European parliamentary elections remain a marginal event in the political life of member states, as evidenced by the low average turnout. Between 1979 and 1989, turnout was between 62% and 59% in the Europe of 15 member states. The 2004 enlargement to include ten Central European countries brought this figure down to less than 45%. It has tended to rise slightly to 51% in recent elections, thanks in particular to the higher turnout in four Central European countries (Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where it has risen from 7% to 16%), while it has stagnated or fallen in the countries of Western Europe. There was a slight erosion in the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group, which lost three seats with 136 MEPs, and a slight increase of 2 seats for the Left Group (formerly the GUE) with 39 MEPs.
Overall, these results do not call into question the existing consensus at the head of the EU with an alliance of EPP, S&D and Renew. The Union’s main places of executive and legislative power - the European Commission (chaired since 2019 by Ursula von der Leyen) and the EU Council of Ministers - will therefore continue to be dominated by this alliance, not forgetting the European Central Bank (ECB). The top posts are appointed by the Council of EU heads of state. This alliance will ensure that the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission, decided by the Council, is ratified by the Parliament. Similarly, Antonio Costa, a Portuguese member of the S&D group, will be appointed President of the European Council. But the margin of this alliance is becoming less clear-cut with the crisis of the Renew liberals and an anti-Von den Leyen protest within the EPP, targeting in particular the 2019 Green Pact, which sets itself the objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, without, moreover, providing itself with financial resources on the scale of this objective.
In addition, since Covid, lobbies from the automotive, chemical and plastics industries have been lobbying the EPP to call into question the objectives of this pact. They have also been joined by agribusiness lobbies. Manfred Weber, President of the EPP and Ursula von der Leyen’s rival, acted as spokesman for this front, pushing for a shift towards the climate sceptics and Eurosceptics of the ECR group. Although von der Leyen was the target of this pressure, she herself made many overtures towards Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, notably by collaborating with the leader of Fratelli d’Italia on the EU’s anti-immigrant measures. The shift towards the extreme right has therefore been temporarily halted in Brussels, but the trend is there and EU policy, even without a direct alliance with the extreme right, cultivates an ultra-neoliberal orientation, in line with the authoritarian policies that are developing in Europe.
Moreover, in line with EU policies, the far right leads two governments in the EU: in Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government, in power since 2010, and that of Giorgia Meloni since 2022 (with Fratelli d’Italia in alliance with Matteo Salvini’s Lega, affiliated to ID in the European Parliament, and Forza Italia, the party created by Berlusconi, affiliated to the EPP).
And in recent years, other coalitions including the far right have been formed: in Finland, since 2023, the government led by the National Coalition Party (KOK, conservative, affiliated to the EPP) includes a coalition with the Finns’ Party (PS, far right, affiliated to the ECR group), the People’s Party (SFP, affiliated to Renew) and the Christian Democrats (KD). The PS has the post of deputy prime minister and finance minister.
In the Netherlands, a coalition led by Geert Wilders’ PVV (affiliated to ID), with the NSC and BBB (affiliated to the EPP) and the VVD (affiliated to Renew) has been in place since May. The prime minister is a senior civil servant and was a member of the PvdA, the old social democratic party, until 2021. Geert Wilders has been appointed immigration minister. In Sweden, in 2022, the Moderaterna party (affiliated to the EPP) formed a coalition with the Christian Democratic KD (affiliated to the EPP), the affiliated to ECR) and the Liberals (affiliated to Renew) with the non-participating support of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD,) who led the other right parties with over 20% of the vote. In Croatia, the HDZ party (affiliated to the EPP), while not declaring itself far-right, has a radical Christian Democrat slant, suggesting the rehabilitation of the Ustasha movement that imposed its criminal dictatorship in the 1940s.
Thus, beyond the declarations of EPP and Renew representatives affirming their rejection of alliances with the far right, in several countries the corresponding parties are finding common ground on ultra-neoliberal, often nationalist and anti-immigration policies. The social attacks, accentuated by the management of Covid, the high inflation of recent years, the impoverishment and precariousness of the working classes and disillusionment with the EU, particularly in Central Europe, have resulted in the emergence of far-right parties that exalt both nationalist withdrawal and exaltation of national identity.
The EPP is the largest group in the European Parliament, with 189 seats. It is dominated by Germany’s CDU/CSU (22 seats), from which Ursula von den Leyen hails. Next come Spain’s PP (22 seats) and Poland’s KO (21 seats), which in Poland took first place from Jarosław Kaczyński’s PIS (ECR 20 seats).But this should not hide the fact that the far-right Konfederacja party won 12.08% of the vote and 6 seats, giving the far right almost 50%. The bulk of the gains came from the Spanish PP, which won 10 seats, the Polish parties KO and Trzecia Droga, which won 10 seats, and the Hungarian Tizra with seven seats, coming from a more Europhile split from Orban’s Fidesz, which itself left the EPP in 2021.
The S&D
The social democratic group with its 136 seats lost 3 seats. Its main parties are the Italian PD (21 seats), the Spanish PSOE (20 seats), the German SPD (14 seats) and the French PS (13 seats). Its main gains come from France with 7 additional seats, Italy and Romania (plus 3), which mitigate the erosions in Germany (2 seats), Hungary and Bulgaria (6 seats).All in all, however, there was little movement.
