The past elections for the European Parliament are described in emotionally charged language in the public, but also among supporters of individual European party federations and conflicting visions of a united Europe. While some speak of the twilight of democracy and draw parallels with the 1930s, others speak of the day when the dawn of freedom has broken. A somewhat more sober view would be that, despite everything, the center, i.e. the mainstream of European party politics, more or less endured.
Small but significant shifts
The coalition of three centrist Europarties on the left-right political spectrum, respectively Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Liberals (Renew Europe) and Christian Democrats (EPP), still holds the majority. However, while five years ago this majority was 59.1, now it has fallen to 55.9 percent. The largest decline was experienced by the Liberals, followed by the Greens, while the largest growth was experienced by the group of MPs who are not affiliated to any club of European party federations. There will be almost 100 of these parliamentarians, so they make up the third largest group in the European Parliament. The key question is who they will side with, since among them are representatives of the Alternative for Germany, which was kicked out of Identity and Democracy. In order to establish a political group (faction) in the Parliament, 23 representatives from at least a quarter of the member states (seven) are needed.
Also, although we can say that the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), as well as Identity and Democracy (ID), increased the number of representatives, this is still not such a large spike. ECR went from 8.3 to 10.1, and ID (that is, their predecessor, the Europe of Nations and Freedom group) dropped from 9.7 to 8.1, although the previous and current political groups are not identical in terms of their membership. On the one hand, the possibility of uniting into a single group on the right is offered, and on the other hand, there are scenarios in which three groups are formed or some parties (like the AfD) ultimately fail to form a group and remain non-aligned.
The latter outcome is more likely, since the parties to the right of the European People’s Party actually have much more that divides them than unites them. The issue of Russian aggression against Ukraine is a big divisive issue. Other dividing lines are the attitude towards the very nature of the European Union and the question of the role of the state in the economy. Furthermore, while Christian conservative forces are more common in the ECR, in the ID, we can find ethnonationalists. Ultimately, the ethnonationalism of certain European countries sooner or later comes into conflict with neighboring ethnonationalisms due to different views on the turbulent history of the Old Continent, which means that cooperation at that end of the political spectrum will almost always be limited in scope and duration.
Paris and Berlin put to the test
The most significant changes in this year's European elections took place in the core states of the European Union, i.e. the founding members. It is a highly industrialized and densely populated part of the Old Continent that stretches from the Rhine to Rome and from the Danube to the Pyrenees. In other words, what was the core of Europe a thousand years ago (the Frankish Empire) has not changed much to this day, at least in geopolitical terms. In these regions, the election was won by parties that want everything opposite to the European mainstream – they want more national and less Brussels decision-making, they are socially conservative, they intend to strictly limit the acceptance of asylum seekers and immigrants, and in foreign policy matters they often look more towards Moscow than towards Washington. In contrast, from the Baltic to the Adriatic and the Aegean, the old mainstream forces have largely held their ground.
The most significant are the election results in Germany and France. Chancellor Scholz's traffic light coalition is a big loser in these European elections. In the central country of the EU, it was once again confirmed that the elections for the European Parliament can be used to punish the government. The Christian Democrats from the CDU and CSU again came first, while the Social Democrats, for the first time, fell to third place, behind the Alternative for Germany. The country is struggling how to reconcile efforts for a green transition with maintaining jobs in the automobile and chemical industries. Furthermore, German politics is torn by the question to what extent and how to help Kyiv and how to fix the failed model of accepting asylum seekers and integrating immigrants. The parallels with the 1930s are exaggerated for now, but it has been long since the Federal Republic has been so polarized, which includes an increasing number of attacks on politicians and other forms of terrorism and politically motivated violence and vandalism. Early elections are not in the tradition of German post-war parliamentarism, and the cycle of provincial elections will allow many more midterm tests of popularity of the traffic light coalition before the regular election term in the fall of next year.
Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN) has beaten Macron's centrist coalition to the ground. This result is the culmination of the process that began with the Yellow Vests Movement in 2018. When you look at the electoral geography, it becomes clear that rural France has decided to support Le Pen and turned its back on the centrist forces represented by Macron. France, like Germany, is torn by the issue of distributing the burden of the green transition between citizens and businesses and between the poor and the wealthy. Furthermore, in France, the issue of immigration (and failed integration) is increasingly securitized over time due to frequent terrorist and other politically motivated acts of violence. An additional challenge for the Hexagon is overcoming the overlap of Europe's identity dilemmas with the war between Israel and Hamas. Indeed, the largest Muslim and the largest Jewish communities on the continent live in France at the same time. Since October 2023, there has been an increasing number of incidents of anti-Jewish motivated violence and vandalism.
Macron decided to react to the electoral defeat by raising the stakes and announcing early elections for the National Assembly. The government of Élisabeth Borne, and then of Gabriel Attal, already lacks a majority support in the National Assembly and relies largely on the support of the Republicans (Gaullists) and the fact that the left-wing opposition (NUPES, an alliance of the socialists, new left, communists, and greens) and the right-wing opposition (RN and other smaller parties) can hardly agree on its overturning. Macron's risky calculation of a snap election at the end of this month (first round) is based on the assumption that he will succeed in rallying a wide range of people who do not want to see Le Pen in power, as well as on the fact that the two-round electoral system will allow the candidates of his coalition to eventually win by falling into the gap between the left and right opposition.
However, the polls are not in Macron’s favor, and he was dealt an additional blow by the announcement of the Republican leaders that they are ready to abandon the policy of le cordon sanitaire and join forces with Le Pen. The tension of the situation is also observable in the fact that, at the time of concluding this text, the Republicans expelled their president Éric Ciotti from the party after he announced cooperation with the RN, while he disputes the party's decision, claiming that his coalition plan is supported by the majority of current Republican representatives. In any case, a government made up of the RN, the Republicans and other smaller partners on the right, would be a significant prelude to the presidential elections in 2027, where there would then be a chance for a right-wing candidate to win, either Le Pen or her successor, the young Jordan Bardella.
The art of negotiation
Until the end of June, intensive negotiations will be conducted both between the governments of the member countries and between the leaders of the European party federations. All of this should culminate in a summit meeting on the 27th and 28th of this month, when the European Council, by a majority vote of the heads of government or state, should support the candidate for President of the Commission. However, although von der Leyen is likely candidate, she is not entirely likely to be the new head of the European Commission. Namely, voting in the Parliament is secret. Five years ago, she was elected with a majority of only nine votes, although the majority of the EPP, Socialists and Liberals held a majority of 67 representatives. Von der Leyen had already reached out to the Italian prime minister to potentially widen her support, but this was strongly opposed by the European Federation of Liberal Parties. The EPP will almost certainly keep the top post in the Commission, but if they want to keep the current president, they will have to make a series of concessions to the Socialists and Liberals, and potentially to the Greens. Of course, there is a chance that someone else from the ranks of the EPP will be elected in the end, even someone who is a non-partisan candidate, such as Mario Draghi, former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank.
A long march through the agenda
Even if the European Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant right fails to form a joint political group in the European Parliament and fails to influence personnel decisions in key positions, after these elections it will have a decisive influence in a number of countries. In the fall, there are elections in Austria, in which the Freedom Party, which also celebrated in these elections, should win. In France, victory is within their reach for the first time, in the Netherlands they recently came to power. A few years ago, the green parties did not win such a large number of mandates in the national elections and in the elections for the European Parliament that they could have a significant share in the executive power. However, they still pulled off a paradigm shift. We can expect that the political forces to the right of EPP will succeed in a similar process.
In other words, regardless of whether they were in power or in the opposition, the Greens throughout the European Union managed to incorporate the topics of green transition, sustainable development and renewable energy sources into the political programs of their competitors and, through a long march through the agenda, achieved that their ideas and their policies appear at the top of the political agenda of all relevant decision-making bodies. Similarly, after the 2024 European elections, we can expect that over time, under the pressure of the rise of the parties gathered in the ECR and ID, but also those that are not aligned, it will come to the point that, first of all, the EPP, but partly also the Socialists and Liberals, will start to revise their immigration and integration policies and move towards more restrictive attitudes towards immigration as well as returning the burden of adaptation to immigrants rather than receiving societies.