Climate Change and Public Trust in Europe

Amid an unprecedented heatwave in Europe this week, a look back at the 2025 European State of the Climate Report makes for bleak reading. Europe, the world’s fastest warming continent, is faced with an evolving poly-crisis created by a warming climate, which deeply affects every member state. Even disregarding the impact of climate change on agriculture, biodiversity, transportation, or security, the increase in the rate of climate-related disasters alone is an existential problem for the continent.

Between 1980 and 2023, weather and climate shocks caused losses of more than €700 billion across the European Union, including €162 billion between 2021 and 2023 alone. Between 2023 and 2024, almost three million people were directly affected by floods, storms, and wildfires. They faced forced relocation, property loss, personal injury or even death.

European officials have identified the spread of climate disasters as a security threat due to its effects on social cohesion, illicit economies, finances, and the scarcity of resources causing uncontrolled migration flows. What is missing from the discussion among policymakers, however, is how climate disasters can affect domestic European electoral politics, which in turn can affect the willingness of governments to make the changes necessary to fight the climate crisis.

It is very easy to imagine why this would be the case: voters who have experienced substantial material hardship after a disaster are likely to focus on their recent experiences when they head to the ballot box, and are therefore likely to vote differently than they would in the absence of catastrophe. They may not only think of the material damage they have endured but also about whether governing institutions have adequately prepared for and responded to foreseeable risks prior to the disaster. Governments that fail either of these tests—adequate preparation or swift and effective restoration—tend to pay an electoral price.

This aspect of the climate crisis is critically important to understand. Given the rapidly increasing rate and severity of climate disasters, should European officials and environmental advocates expect citizens to support, for instance, green parties that are committed to sustainability and a zero emissions future? Or should they expect an even larger wave of populist backlash, with critical implications for democracy and the European Union project as a whole?

This question has long puzzled researchers. The one universally supported conclusion is that, especially when governments struggle to effectively respond, voters punish the incumbent government. Who they turn their support to is a different question. Some studies show that climate disasters make people more aware of the climate crisis and supportive of green parties that center climate policy in their campaigns. Others disagree, saying that such voters do not switch to green parties, and may in fact even turn against these parties for not effectively protecting them against the climate disaster in the first place. A few others suggest that these voters may turn to populist parties: those whose successful electoral platforms tend to revolve around grievance and the translation of hardship into retributive political anger.

In my most recent work with Lisa Dellmuth, Evelina Jonsson, and IGCC Steering Committee chair Christina Schneider, we argue that this divergence in previous research can be explained by examining variations in political trust: how much voters trust the national government, legislature, and political parties to effectively represent their interests.

In regions where voters already regard governing institutions with suspicion, such events only reinforce the perception of—by malice or incompetence—elite and institutional neglect. We find that in such regions, climate disasters fuel grievance-driven gains for populist and anti-system parties, while further amplifying incumbent losses. In high-trust regions, however, incumbents are more insulated from blame, and climate shocks instead heighten voter demand for robust environmental governance. This creates conditions under which green parties also may attract support, particularly among communities acutely sensitive to climate risks. Nevertheless, even when voters are trusting of the government, the gain for such parties is quite modest.

Amid escalating climate disasters, the ability of elected officials and governments to maintain public trust will decide the future of Europe. If maintained, this trust will lead more and more affected citizens to support safeguards against climate-related disasters and mitigation measures against climate change. If not, Europe may face a snowball effect, where poor institutional trust and escalating climate disasters lead to the election of anti-system populist parties, who further weaken the state and democratic accountability, and erode public trust to ever decreasing levels.

Theodoros Ntounias is a PhD candidate in political science at UC San Diego and 2025-26 IGCC Dissertation Fellow from Athens, Greece. He studies contemporary challenges to democracy in a comparative perspective.

Thumbnail credit: Wikimedia Commons