Unlike Europe’s northwest, green parties and movements in southeast Europe do not perform as good in the elections as other political platforms according to European Newsroom, a project launched by news agencies.

Although it is more difficult to mobilise voters in South-East Europe around environmental issues, environmental and climate awareness is, nevertheless, on the rise.

Western Balkan countries signed the Green Agenda declaration at the summit in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2020, pledging to completely phase out coal and become climate-neutral by 2050, in accordance with the European Green Deal.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – who is a member of the country’s Green Party – also called on the Western Balkan countries to step up cooperation in energy security and in switching to renewables.

Russia is using energy as a weapon, she said. Implementing the green transition is our common interest because we all benefit from clean and safe energy, the German minister said in her opening speech at the Western Balkans Conference in Berlin on 21 October.

“We Can!”: Green movement in Croatia on the rise

In Croatia, which has been a member of the EU since 2013, the Green Coalition under the political platform “We can!” won 116,000 votes and thus seven seats in the national parliament at the last parliamentary elections in 2020.

For comparison, just one year earlier at the 2019 EU elections, the same platform received less than 20,000 votes, meaning that only 1.8 percent of the voters voted for the “We Can!” platform. In the local elections in May 2021, one of the leaders of the platform, Tomislav Tomasevic, was elected mayor of Zagreb.

A new test for him and his platform will be the upcoming parliamentary and European elections that will take place next year.