2024: Year
of elections
European
Union
Make or break for the EU? Europeans vote in June
with far right on the rise
Ever more of the continent’s 400 million voters feel
the bloc is important enough to warrant casting their ballot
Jon Henley
Jon Henley Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Wed 3 Jan
2024 13.19 GMT
They are
elections whose purpose many do not see, for an institution whose role few
fully understand; an international ballot still viewed primarily in national
terms, by voters who see it chiefly as a low-risk way to vent national
frustrations.
“They’re
not really about the EU and they don’t really matter” was long the popular take
on elections to the European parliament, whose latest edition, from 6 to 9
June, will once more fill the 705 seats of the only directly elected EU body.
That take
was never really true, and has certainly become less so since 2009, when the
Lisbon treaty put the parliament on a more equal footing with national leaders
in deciding what the EU does and how much it spends, plus more influence on who
runs the bloc.
This time,
it looks likely to be less accurate than ever. On the upside, polling shows
that more of the EU’s roughly 400 million voters than ever before believe the
bloc is important, are interested in the 2024 elections and intend to vote.
But with
nation-first Eurosceptics on the rise across the EU and predicted to make gains
– although far from enough for a majority – in parliament, analysts also say
this election could come to be seen as a “make or break moment”.
According
to a Eurobarometer poll of 27,000 people published in December, 57% of voters
are interested in the elections, six points more than in the run-up to the
previous European elections in 2019, and 68% intend to vote – up nine points.
A record
72% think membership has been good for their country, while 70% feel the EU
matters in their daily lives. But voters are also worried about the future: 73%
fear their standard of living will decline this year.
Georgina
Wright, a senior fellow at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne thinktank, said
voters were increasingly convinced by Covid and a string of geopolitical crises
that there are some issues “that clearly can’t be resolved at a national
level”.
Questions
tied to Russia’s war against Ukraine, such as the EU’s role in Europe’s
security, as well as the cost of living crisis, migration and the green
transition and its costs would be paramount, Wright said, although “a lot can
change” before June.
The
European parliament election remains to a large extent “27 national campaigns,
and 27 national elections”, she said. “It’s not yet properly pan-European, and
its problem remains that many people don’t really know what the parliament
does.”
But this
time they “will be voting with the EU in mind”, Wright said.
“Not
because they love the EU, but because there’s growing understanding that some
matters can only be addressed at EU level. The EU debate is no longer pro or
anti, but ‘what kind’”.
Most of
Europe’s nationalist parties have dropped or rowed back on any plan to follow
Britain out of the EU. But in nearly a dozen EU member states, including France
and Germany, far-right parties are in government or number one or two in the
polls.
Polls
suggest Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam party would win even more seats now than when
it finished first in November’s Dutch election, and Marine Le Pen’s National
Rally (RN) is 10 points clear of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance on 28% to
30%.
Giorgia
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy remains comfortably ahead in the polls on 29%,
Austria’s FPÖ is on 30%, and in Germany in December the AfD won its second
municipal election in six months and stands at second place on 22%.
Forecasting
the results of the European parliament election is hard, because the two
organisations that do so – Politico Europe and Europe Elects – rely on
extrapolations from national polling, and in the European ballot voters often
behave differently.
Both sets
of polls, however, predict a clear gain for the far-right Identity and
Democracy (ID) group, which includes AfD, RN, FPÖ and Matteo Salvini’s Lega,
and could emerge with more than 85 seats from its present 76.
The
European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which includes Poland’s Law and
Justice (Pis), Brothers of Italy, the Finns party, the Sweden Democrats and
Spain’s Vox, is also forecast to advance, moving to about 80 MEPs from 61.
The most
pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the
environment
Those gains
are accompanied by modest predicted losses for the centre-right European
People’s party (EPP) and centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and
Democrats (S&D), a bigger fall for the centrist Renew group, and a sharp
drop for the Greens, who are forecast to lose up to a third of their seats.
EPP and
S&D are still expected to finish first and second with more than 170 and
140 seats respectively, and with Renew on 83 MEPs and the Greens on 45 the
so-called “centrist” bloc in parliament should still have a comfortable overall
majority.
That does
not look like an earthquake. It should leave the EPP in charge of the European
Commission, potentially with a second term for the current president, Ursula
von der Leyen, and S&D at the head of the European Council of national
leaders.
Perhaps the
biggest upset would be if the hard-right ID group were to beat Renew into third
place, in which case it might demand a significant post in the commission.
Nonetheless, some analysts see these elections as a potential EU turning point.
Thus far,
said Wright, Europe’s far-right parties – which also made significant advances
in 2019 – have not been able to significantly influence the EU policymaking
process for the simple reason that they have failed to cooperate with each
other.
That may be
about to change, said Catherine Fieschi of the European University Institute in
Florence. “They’re not about to take over,” she said. “But they are more
numerous, they are getting smarter and they could work with the centre-right.”
Several key
factors have changed since 2019 and before, Fieschi said. European parliament
elections are “no longer the nationalists’ only chance to win an election –
increasingly, they are winning influence and power at the national level”.
That has
brought the ID group closer to ECR, many of whose members are in, or
supporting, rightwing governments, because electoral success has forced the
hitherto more radical, hard-right ID to adjust. Most voters do not want to
leave the EU or the euro.
At the same
time, the member parties of the centre-right EPP have drifted further and
further right in search of far-right votes. “It’s no longer a question of the
nationalist and far-right groups working together, ECR with ID,” Fieschi said.
“The
question now is will the centre right work with the far right: EPP with ECR.”
Key to that, she said, will be the stances of Meloni and Hungary’s prime
minister, Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz party has yet to rejoin another group
after quitting EPP in 2021.
“Imagine if
Orbán joins ECR, which works with EPP,” Fieschi said. “That’s the [European]
green new deal blocked, EU enlargement on hold … So my worry is these elections
really could be a make or break moment, that leaves the EU frozen as a middle
power.”
The EU
would still deliver for its citizens, Fieschi said, reigning in the worst
excesses of a polarised world, doing what it can on the environment. “It will
keep holding the fort at a time of immense geopolitical and economic
uncertainty,” she said.
“And let’s
be honest, that’s not bad. But it would also be a huge missed opportunity.”
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