European Green Deal in Central European Political Discourse – Realist Vs. Populist Approach

Many observers detect different groups of states within the EU/Europe with different priorities and positions regarding the European Green Deal. As the analyses showed, we can observe the real pioneers such as Nordic nations (Sweden, Denmark, Norway), which are often joined by Germany, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In the opposite, the East-Central European nations – and among them primarily the V4-nations – are often presented as the most visible laggards regarding the green transformation. Nevertheless, such generalising approach must be falsified as one-sided and unfounded opinion and label. Let us stress that nations such as Estonia and Slovenia belong to the visible promoters of environmental policies; in the last parliamentary elections in Slovenia in April 2022, the environmental and liberal Freedom Movement reached 34,45% and created the left-centrist and clearly environmentally oriented government. Also, Lithuania belongs to the group of 7 EU-nations requesting the EU energy rely solely on renewable resources by 2050. Nevertheless, the development of Visegrad Group as the populist and leader-driven format in the last more than decade developed the negative image of the group. Furthermore, the group – but also France – belong to the group of member states that present the nuclear power plants as the necessary part of the energy mix and/or the renewable source of energy. On the other side, when we observe the pragmatically based position of Czech and Polish government regarding the coal industry, we cannot compare these actors with the recent position of Hungarian officials. Furthermore, we cannot overlook the recent polarisation and even cleavage regarding the energy security in Europe, having Germany as the example of (temporary) transition from the coal, oil and nuclear sources over the (Russian) gas towards the solely renewable sources. Doubtless, we also should not forget that we cannot reflect the partial EU-member states as like-units compared among themselves, but also internally, i.e. regarding the unanimity of positions within one nation. At one side also in Czechia and other rather restrained nations we can find visible promoters of the Green Deal, while also for example in Germany we can reflect the strong voices promoting at least temporary maintenance of nuclear power plants in operation, and even the continued dependency on the Russian gas supplies (the most visible example seems to be the Prime Minister of Saxony Michael Kretschmer). In such situation, any one-sided criticism against the V4 (and more generally against the “new EU-member states from the “East”) have to be reflected above-all as the hypocrisy. Thus, our analysis focuses primarily on falsifying the one-sided and non-subordinate division of the EU into ideal-typical groups of countries with respect to the approach to the European Green Deal. Specifically, we focus on the social and political cleavages within the Visegrad Group or other Central European countries. Our aim is to show how the issue of energy transition has become one of the key issues of regional populism. For us, the concept of regional populism provides the basic theoretical framework within which we situate our primarily discursive analysis.