Curated by Kristóf Szombati and Ece Özbey
Germany’s latest parliamentary elections mark more than just a change in government — they signal a potential turning point for the country’s economy, multicultural identity, and political landscape. As the European Union’s largest and most influential member grapples with mounting domestic and global pressures, the decisions made in the coming years will not only define Germany’s trajectory but also reverberate across Europe and beyond.
This mini-series brings together leading scholars working in and on Germany to offer their insights into the key questions arising from this pivotal moment of transition. Through a multi-angled, interdisciplinary discussion, it examines the political, economic, and social forces driving change and shaping the country’s and the broader region’s future.
In this third edition, our contributors examine the pressures weighing on Germany’s ecological transformation.
You can also explore other contributions to this mini-series:
📌 Read our editor Kristóf Szombati’s analysis of the election outcome and the challenges the incoming government will have to face.
📌 Check out the expert insights on Germany’s socio-economic model in transition.
📌 Delve into perspectives on identity, integration, and the complex challenges of social cohesion in Germany.
Germany has long been seen as a global leader in climate policy, with ambitious goals to reach climate neutrality by 2045. However, amidst economic stagnation, geopolitical instability, rising energy costs, and growing public resistance to climate measures, there are increasing doubts about whether the next government will stay the course or retreat in the face of political and economic pressures. As Germany navigates this crossroads, the outcome will shape not only its own future but also global climate leadership.
The road to climate neutrality was never going to be smooth, but the backlash against climate policies — from farmer protests to broader skepticism over costly energy transitions — has intensified, significantly reshaping both public discourse and the electoral landscape. We therefore asked two experts to reflect on whether Germany’s ecological transformation is at risk of stalling. The specific question we posed to them was:
With the ongoing (and still growing) backlash against climate policies, has the political landscape shifted to the point where a significant watering down — or even a reversal — of Germany’s climate goals is likely under the next government?
Our two contributors agree that the parliamentary elections yielded a decisive shift in the balance of forces between parties promoting and opposing the pursuit of ambitious green policies, with the pro-climate Greens losing seats and influence, while the climate-skeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) made significant gains. They argue that this shift is likely to push the incoming Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-led government to scale back Germany’s ecological ambitions and seek (re-)align more closely with industrial and conservative interests, moving away from the Greens’ climate agenda.
Analyzing the causes of this swinging of the political pendulum away from ecology,Dennis Eversberghighlights a profound shift in public opinion: he sees interlocking societal crises as having undermined the broad consensus that climate neutrality could be achieved without major changes to unsustainable lifestyles. As this consensus erodes, he argues, voices calling for less ambitious climate policies have grown stronger. Dorothea Elena Schoppek, without disagreeing, underscores the CDU’s privileging of industrial interests and emphasizes that industrial and security priorities will likely trump climate action — unless profitability or geopolitics push in that direction.
Rather than a government prepared to lead on climate, both authors foresee leadership more likely to defer, delay, or dilute green commitments, leaving Germany’s climate agenda under pressure and making the goal of attaining climate neutrality by 2045 increasingly improbable.
Prof. Dr. Dennis Eversberg
The outcome of the parliamentary elections not only marks a substantial rightward shift in Germany’s political landscape but also documents a turn away from support for climate policies among large parts of the electorate, rendering future progress on climate commitments rather questionable.
Sociologically, we can distinguish two sides of this turn. On its overt and aggressive side, the far-right AfD, openly inimical to climate policies in general, is now the strongest political force throughout East Germany as well as in a number of mostly rural municipalities in the West. It is also the second-strongest party in most of the traditionally conservative rural regions of the country’s affluent South. Simultaneously, the relative resurgence of the CDU/CSU attests to the more subtle yet quantitatively decisive side of the anti-climate policy turn: In promising “pragmatic” climate policies and a rollback of some key decisions of the former government (internal combustion engine ban, the “heating law”), conservatives have themselves performed a shift, catering to rising sentiments among substantial parts of the affluent middle and upper strata.
Since the CDU/CSU lost the 2021 elections, compounding societal crises have undermined Angela Merkel’s earlier promise that climate neutrality could be achieved without any significant change to unsustainable modes of living. Realizing that this deal would not hold, those who had materially benefitted from Germany’s unsustainable export-centered growth model doubled down on their expectation that the government shield them from any kind of need to adapt. The CDU/CSU under Merz, taking note of this shift, won on the promise to protect citizens’ material prosperity against any threats — including that of effective climate policies.
Taken together, the strengthening of the AfD and CDU/CSU indicates the formation of a new “defensive consensus” against climate action that unites underprivileged and materially affluent groups, particularly in rural regions — a tendency well reflected in recent political convergences. Meanwhile, the Green and Left parties, which continue to advocate for more ambitious climate policies, won some urban constituencies but remained largely marginalized outside urban centers. The two parties combined mustered three seats less than the AfD.
