The success of right-wing parties in the recent European Parliament elections has shocked the continent and countries around the world, indicating a potential benchmark for the upcoming US presidential elections.
Voters in the 27 member states that make up the European bloc voted between June 6 and 9, and the results kept European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's center-right European People's Party (EPP) Group in the majority with 189 of the 720 available seats. , but observing a significant shift from left to right in the remaining groups.
Here's what happened, along with the winners and losers of this surprising election result.
VOTING AGENDA IN EUROPE
The results in Europe could signal a continued global shift to the right during one of the busiest election years on record: More than 50 countries had elections scheduled for this year, even before France announced an early election due to the European Parliament results. , according to Associated Press.
With U.S. politics so closely primed ahead of the 2024 election, analysts will look to other global races to get a sense of universal voter sentiment (remembering that the historic, surprise Brexit vote preceded Donald Trump's surprise victory about Hillary Clinton in 2016). particularly because similar issues seem to concern both Europeans and Americans despite the Atlantic divide.
The successive victories of Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) in national and European elections, for example, have consolidated the Netherlands' shift to the right. Wilders gave up his bid to become prime minister but appeared to secure a PVV-led government that will prove to be the country's most conservative in decades.
Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders speaks to the press after a meeting with the Speaker of the House of Representatives in The Hague, November 24, 2023. After his surprising election victory, the firebrand Dutch far-right Geert Wilders began the formal process of building a government coalition on Friday, struggling to convince reluctant rivals to serve under him as prime minister. (Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
“The Greens and the Liberals are big losers,” Wilders wrote on the social network Austria, Portugal and many other countries. It was a very nice election day!”
The London-based think tank Chatham House cited immigration as one of the main issues that right-wing parties have brought to the forefront of voters' minds. They also cited “genuine” complaints about health care, housing and the ongoing cost of living crisis as issues on voters' minds when they went to the polls this month.
Support for Ukraine also remains a key issue, although the think tank warns that it is “perhaps the least controversial foreign policy issue”, focusing instead on the issue of EU membership expansion: Russia's invasion led Finland and Sweden to break with decades of neutrality policies. and join the union.
HOW DOES THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT WORK?
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) won 21 seats and became the third largest European party, and the National Rally party (NA) in France will have 30 seats in total, giving right-wing parties a significant presence in the Parlament. Meanwhile, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberal party Renew Europe, Independent and Democracy (ID) and the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) each lost more than a dozen seats.
As in the US House of Representatives, the number of MEPs depends on the population of their country of origin: Austria, for example, has 20 seats, while Cyprus has only six seats. Germany and France lead the count with 96 and 81 seats each, while Italy has 76 seats, Spain has 61 and the Netherlands has 31 seats.
Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, co-leaders of the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), celebrate at the AfD election evening after the publication of the initial results of the European parliamentary elections on June 9, 2024 in Berlin. Germany. The elections to the European Parliament have been held since June 6 in all member states of the European Union and will conclude tonight. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The ECR will have 83 seats and will be by far the biggest gain, although the media attempted to position the EPP gains as bigger news after the party had lost seats in previous elections. The ECR also posted strong numbers in Poland, where it won 20 seats, coming second behind the EPP, indicating the divided nature of politics in many European countries.
Each country's national parties take seats and then filter into one of the parliamentary groups, meaning that parties such as Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), which enters the European Parliament for the first time with 15 seats, and the PVV win by Wilders. , helped strengthen ECR's position.
A party needs at least 23 MEPs from seven member states to have a presence in the European Parliament, according to Reuters. This means that winning even one seat – especially in countries that only have a handful of MEPs to choose from – in some countries often proves to be a vital step in securing a place at the table.
WHAT DOES A VICTORY OF THE RIGHT MEAN FOR EUROPE?
In Germany, the EPP won the most seats, followed by NA and the Greens, while in France the ID took the lead over the S&D and Macron's own party, Renew. Italy gave the ECR its biggest victory, while the S&D came in second by just a few seats. Spain gave strong support to both the EPP and the S&D, while the Netherlands gave virtually uniform support to Renew, the EPP and ID each.
Left-wing politicians have expressed concern that the huge success of ECR has given the right an important bargaining chip in future political discussions, and the ruling EPP is likely to engage with them when necessary to pass the desired legislation and give it on the right more participation in pushing their own agenda.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a final press conference at the G7 in Borgo Egnazia, near Bari, southern Italy, Saturday, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The ECR party is a eurosceptic party most closely affiliated with Italy's right-wing parties: Nicola Procaccini, a member of the Brothers of Italy, has served as the party's president since 2019, with the group making its biggest gains in France, Germany and Italy. .
The party is also closely associated with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has become an archrival on the continental stage of French President Emmanuel Macron, who is also facing a rising wave of right-wing opposition in his home country such as Marine Le Pen and his National Rally party, renamed the National Front in 2018 after almost five decades, are seeking progress in the upcoming snap elections.
FIND A COMPROMISE?
Macron called early elections after the National Rally won 31.4% of the votes for the European Parliament, defeating every other party, citing concerns that growing support for the party could hamper the remainder of his mandate and arguing that a choice was the “most responsible solution.” “France24 reported.
ECR describes itself as a “constructive center-right force,” according to Politico: The group also counts Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala's party as well as the Spanish far-right party Vox among its members. Romania added five new members to the group, proving once again that every victory counts.
The president and senior MEP of France's far-right National Rally (RN) party, Jordan Bardella, waits for the start of an interview on the evening news of French television channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, on 20 June 2024. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the most prominent new faces of the rising right is Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, who has been an MEP since 2019 and has taken on a galvanizing role in French politics in recent years, becoming the party's “model” . ,” and is now poised to become prime minister if his party wins the French elections scheduled for July. (Note: France has a president, Macron, who runs national and international policy and a prime minister who guides the parliamentary agenda and internal politics).
Bardella has already tried to show a more moderate temperament, backing away from his party's 2022 pledge to prioritize an exit from the “NATO integrated command,” insisting instead that such a move during wartime would “considerably weaken the responsibility of France on the European scene and, obviously, its credibility with its allies.”
Von der Leyen herself comes from Germany's Christian Democratic Union, former Prime Minister Angela Merkel's party, but analysts have warned that if she retains her role as president of the European Commission, she will have to try to balance demands from both extremes. . of the political spectrum if she wants to succeed.
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Sandro Gozi, Renew's top MEP, told Politico that he does not believe ECR's rise at the expense of his own party will provide any kind of fundamental change in parliament's policies and approach, arguing that the “pro-European majority” in the leftist parties will be enough to keep things practically the same.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
