Green Party Performance is the Key Takeaway from European Parliament Elections

It's the last takeaway of the five listed in "European Parliament Elections: 5 Biggest Takeaways" by Steven Erlanger and Megan Specia, but I think it's the most important story coming out of the elections for the European Parliament:

The Green Party had broad — and surprising — success.

The Green Party made gains across Europe, from Germany to Portugal and across the Nordic countries, based on early figures, with some analysts framing the rising support as a “green wave” of voters. Climate change, a surge of young voters and anger at existing policies seem to be behind it all, leaders of the movement say. 

Bas Eickhout, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and a Green candidate for the European Commission presidency, thanked voters Sunday night as results poured in. The Greens, he said, were “very clearly asking for change, asking for change for a new Europe, a Europe that is fighting climate change, a Europe that is looking for a green transition in a socially just way.”

In Germany, the rise of the Green party, which secured more than 20 percent of that country’s vote, is being seen as the big story of the election. The center-left Social Democrats suffered their worst defeat in decades, with many voters on the left, particularly young people, turning instead to the Greens.

The Green Party also saw a surge in Ireland, where it previously held no seats, at the expense of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael, particularly in its supposed stronghold in the capital, Dublin. In Britain, where Brexit dominated the agenda, the Greens gained a record seven seats.

Turnout was at a 20-year high. The ultranationalists made gains but nothing in proportion to the amount of attention that has been lavished on them by the mainstream media. The preferred narrative in the mainstream media is of a global populist tsunami drowning the poor rational folk clinging to the neoliberal center. The abandonment of the center-left nominally socialist parties in favor of the Greens is usually barely mentioned; and when it is, it is whispered at the margins of the story. At least Erlanger and Specia included it as a takeaway.

One can't help but reach the conclusion that the Greens are now the established number two party in the wealthiest country in Europe. The Greens came in second in Germany with 20.5%, compared to 15.8% for the Social Democratic Party.

In France, the Greens won 13.5% of the vote and came in third behind Le Pen's National Rally and Macron's En Marche!, out-polling the collapsed center-left and center-right parties.

An old Green myself, I am not terribly confident that the party can crack the neoliberal consensus. Greens are for the most part not revolutionary. They will most likely welcome neoliberal rats as they scurrying off their sinking ships. But at least the robust showing of the Greens proves that neoliberal ships are in fact sinking.