segunda-feira, 3 de junho de 2024

Europe’s democratic charade

 



NEWS

OPINION

Europe’s democratic charade 


Prepare for postelection negotiations changing the European Parliament just as much as voter choices.

For many voters, these fluid European party affiliations make the upcoming election even less understandable. |

 

OPINION

JUNE 3, 2024 4:00 AM CET

BY NICOLAI VON ONDARZA

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-european-election-voting-democracy-coalitions-far-right/

Nicolai von Ondarza is a political scientist and head of EU/Europe research division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

 

This summer, the composition of the European Parliament will undergo a significant shift, with changes stemming not only from voters’ decisions but also the maneuvering undertaken by parliamentary groups themselves.

 

Although EU discourse often treats party groups — such as the European People’s Party (EPP) or the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) — as homogeneous actors, by and large, they remain alliances of national parties that can change at any time, easily altering the Parliament’s make-up.

 

And this time around, this fluidity is most evident among the EU’s far-right parties, which appear to be gearing up for a significant postelection reconfiguration.

 

Normally, besides some high-profile switches, the number of changes taking place between the Parliament’s political groups are overlooked. Take, for example, the center-right EPP — the largest and, in many ways, best organized of these groups. According to data from Europe Elects, during the current legislative period alone, 12 MEPs from other political groups switched to the EPP, seven of whom were previously part of one of the two far-right groupings. Conversely, 19 MEPs left the group, chief among them the 11 Fidesz MEPs from Hungary, who left the group in March 2021 to avoid being booted out.

 

Still, at the very least, it seems we can expect all current EPP member parties to remain in the group in a couple months’ time.

 

The same can’t be said, however, for the liberal Renew group — itself an alliance of several different European parties. Renew is the third largest group in the current Parliament, and has often taken on the role of kingmaker. But it’s also been a reservoir, accepting 10 MEPs from almost all other political groups — including the Greens, the S&D, the EPP, all the way to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

 

And currently, Renew is debating whether to expel the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy — one of its founding members — for agreeing a coalition with Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom.

 

The S&D, on the other hand, ended up with a net loss, recruiting “only” five MEPs from other groups since 2019, while losing 13 along the way.

 

Still, despite all this back and forth, the biggest changes afoot are among the EU’s split far-right party groups.

 

In today’s Parliament, these groups include the national-conservative ECR — home to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS); the right-wing populist-to-extremist-ranging Identity and Democracy group (ID), which brings French opposition leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally together with Italy’s the League and the Freedom Party of Austria; and finally, there are the non-aligned far-right parties, such as Fidesz and Alternative for Germany (AfD).

 

With Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seeking a new political home for his Fidesz party, and AfD’s recent expulsion, a major reconfiguration is on the cards. And this means we’re faced with three distinct possibilities:

 

The first is a continuation of the status quo, where both the ECR and ID gain seats in the elections, but the AfD’s expulsion makes the ECR the bigger of the two. In efforts led by Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the ECR would then try to work with the EPP as a “mainstreamed” negotiation partner, leaving ID on the fringes.

 

The second possibility is that a renewed ID would come together with Fidesz — and potentially PiS from the ECR. Though the group would still remain on the fringes, in this scenario, ID could leapfrog the ECR to become the third largest group in the Parliament. The EXR, meanwhile, would be even more open to cooperation with the EEPP.

 

Finally, the third scenario would be a merger of the ECR, ID and Fidesz. Such a big-tent far-right supergroup would come with huge policy differences — not least over how to deal with Russia — and it’s the stated ambition of Le Pen and entertained as an option by Meloni. It would also come at the cost of re-toxifying the ECR, which would then likely lose some of its more center-leaning parties to the EPP. Such a group would become the second largest in the Parliament — and unacceptable as an EPP partner — altering the balance of power significantly.

 

These three possibilities all illustrate just how vastly different the Parliament could look depending not just on voters’ choices but postelection backroom negotiations. They also underscore the big decision Meloni will face — whether to take the open hand offered by the center right or attempt to forge a broader national conservative/populist alliance.

 

For many voters, these fluid European party affiliations make the upcoming election even less understandable. Even Brussels insiders can’t predict which European party group the largest national delegations from France, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands or Austria will belong to after all the behind-the-scenes deal-making.

 

And this adds to the disconnect between voters’ choices and EU politics.

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