European Election

Election forecasts indicate the centre has held in European politics, for now

Continued momentum of far right and populist nationalists poses threat to European Parliament

European Commission President and EPP lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech during an EPP election evening after the vote for the European Parliament election in Brussels. Photograph: John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
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Jack Power Europe Correspondent
Sun Jun 09 2024 - 21:42

It will be slightly battered and slimmer than before, but the centre coalition that effectively runs the European Parliament will hold together, according to initial forecasts from the elections over the weekend.

The centre right European People’s Party (EPP) will remain the biggest grouping in the parliament, picking up several seats. The centre left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) seem to have mostly held their ground, while the centrist and liberal group Renew are expected to lose a sizeable number of seats.

Despite the mainstream parties taking heart that the wave of support for the extreme right looked unlikely to become a tsunami, the electoral trend is undeniably going in a rightward direction. The current governing majority that ensures the European Parliament functions and is able to pass laws has remained intact this time, but for how long?

In the last two decades the number of seats held by the EPP, Renew and S&D has fallen from more than 70 per cent of the parliament, to about 55 per cent, according to exit polls. If you look back to the 2014 elections, the EPP and the S&D, historically the centre of gravity in the parliament, won more than half of the seats between them.

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The fear had been a surge in support for more extreme and hard right parties this time could threaten the long-standing centre majority. The result would have likely been a breakdown in the parliament’s ability to function as we know it, leading to a logjam at the heart of the EU’s policymaking system. Exit polls suggest that will not come to pass.

Controversially Von der Leyen has made no secret of the fact she would be open to a back room deal to secure the support of Giorgia Meloni’s ultra conservative party

The hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and far right Identity and Democracy groupings, along with some other unattached extreme right parties, are set to make significant gains. But indications clear that are – as expected – their increase in seats will not be enough to upend the system. They will still be able to cause big headaches as a loud, obstructive voice opposing policy.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s team will be pouring over the results as they are finalised in the coming days. Von der Leyen, who is seeking a second term as head of the commission, will need the backing of a qualified majority of the 27 national leaders, as well as MEPs. An incredibly tight vote is expected in parliament, where she will need 361 of the available 720 votes.

Some national parties and individual MEPs who sit in the trio of EPP, S&D and Renew have already said they will break with their groups and vote against her. So this realistically means the German politician will need the three centre groups to win close to 400 seats to give her a cushion to account for that. A projection of the make-up of the next parliament, based on exit polls and other data before the first official results from the elections came in on Sunday night, indicated the groupings could get close to those numbers.

Controversially Von der Leyen has made no secret of the fact she would be open to a back room deal to secure the support of Giorgia Meloni’s ultra conservative party Brothers of Italy. However, such a scenario risks Renew and S&D withdrawing their support. The other option of striking a deal over on the left with the European Greens risks alienating those in the right wing of her own EPP, who have spent the last year opposing environmental policy.

Many casting their votes for the extremes are also doing so in protest over the failure of national governments

More important than whether the commission president is out of a job is the fact that the far right, populists and other ultraconservatives continue to gain substantial ground.

Europe has faced a decade of headwinds, from the financial crash and austerity, to the 2015 migration crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, not to mention the looming threat of climate change. One reading of the rise of nationalist conservative parties and the far right is a growing lack of belief in the ability of the EU to respond to those and future challenges. The message of the standard bearers of the right like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, is that we need less not more EU.

Many casting their votes for the extremes are also doing so in protest over the failure of national governments. In France the big success of Le Pen’s far right National Rally is much more a condemnation of president Emmanuel Macron, who called a snap parliamentary election in response to the vote, than Von der Leyen or Brussels.

While the centre held up this time, the trend is going in the wrong direction and picking up pace. If mainstream politics does not find a way to counter the growth of rightwing populism, the next election in five years time may be the one where the working majority of the European Parliament does collapse.