Suchergebnisse

Today, there is a broad international consensus on the need to ensure carbon neutrality and, more broadly, to address global environmental issues. By promoting increasingly stringent ecological standards and climate regulations in the energy sector and consistently forcing others to emulate its example, the European Union seeks to present itself as a normative power in this area. At the same time, the EU leaders face the need to mobilize public support for the idea of the sustainable climate-oriented transition in order to mitigate its negative economic and social effects. This, in turn, requires the construction and promotion of the compelling and unambiguous energy transition narrative designed to legitimize the EU's environmental and energy policy. This paper identifies and examines the key elements of such a narrative propagated within the European Union, as well as assesses its perception by various groups of the European countries' population. The author also outlines a few alternative 'greentransition' narratives, which have arisen as a reaction to both the deficiencies of the EU's energy policy and the challenges posed by the Ukrainian crisis. The author concludes that the EU leaders and the non-governmental and non-profit actors backing them have managed to build a broad and solid public consensus around the official narrative of the energy transition. Under these conditions, one of the central objectives facing the EU leaders is to maintain and strengthen the attained level of public support for its policies, given new transition-related challenges to the territorial integrity and political cohesion of the union. The latter include high inflation rates and the general rise in the cost of living, negative tendencies in the labor market due to its structural transformation, as well as the growing economic heterogeneity of the member states.

The paper examines formation, evolution and political perspectives of the Spanish radical left-wing populist party 'We Can!' (Podemos) in the face of growing support for populism in the the Southern European countries as well as in the European Union in general. The author identifies the origins and country-specific characteristics of the left-wing populism in Spain and provides the general overview of trends in the country's party system since the middle of the 2000s, including the growing axiological, generational, political and ideological cleavages in the Spanish divided society. Special attention is paid to the political portrait of the Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias and the prospects for development of political situation in the country after his resignation and subsequent electoral defeat in the Autonomous Community of Madrid in May 2021. As such, this case study can provide some useful insights on the nature of populism in the EU member-states in general. In particular, the paper shows that the fragmentation of traditional political systems and the impacts of the sovereign debt crisis per se do not provide a sufficient explanation for the growing demand for populist rhetoric and charismatic leaders, but rather they have exposed certain structural economic and social imbalances. It is exactly these imbalances which traditional political parties are unable to address that create a breeding ground for various left- and right-wing parties and movements. As a result, the author concludes that populism will remain an essential element of political landscape in Spain despite all scandals that accompany populist politicians as the case of Pablo Iglesias has clearly demonstrated. At the same time the author emphasizes that it is this clear and imminent threat posed by the populist movements that may eventually serve as an impetus for a renewal of traditional parties and of the country's political system in general.

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