Between Urgency and Skepticism: A Comparative Analysis of Political Parties’ Climate Change Communication Across the EU

The way politicians communicate or ‘frame’ an issue, by emphasizing certain aspects while omitting others, matters. Existing research shows that how elites present an issue strongly shapes how citizens understand it and form policy preferences (e.g. Stone, 2012). How politicians frame climate change can either encourage or discourage climate action. They may also focus on different aspects of the issue at the same time, using a recurring set of different frames, to construct broader, coherent climate narratives. Yet, systematic cross-country evidence on how politicians communicate and frame climate change remains limited. This study addresses this gap by comparatively examining how political parties across the EU communicate about climate change. While extensive experimental work has demonstrated that framing affects public opinion (e.g. Chong & Druckman, 2007; Dasandi et al., 2022), much less is known about the supply side, how parties construct and combine frames in their official communication. We identify three central research questions: (1) which frames typically co-occur to form broader climate narratives; (2) how these configurations align with ideology and party families; and (3) to what extent these narratives travel together with proposals for climate mitigation, adaptation, or rollback. To answer these questions, we conducted a comparative content-analysis of 35 party manifestos for the 2024 European Parliament elections across nine EU countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Czechia, Portugal, and Italy), covering four major party families: Greens, Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, and Radical Right parties. A broad set of frames was coded, working both inductively and deductively, and distinguishing between frames that encourage and those that discourage climate action. We identified 14 distinct frames, seven discouraging and seven encouraging. Using hierarchical cluster analysis these frames are grouped into three broader configurations or climate narratives: Climate Action Now, Cautious Action, and Climate Hysteria. Rather than employing single frames in isolation, parties use recurring frame combinations to form coherent narratives that justify either climate action or inaction. A clear ideological pattern emerges while country differences play a far smaller role. Greens and Social Democrats—almost exclusively in the Climate Action Now cluster—rely on encouraging frames stressing urgency, moral duty, and economic opportunity. Christian Democrats, generally in the Cautious Action cluster, combine encouraging and discouraging frames, emphasizing both opportunities and potential economic or social risks. Far-right parties, concentrated in the Climate Hysteria cluster, employ discouraging frames that question the legitimacy and feasibility of climate policy by highlighting perceived economic burdens, social injustices, and threats to national sovereignty. Regression analyses further show that these clusters are closely linked to policy proposals: parties in Climate Action Now propose significantly more mitigation and adaptation measures, whereas those in Climate Hysteria are more likely to advocate rollback policies, such as abolishing the European Green Deal. This study provides an updated overview of the climate frames and broader narratives used by political parties. It shows how these narratives align with ideology and connect rhetoric to concrete policy proposals, revealing that climate communication is structured around competing narratives of urgency and skepticism.