Renew
By dropping from 102 seats to 74, the liberal group becomes the fourth largest group behind the extreme right-wing ECR. This is mainly due to the crisis of the French delegation led by Renaissance, Macron’s party, which lost ten seats, collapsing to 13 MEPs, as well as the disappearance of Ciudadanos and its seven seats, five seats for ANO2011 in the Czech Republic, a party which has left the group (for the time being as a non-attached party), and two seats for Momentum in Hungary. This was offset by Fianna Fail’s gain of 3 seats in Ireland. In Portugal, the emergence of Iniciativa Liberal brings two seats for a party that explicitly competes with the far-right Chega party on the authoritarian and neoliberal terrain.
This quick scan shows just how porous European parties can be between affiliation with Renew, the EPP or even far-right groups.
The Greens
The Greens/EFA group fell from 71 to 54 seats. The biggest losses were in Germany, where the Grünen, accountable for the government coalition’s policies, lost nine seats. The French Green party EELV also suffered a heavy loss of eight seats, failing to repeat its very good result of 2019.The Belgian Ecolo party, also a member of the liberal coalition of the De Croo government, lost more than half its votes and one of its two seats, while also losing more than half its seats in the Walloon and Brussels-Capital Region parliaments. On the other hand, the party came out on top with four elected members in the Flemish-speaking college of Brussels, where it was not in government. In Denmark, SF, the Socialistisk Folkeparti, having refused in 2022 to support the government bloc built behind Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democratic Party, allied with the Moderates and the Liberal Party, took first place in the European elections, with over 17% of the vote, overtaking the coalition parties and rising from 2 to 3 seats.
The Left
The Left/La Gauche group (GUE/NGL) maintained its position, gaining two seats. The biggest gains were for France insoumise (nine seats, a gain of three MEPs) and Finland, where the Left Alliance came second, taking three seats and 17.3% of the vote, tripling its votes and seats against the parties in the right-far-right coalition government. In Belgium, the PVDA/PTB moved up from one to two seats, in line with its steady rise in Belgian elections since 2019. In Italy, the Verdi e Sinistra alliance, inspired by the French NUPES, made a significant gain of its two components with six seats, including two MEPs affiliated to the GUE group. These gains offset the decline of Die Linke in Germany (three seats), Sumar and Podemos in Spain (three and two seats) and the BE and PCP in Portugal (two seats in total instead of four). In Greece, Plefsi Eleftherias, a non-affiliated party founded by Zoe Konstantopoulou, won a seat.
The future of BSW (six elected members), the party founded in Germany by Sarah Wagenknecht, a split from Die Linke – on an anti-austerity stance but with several positions against aid to migrants and blocking asylum seekers outside EU borders – remains uncertain. Its leader in Brussels, Fabio De Mais, has stated that there will be no affiliation to the GUE, but rather the creation of a new European group.
ECR, ID and other far-right parties
The ECR/RCE, European Conservatives and Reformists (83 seats), was created for the 2009 European elections by David Cameron’s British Conservative Party, the Czech ODS and the Polish PIS, bringing together a number of parties from the former Union for Europe of the Nations group. At the time it had 55 MEPs, now it has 83, having won 14 seats in the last elections. The two pivotal parties are Fratelli d’Italia (Giorgia Meloni) with 24 seats and the Polish PIS with 20 seats. There is a presence in 16 other countries, including 6 seats for Vox in Spain. ID, Identity and Democracy (58 seats), was created on the eve of the 2019 European elections around the Italian Lega, the German AfD, the Austrian FPÖ, the French Rassemblement National, Vlaams Belang and Geert Wilders’ PVV.
The two groups have 141 seats in the Parliament, and several other non-registered parties are also clearly on the far right. In a number of countries, their weight is now significant and, at European level, the pressure is clearly going to be on for even more reactionary policies.
In Italy, Fratelli d’Italia, affiliated to ECR (Giorgia Meloni), reversed the balance of power with the Lega, going from five to 24 seats, while Salvini’s party went from 28 to eight, giving 32 far-right MPs, allied in government with Forza Italia.
In France, the RN (affiliated to ID) topped the elections by a large margin, rising from 23 to 30 MEPs, to which must be added the five elected MEPs from Reconquête and, no doubt, half of the six MEPs from the Republicans, who, with Eric Ciotti, entered into an alliance with the RN. In Germany, the AfD gained six seats, increasing its number of MEPs from nine to 15, but it has been excluded from the ID group for the time being. In Austria, the FPÖ, affiliated to ID, doubled its number of seats from three to six, winning 25% of the vote. In Belgium, Vlaams Belang in Flanders and the N-VA in Wallonia accounted for 28% of the vote. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz took 45% of the vote, with his party and its 11 MEPs currently not affiliated. And behind it, Tizra, Peter Magyar’s party (affiliated to the EPP), is directly descended from Fidesz, being pro-European but just as reactionary. Not to mention the installation of Vox and Chega in Spain and Portugal. The kaleidoscope of the far right reflects disagreements over integration into the EU and relations with Russia, particularly following the invasion of Ukraine, but as with Viktor Orban, there is a wide range of agreement between all these parties on security and anti-immigrant policies.
There will be a lot at stake if the left in Europe is to revive its momentum, fight the extreme right and unite social and political forces around social and democratic demands.
27 June 2024