Europe hasn't abandoned the green transition — but politics has

Across Europe, a familiar narrative is taking hold: environmental protection, we’re told, has become a luxury — unaffordable in an age of war, inflation, migration and a spiralling cost of living. But the data tells a different story.

According to a new Eurobarometer survey, 85% of EU citizens regard climate change as a “very serious” global threat. Eight in ten support the goal of climate neutrality by 2050, and 77% believe the cost of inaction is greater than the investment needed for a just ecological transition.

These are substantial numbers. They cut through the misinformation and directly challenge the narrative — often promoted by media outlets and fossil fuel lobbies — that public concern for the climate is fading. On the contrary, ecological awareness is rising, not despite today’s overlapping crises, but because of them. People are experiencing the consequences firsthand — in their health, their communities, and their food and water systems.

Businesses, too, are feeling the pressure of natural resource constraints and shifting consumer attitudes.

Speak with construction firms across the EU and you’ll hear the same refrain: margins are shrinking, and we need change to survive. The future depends on redesigning operations, reusing materials, shortening supply chains, and maximising resource efficiency. Water use, in particular, has become a front-line issue. Sustainability is no longer a buzzword — it’s a business imperative.

We see this every day. As a French systems engineering company delivering digital solutions, we’ve long championed a vision of Total Resource Efficiency, embedding environmental and climate KPIs into lifecycle management and lean operations. For years, it felt like preaching to the wind — now, clients are knocking.

30,000 butchers in Italy Champion Animal Welfare and green husbandry

Take Italy. I’ve worked with FEDERCARNI, the national association representing over 30,000 butchers — all small, independent shopkeepers. In 2024, red meat purchases declined by 18% in large-scale retail outlets, while demand rose by 26% in Federcarni-affiliated butcheries — driven by more discerning, sustainability-minded consumers.

Long before enabling regulations were finalised, these butchers were already asking how to join local energy communities to cut their soaring electricity bills. And when the long-delayed ministerial decrees finally arrived, they wasted no time. Energy communities are now mushrooming across the country, slashing costs, reducing emissions, and forging new alliances between businesses and citizens.

Butchers are also contending with a market increasingly tilted in favour of large distributors and industrial-scale breeders — players who pocket the lion’s share of profits while offloading the environmental costs onto society. In response, these small-scale shopkeepers are charting their own course: bypassing the middlemen and forging direct partnerships with local, more sustainable breeders. Not with the intensive livestock operations that leach nitrates into water supplies and degrade the soil, but with breeders whose animals can graze on open pastures.

New partnerships for a sustainable 'meat pact'

Together, they are shaping a new “Meat Pact” — founded on shared responsibility, quality, and environmental sustainability. Partnerships have already been forged with breeders in several regions — including Lombardy, Sardinia, Tuscany and Piedmont — with momentum steadily building across the country. Over 2,500 small breeders and several local consortia already participating.

Many are now exploring the creation of a biodiversity protocol that mirrors key elements of the EU’s much-debated Nature Restoration Law. It would be a bold step forward — capable to improve ecosystems’s health at scale, and helpt to fundamentally rethink supply chains from the ground up. Projects in carbon farming are coming?

Politics is lagging behind society

And yet, this growing momentum faces a stubborn obstacle: politics. [Ed. This is precisely why illuminem launched an open letter urging policymakers to rise to the occasion.]

The benefits of the green transition — cleaner air and water, lower energy bills, healthier lives, nature, innovation, better quality of life — are not being distributed evenly across Europe or across social classes. Not because the technology or solutions are lacking. Not because the resources aren’t there. But because the system, as it stands, still protects incumbents and preserves a fossil-fuelled economy. The solution? New rules for new market design.

From electricity pricing to agricultural subsidies, too many policies remain rooted in an outdated economic model. The backlash we’re seeing isn’t against climate action itself — it’s against a system that offers no credible alternatives, ignores obvious solutions, and widens social and regional inequalities.

We need more, not less, state for the common good

This needs to change. Governments must stop acting as passive facilitators and reclaim their role as stewards of the common good. That means setting the rules, enforcing fairness, and rebalancing competing interests.

Just look at Europe’s cities. Shaped by global capital and the logic of mass tourism, many are slipping out of the hands of the communities who live in them. Milan is just the latest example — increasingly treated as a real estate asset by foreign investment funds, following a path that began in Canary Wharf-era London in the 1990’s.

Public spaces and common goods — the commons — are being privatised, while the state retreats. In Italy, beaches are managed by private rich concessionaires — in clear breach of the Bolkestein Directive. Water is bottled and sold by multinationals even as droughts fuel conflict over water usages already across countris such as France and Spain. Health systems are stretched, schools underfunded, tax systems rigged by carve-outs for the wealthiest.

The result? A growing gulf between citizens and the institutions meant to serve them.

Climate deniers may be beaten at their own game

As climate change pushes resource scarcity to the forefront of public discourse, those wagering on climate scepticism as a political strategy may be gravely misreading the mood.

In the UK, the Liberal Democrats are placing climate policy at the heart of their campaign to challenge Nigel Farage. Meanwhile in France, 1.5 million people signed a petition — in just ten days — to overturn the controversial “Loi Duplomb”, which reintroduces banned pesticides, favours intensive livestock farming, and accelerates water-grabbing infrastructure.

It wasn’t a party machine that drove the protest. It started with a student, unaffiliated and unprompted. The spark? Real, everyday concerns: public health, biodiversity, quality of life over party lines. At the centre of it all is acetamiprid, a pesticide linked to pollinator decline, groundwater contamination, and long-term risks to food security.

The scale of the response has already forced Parliament to schedule a public debate for September. In an age where political courage is scarce, and denialism is often funded by American think tanks and politicians, this kind of civic pushback matters.

When read alongside the Eurobarometer results, it suggests something deeper: a shift in where leadership is emerging. The public hasn’t turned away from the green transition — far from it. 

The public hasn’t turned its back on the green transition. Far from it. What’s shifting is the centre of gravity — away from traditional party politics and into the hands of civil society.

And this time, it’s not just youth activists or fringe campaigners leading the charge. It’s the quiet centre — shopkeepers, farmers, professionals — stepping forward. The so-called “silent majority”, led by common sense, may be finding its voice. And when it does, it won’t whisper. It will roar.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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