The initiative by ELAM to place before the Parliamentary Environment Committee the activities of environmental organisations and activists is not an isolated Cypriot phenomenon. On the contrary, it forms part of a broader trend within the European far right, which is increasingly separating "the protection of nature" from organised environmental activism.
The item, tabled by ELAM MPs Linos Papayiannis and Linos Hadjigeorgiou for the 16 September session, concerns the "impact" of the activities of specific activist organisations and the possible need to take measures. The wording has drawn criticism precisely because it shifts the discussion away from environmental violations themselves and onto the activities of the organisations.
In theory, ELAM does not reject environmental protection, having come out in favour of protecting Akamas and having set up its own Environment Committee. On the other hand, of course, it clashes with activists over issues such as ambelopoulia (songbird trapping), and opposes green taxation. Above all, though, it is serving political expediency.
This logic has clear European precedents and is also linked to Trump-era politics in the United States. In Germany, AfDuses far harsher language against Last Generation, describing its members as "climate terrorists" and calling for harsh penalties or even a ban on the organisation. In Italy, officials from Fratelli d'Italia have called similar activists "pseudo-environmentalists," while the Meloni government tightened legislation in 2025 on road blockades and damage to public property, measures that directly target the tactics of climate movements.
A similar political clash is playing out in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders's PVV speaks of "hysterical" climate activists and nitrogen rules, and links the green transition to costs for households, though it has not developed the same systematic "terrorism" rhetoric against activists as AfD.
The Rassemblement National follows a more institutional line. It does not reject ecology, but sets it against what it considers "ideological" or "punitive" green policy, favouring nuclear energy, national energy sovereignty and limits on wind and solar projects.
The comparison points to a common trend: these parties are attempting to appropriate the concept of nature protection, decoupling it from green movements and, above all, from concerns about climate change. ELAM today appears closer to this European line, but cannot entirely conceal certain glaring motives of its own — namely, that it seeks to win over the hunters' party as well as hundreds of other independent poachers, who are specifically the ones violating existing legislation.
