Growing support for extremist and smaller parties across Europe could change the fundamental composition of the new European Parliament, writes Judy Dempsey
Elections to the European Parliament (EP) take place every five years. Until recently, the outcomes were predictable. The conservative European People’s Party has dominated with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists, albeit with declining numbers, and Democrats (S&D) coming in second.
Their decline reflects waning support for mainstream parties and an increasing fragmentation of European party systems at national and European levels.
This time round, the EP election is about how the growing support for extremist and smaller parties across Europe could change the composition of the parliament and the EU. Integration is taking a back seat.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reckons the major winner in the EP elections will be the radical right Identity and Democracy (ID) group.
“We expect it to gain 40 seats and, with almost 100 MEPs, to emerge as the third largest group in the new parliament,” states ECFR.
The political elites across Europe are nervous as far-right parties in France, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Hungary, Italy and other countries are campaigning hard to strengthen their presence in the EP.
And, despite backroom deals and trade-offs taking place inside the EP regarding which countries will become EU commissioners, a different political constellation could upset the way things have been done in the past.
The political status quo across Europe is changing. The 2009 global financial crisis dented the belief that the EU was on a permanent trajectory towards prosperity. The wars in Syria that led to well over a million people seeking refuge in Europe in 2015 created divisions inside the EU regarding identity and values. COVID-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine dented the unity and self-confidence of the EU even further.
More importantly, as EU leaders grapple with these global issues, they must respond to their electorates back home.
Citizens want security, affordable housing, better access to good schools, healthcare and other public services. These services are under pressure as governments, struggling with inflation, weigh up the cost of spending or saving more.
The far-right, nationalist and far-left parties, from the comfort of not being in office, exploit these crises. They want their governments to stop sending weapons to Ukraine; to stop the inflows of asylum seeks or refugees fleeing wars, famine and the effects of climate change. They question the costs of protecting the environment.
In short, the sense of security that characterised most of (Western) Europe after 1945, and even after the reunification of Germany after 1991, is being replaced with an uncertainty that populist and far-right and far-left parties are tapping into.
They challenge the status quo that oversaw the establishment of today’s EU.
If they gain many seats in the EP, they will not want to leave the EU. The financial benefits are too big and support for the EU is still high across the bloc. Instead, they want to change the EU from within.
The issue for these parties is sovereignty. Like Brexit, they want to ‘regain’ their national sovereignty but remain in the EU.
Yet EU membership requires ceding some sovereignty in return for certain benefits. With few exceptions, EU leaders shy from selling those benefits to their citizens. Their reluctance plays into the hands of the far right and the far left.
Judy Dempsey is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Europe
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