Following the German parliamentary elections in February, which pushed the Greens out of government, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has started embracing environmental issues in a way that would have seemed unlikely not so long ago..Rather than dismantling the green agenda, the CDU has chosen to adopt it, giving it a patriotic twist: climate protection is no longer presented as a global moral duty but as a national obligation.
However, the broader green agenda, now being embraced across Europe’s center-right, still comes with real economic costs: weakening European industry and deepening reliance on components made in China.
But the CDU is following a clear agenda: to weaken the Greens and attract their voters without breaking with Brussels’ climate mandates.
While during the campaign the CDU heavily criticized measures such as heating mandates or the gradual elimination of combustion engines, they are now merely softening—not repealing—those policies. The KlimaUnion, an internal party faction, has already claimed that repealing climate laws without equally effective alternatives would be unconstitutional.
The climate lobby has also taken the reins within the centre-right camp. An example of this new approach is the group Heimatwurzeln (“homeland roots”), whose leader, Florian Wagner, openly states that protecting the environment is “an expression of patriotism.” In his narrative, which especially resonates with nostalgic conservatives, the rural middle class, and precarious sectors, the energy transition must distance itself from the progressive language of global justice and instead embrace traditional, Christian, and community values.
The narrative is no longer one of a “climate emergency” demanding personal sacrifice, but rather an opportunity to regain industrial sovereignty, energy security, and national pride. It is also a way to appeal to voters tempted by the AfD, without abandoning Brussels’ green rhetoric.
This shift toward “green patriotism” is not exclusive to Germany. At the plenary session of the European Parliament held in Strasbourg on March 11, a similar change in rhetoric could be observed. During the debate on the Clean Industrial Deal, the Commission’s new ecological plan, multiple groups—including the European People’s Party (EPP)—adopted the language of sovereignty and self-sufficiency to justify green policies that, until now, were considered utopian or leftist.
Those opposing decarbonization were accused of serving foreign powers like “Putin’s Russia” or “Trump’s America,” and the abandonment of fossil fuels was presented as a patriotic obligation. European Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné even defended the opening of new “ecological” mines in Europe and the imposition of tariffs as ways to protect the continent’s economic sovereignty.
The CDU, like other EPP forces across Europe, wants to take environmentalism out of the hands of the Left. But rather than confronting it head-on, they have chosen to reinterpret it through a national lens.