BAKU, Azerbaijan — Looking for a MAGA-compatible approach to climate diplomacy? Europe’s right-wing leaders can help.
While Donald Trump plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement once again upon his return to the White House, Europe’s nationalist prime ministers and autocratic leaders made a right-wing case for championing (some) measures to slow global warming in the opening days of this year’s climate summit, known as COP29.
In Europe as elsewhere, right-wing populism correlates with weaker climate measures. But governments from Italy to Turkey have found arguments in favor of global cooperation to curb the rise in temperatures — from seizing economic opportunities to concerns that climate disasters will drive more migrants toward Europe.
Some — COP29 host country Azerbaijan chief among them — also see climate summits as a chance to greenwash their authoritarianism or fossil fuel industries.
With key centrist figures such as Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron skipping the summit, these narratives arguably dominated the European presence at the COP29 leaders’ speeches this week.
So how do Europe’s populists square global climate action with the way they see the world? Read on for a breakdown of the right-wing green playbook.
1. Make money
From electric vehicles to solar panels, the clean economy is booming — and leaders running on a business-friendly, make-our-economy-great-again platform want to ensure they get in on it.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán began his speech at COP29 on Tuesday with his usual warnings against burdensome green regulations and a call to keep using fossil fuels while pushing ahead with climate action.
But he quickly pivoted to boasting about his country’s clean-tech prowess. “We are positioning ourselves to be a significant player in electric vehicle development and electricity storage,” he told fellow leaders.
A senior climate negotiator for a European right-wing government said the economic argument was a no-brainer. “Our companies see they can make money from the green transition,” he said. “And the earlier you start the transformation, the bigger a winner you’ll be as a company or a country.”
2. Reduce immigration
Promising to limit immigration — particularly unauthorized border crossings — is a central pillar of right-wing election campaigns. And climate disasters, rising sea levels and worsening droughts are projected to displace hundreds of millions in the coming decades.
The Italian government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party rooted in fascism, has seized on the connection between migration and global warming to make the case for funding climate action in Africa and other developing countries.
Italy has plans to expand its economic and energy cooperation with Africa to boost job growth and infrastructure — as well as Rome’s influence on the continent. Notably, the government’s strategy explicitly states that the plan will help give Africans “the right not to be forced to migrate.”
Providing funding is part of that approach. Last year, Italy unexpectedly contributed €100 million to a new fund for countries hit by climate disasters, and Meloni has set up a €4 billion money pot to finance climate action in developing countries, particularly Africa.
Speaking at the financing-focused COP29, Meloni said that “Italy intends to continue to do its part.”
A second climate negotiator for a different European right-wing government thinks Trump might find this aspect alluring, too. “For example, land degradation as a result of climate change will create huge amounts of migration. And that’s a topic that’s also crucial for the Trump administration,” he pointed out.
3. Promote nuclear
Right-wing voters tend to like the idea of nuclear power, a clean if controversial source of energy. Take the U.S. — more Republicans than Democrats view atomic energy favorably.
Plenty of leaders — including Orbán and Meloni — promoted the development of nuclear power in their COP29 speeches.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, a member of the right-wing Law and Justice party, was among those trumpeting the benefits of nuclear power in Baku. “I believe that nuclear is [the] future and it is only nuclear that will help us to achieve our climate goals and guarantee clean, safe and stable energy,” he said.
“Nuclear is crucial on the path toward [climate] neutrality,” concurred Slovakia’s President Peter Pellegrini.
4. Fight your corner
Immigration is only one example of how European right-wing leaders wove their key issues into their climate rhetoric at COP29.
Orbán likes to cast himself as a politician who protects Europe’s farmers against overzealous climate legislation.
Railing against green “ideology” in his speech, Orbán hit the farmer defense trifecta: “We cannot sacrifice our industry for agriculture … The price of climate change should not be paid by our farmers … We cannot impose unrealistic quotas or burdensome rules on farmers.”
Duda, meanwhile, used his speech to link Poland’s worries about Russia to global warming and environmental degradation, telling fellow leaders that “Russian aggression against Ukraine has shown us that armed conflicts also result in serious environmental damage and pollution.”
Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic president of Azerbaijan, called out what he described as Western “hypocrisy” in his opening speech, defending his country’s reliance on exporting fossil fuels by pointing out that the Europeans readily buy them.
5. Claim leadership
Many leaders use climate summits to boast about their countries’ efforts. For right-wing and autocratic governments, the conferences also present an opportunity to cast themselves as upstanding global community members.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin made no mention of the brutal war his country is fighting against Ukraine, instead voicing concern about the “wellbeing of future generations” and vowing to combat climate change. (Russia is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gasses.)
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pitched his country as the host of COP31 in 2026, despite its having ratified the Paris Agreement a mere three years ago.
Even Duda, whose party tried to block key EU climate efforts while in power, sought to burnish his green image during his speech, saying: “During my presidency in Poland, I have worked to keep the climate policy agenda high on my country’s priority list. I’m glad that I had the pleasure to personally ratify the Paris Agreement in 2016.”
But right-wing leaders were careful not to take their climate leadership claims too far, sprinkling their speeches with calls for “common sense” and “realism” in the green transition — lest they be mistaken for green ideologues.
“We must protect nature,” said Meloni, “with man at its core.”
Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting.