Europe | Charlemagne

In Europe, green policies rule while green politicians struggle

Reshaping the continent’s economy is easier than winning votes

A woman holding a brush and surrounded by empty paint pots has painted herself into the corner of a room — Illustration: Peter Schrank

Dec 7th 2023

Imagine a scantily clad woman suggestively wiggling her behind in your direction, then inviting you to dance like a feverish chicken. You might think you have somehow landed in a bachelor party, circa 1995. The reality is odder still: this is a rally organised by the French green party in Paris. On December 2nd members of Les Écologistes were invited to a 20-minute session of “la booty therapy”, involving raunchy twerking and encouragements for the bemused crowd to “let their buttocks fly”. After this unexpected interlude, normal service resumed: appeals to smash the patriarchy, pleas for a kinder sort of politics, and (almost as an afterthought) alarm over carbon emissions. On the same day but in another political universe, the German chancellor and the French president were among those at the COP climate jamboree in Dubai, hammering out a global deal to avoid frying the planet.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Playing the green card”