The green movement in the Baltic States: between hope and reality

Polls predict that the Green/EFA group will post a fourfold increase in the number of European Parliament seats for the Baltic States after this weekend’s elections. Euractiv spoke with local experts, who cautioned that this increase does not constitute a real ‘green wave’ in the region.

The Baltic states are preparing to vote in the European elections on 8-9 June.  Opinion polls are forecasting the election of four Green/EFA MEPs across the three countries, compared to just one MEP in the previous term. There are a total of 27 parliament seats up for grabs across the three Baltic countries.

While at first glance this seems like a significant increase, experts warn that the political ideology of these domestic Baltic parties differs from that of their European group.

Three of the four MEPs forecast to be elected come from Lithuania, and specifically from the Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga (LVŽS) and the Demokratų sąjunga „Vardan Lietuvos“; (DSVL) party.

LVŽS are a primarily agrarian party, considered as conservative.

Concerning DSVL – the party of European Environment Commisioner Virginijus Sinkevičius – the “Green agenda is not at the core of (their) agenda,” according to Ainius Lašas, a political science lecturer at Kaunas University. He described the party as “a hodgepodge of politicians, who were looking for a convenient landing place.”

The low score of the Baltic green movement

“The green political movement does not come to the fore in the Baltic states”, Marielle Vitureau, a freelance journalist specialising in the region, explained to Euractiv.

A 2024 European Parliament survey found that climate action was the priority for only 6% to 14% of Baltic citizens.

This low interest in environmental issues is reflected in the modest scores achieved by green parties in national elections.

In the 2020 parliamentary elections in Lithuania, the Green party Lietuvos Žaliųjų Partija (LŽP) received just 1.7% of the vote and last year, in the national elections in Estonia, the equivalent party Erakond Eestimaa Rohelised (EER) received only 0.96% of the vote.

Environmental protection – a historical fight

In Latvia, the environmental movement began in the 1960s, in opposition to the construction of dams on the country’s largest river, the Daugava. The movement became increasingly intertwined with resistance to Soviet rule.

The Environmental Protection Club (Vides aizsardzības klubs), set up in the mid-1980s, then focused on issues such as the protection of the Baltic Sea, deforestation, and the preservation of biodiversity.

However, when the Baltic states freed themselves from Moscow and regained their sovereignty, political priorities shifted.

“Guns and butter – security and economic development seem to dominate among voters’ concerns,” Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, a professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, told Euractiv.

In the three Baltic countries, the environmental cause was pushed down the political agenda by a desire to catch up with their fellow EU member states, and a preoccupation with safeguarding their newly-won independence.

Furthermore, the strong influence of agrarian parties on the Lithuanian and Latvian political scene means that environmental issues are now often viewed through a more skeptical farming prism.

A second ecological awakening?

Despite this, social democrat and ecologist parties have risen in recent years, which is more in line with their counterparts in Scandinavian or Western European countries.

Vitureau ascribed this to a Baltic youth that is more progressive and attached to the defence of social values such as the environment and sexual minority rights.

She argued that young Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians no longer identify with the traditional parties that call themselves ‘socialist’, which often stem from the old communist parties and defend Russian minorities in the region.

As a result, new socialist parties, without ties to the older regime, are on the rise. For example, the Latvian Progresīvie (The Progressives), founded in 2017, currently sits in government and is on course to win its first MEP this weekend.

[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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