The new government will almost certainly be a coalition between Merz’s CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which occupies a climate political middle ground between the conservatives and Greens. Their shared priority will be to restart economic growth. In parliament, they will sit sandwiched between almost identically strong pro- (Greens and Left) and anti-climate (AfD) opposition camps. Although each opposition camp represents around 21% of voters, this is not a symmetrical constellation, as public debate has itself shifted away from climate concerns and the pressures of acute crises will recurrently divert attention toward seemingly more urgent issues. The government-to-be appears most likely to verbally affirm previous climate commitments for the time being while deferring or cancelling any substantial steps toward achieving them. The Council of Experts on Climate Change will likely impose another round of immediate measures for reducing emissions when its annual assessment in May once more finds progress too slow. This will come at a time when the CDU/CSU and SPD will face pressing challenges in foreign and defense policy, and are likely to be bogged down in tough arguments around migration, public spending, and the infamous “debt brake.” Seeing that Merz had promised to roll back several key climate policies and that on his initiative the EPP is now pushing for a return to pre-Green-Deal policies at the EU level, the best bet is that the government will at least try to temporarily suspend climate goals. Pressure in this direction is also likely to be strong internationally — and stronger than pressure exercised by increasingly fragmented pro-climate forces.
Dennis Eversberg is a Professor of Sociology with a specialization in Environmental Sociology at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. Contact: eversberg@soz.uni-frankfurt.de.
Dr. Dorothea Elena Schoppek
The climate crisis and how to tackle it hardly played a role in the recent German election campaign. While climate protection was still a decisive factor at the 2021 federal elections, this time politicians paid little attention to the issue in public debates. Amongst those who did, some exhibited outright hostility to climate protection, a clear marker of how much things have changed since the last elections. Climate protection has also slipped down the list of voter preferences and has been overtaken by concern with the economic situation and migration, as surveys by the “Forschungsgruppe Wahlen” revealed. The result of this discursive shift can be seen in the election outcome. The big winners are in particular those parties that criticized the climate policy of the traffic light coalition as “ideology-driven” and propose to either reverse several decisions made by the outgoing coalition (CDU/CSU) or to abolish all restrictions on the use of fossil fuels (AfD).
None of this bodes well for much-needed ambitious climate policies in light of ever more temperature extremes. In a recent report, the German Council of Experts on Climate Change found that — despite significant progress in the last years — climate protection is not advancing fast enough and Germany is likely to miss its 2030 climate targets.
Does this mean we can say goodbye to climate neutrality? Opinions differ on this question.
The new government will most likely be a coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD under the chancellorship of Friedrich Merz. On the one hand, optimistic observers are confident that Merz has no choice but to become a “climate chancellor.” Reasons given include legal obligations under the German Climate Change Act, European and international law, the expansion of the European Union Emissions Trading System, the increasing profitability of renewable energy sources, and security interests.
On the other hand, Merz has announced that he wants to split climate and economic policy into two ministries again, indicating a departure from a climate-mainstreaming approach. The CO2 footprint of the massive investment programs for defense and infrastructure that were recently announced by the leaders of the CDU/CSU and SPD is not yet known. What we do know, however, is that military activities are already estimated to account for at least 5.5 % of global emissions. Although it has since been revised, the initial version of the infrastructure investment package did not even mention climate- and environmentally-friendly investment measures. Only thanks to the Green Party’s veto was it possible to negotiate at least 100 billion euros for climate protection. The fact that the CDU/CSU see this as a concession to the Greens, rather than an urgently needed intervention to preserve our livelihoods, is deeply revealing. Merz has made it abundantly clear that German industry will have priority over climate protection under his watch. Taken together, this suggests that climate policy will only be pursued when it is profitable or geopolitically attractive.
What is more, the necessary social-ecological transformation is not limited to the achievement of climate neutrality. While we are witnessing a power struggle over the continuation of an ecological modernization program, the latter itself carries the risk of prioritizing action in one domain (climate change) at the expense of another (the health of critical ecosystems and biodiversity) and of externalizing the social and ecological costs of climate mitigation to other regions of the world or into the future.
Given the rhetoric of the election campaign and the political convictions of the prospective chancellor, along with the two parties that are likely to make up the next coalition, I doubt that the new government will succeed in making an attractive, socially just, and ecologically sustainable offer of transformation to the population. Rather, it will depend on the opposition (the Greens and Left Party) to keep this discursive space open and on civil society initiatives to become more vocal once again. What we need is a positive vision of how the majority can benefit from the necessary transformations, including but not ending with climate neutrality.
Dorothea Elena Schoppek is a Research Associate focusing on social and political transformation conflicts at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Contact: schoppek@pg.tu-darmstadt.de.
