union that excludes it. To make this happen, Tom Theuns and Merijn Chamon came up with an ingenious idea …

This strikes me as the only workable nuclear option but it would only be truly punitive if it also forced the illiberal state out of the European Economic Area. In theory, since Hungary itself and the “useless husk” would remain signatories to the EEA, the expulsees may keep all their single-market rights. That might suit Orbán just fine.