The effect of greening of radical left parties on political pragmatism in the European Parliament

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in radical left parties (RLPs) and their environmental positions. This so-called greening of RLPs incorporates democratic-socialist stances and environmentalism and strives for drastic measures to protect the climate, which are sometimes at odds with the functioning of the existing regime. This conflict is particularly visible in the European Union (EU), since many RLPs embrace Eurosceptic attitudes. Hence, this paper examines the role of RLPs in the European Parliament (EP) to better understand how their positions on European integration and greening have evolved over time. It focuses on the tensions arising from their Eurosceptic and radical policy positions in an environment marked by consensus and the need to adopt pragmatic and constructive attitudes. It is argued that the increasing salience of environmental issues to the RLPs has rendered their Members of the European Parliament more co-operative in the law-making process, including forming alliances with the other progressive party groups. Hence, in order to be effective in the area of environmental policies, RLPs have had to reduce their rejectionist attitude towards the EU. Based on elite interviews with both RLPs and mainstream groups, this paper aims to better understand how RLPs perceive their work in the EP in relation to environmental issues but also how mainstream parties make sense of the RLPs’ apparent shift in environmental positions and Euroscepticism.