German climate activists enter EU-Elections: Last Generation aims to ‘shake up’ Parliament

The list of fringe parties in Germany aiming for a seat in the European Parliament is getting longer, as climate activists want to “really shake up” politics this time.

The German climate protection movement “Last Generation” (Letzte Generation) announced its intention to run for the EU Elections in June on Wednesday.

“We want to finally bring the resistance into Parliament,” said spokesperson Carla Hinrichs said in a press conference.

The movement is best known in Germany, Austria and Italy and is part of the same network as the Just Stop Oil movement in the UK. They believe that efforts to protect the climate are not progressing fast enough.

The movement has attracted constant media attention by glueing themselves to the streets and spray-painting luxury shops orange.

After calling an end to the “glueing chapter” at the end of January, the group planned to continue to protest in a different form.

“We want to bring the voice of the street, the voice of the movement into Parliament,” Hinrichs said, adding, “That’s why we want to really shake up the EU-Parliament this year.”

And the chances of winning a seat in the EU Parliament are not slim. This June will be the last time in Germany there is no electoral threshold for the European elections. It will, therefore, be possible to be elected to the Parliament with around 0.5% of the total vote.

In Germany, several small parties have regularly been elected to the European Parliament. In this legislature, parties such as the Animal Protection Party (1.4%), the Ecological Democratic Party (0.7%), the Pirate Party (0.7%) and Volt (0.7%) have one MEP each.

Last Generation calculated they would need around 250,000 votes to gain representation in Brussels, with current spokesperson Lena Johnsen as their top candidate.

Hinrichs lamented that in the parliament, “there is no one who finally says what’s happening here in an unignorable way. Namely that we have screwed it up so far that nobody has a plan to get us out of [climate change].

In the past, the German Greens have distanced themselves from the movement, stating that their methods of activism “do not bring progress.”

The upcoming elections will show whether the Greens represent the interests of the broader climate movement or whether they will lose votes to Last Generation activists

Cover photo: The German climate protection movement “Last Generation” (Letzte Generation) announced its intention to run for the EU Elections in June on Wednesday. [Shutterstock/Stephan Dost]