It is tempting to dismiss the European Parliament elections as the most important elections that don’t really matter.
Hundreds of millions of voters in 27 countries will turn out to vote this weekend, but the European Parliament is the least powerful of the European Union’s institutions. It is often derided as a talk show. Its 720 members have limited powers, and while some are rising stars, others are retired politicians or even criminals.
But the European Union has never been more important in delivering tangible benefits to its citizens, or to the world by being a force for stability and prosperity, since its creation as an economic alliance almost seven decades ago. The Parliament that emerges from these elections, however weak, will serve as a brake or accelerator on the crucial policies that will help shape Europe’s immediate future.
In the five years since the last election, the bloc jointly purchased Covid-19 vaccines and launched a massive economic stimulus program to recover from the pandemic. He sanctioned Russia and paid to arm and rebuild Ukraine. He abandoned Russian energy imports and negotiated new sources of natural gas. Reviewed its immigration system. Adopted ambitious climate policies.
But in that time, the EU has also been criticized for failing to address demands for greater accountability and transparency, and for pushing policies that favor urban elites over farmers and rural voters. The loss of sovereignty to an obscure power center in Brussels, run by technocrats, also does not sit well with many Europeans.
Angered by Covid-era policies and the arrival of more immigrants, and desperate to regain a sense of control and identity, many voters are expected to swing to the right. The other two right-wing parties running in these elections are poised to make significant gains.
That shift is also fraught with some of the same culture war issues surrounding gender politics, especially in Eastern Europe, as in the United States and other parts of the developed world.
In this context, the European elections will produce a new commitment to political extremes. It seems likely that centrist parties will have to work with the far right to achieve anything.
If he If the projections are correct, then Parliament could find it more difficult to perform even the limited functions it has: approving EU legislation, the bloc’s budget and senior EU leadership positions. Smaller, more disruptive players will become more powerful. And the far right is splintering, leading to greater instability in the European political process.
“Normally, these elections would be of second or third order of importance,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the consulting firm Eurasia Group. “But the vote matters because of the context.”
Never waste a crisis
The European Union grows through the crisis. At the heart of this unique experiment in supranational governance is the idea that the countries of Europe can achieve more together than each one alone.
Still, the way the bloc works is based on an inherent tension between the EU’s joint institutions based primarily in Brussels, primarily its executive arm, the European Commission, and the national governments of each of the 27 member states. .
The commission sees itself as the guardian of a vision of a federal Europe and guides its members toward “an ever closer union,” according to its founding document. National governments oscillate between empowering and funding the commission and trying to control it, blaming it for failures and taking credit for successes.
This weekend’s elections will send a strong signal to European leaders about which side of the scale citizens want to point to. Each consolidation of power by Brussels has tended to be followed by some popular rejection, making European integration a process of two steps forward and one step back.
The pandemic was a good example. After a brutal first wave that left Europeans without sufficient access to vaccines, the EU organized the purchase of billions of vaccine doses and Europeans quickly emerged from severe lockdowns.
In many ways, the response was considered a success. But it also generated deep distrust of Brussels in the pockets of voters, especially on the right, who are wary of government overreach and who may also be skeptical about vaccines.
Vaccine procurement contracts remain secret and there is a widespread feeling that the EU ordered too many doses and wasted taxpayers’ money. (The New York Times is suing the commission in a Freedom of Information case before the European Court over documents related to these contracts.)
As a deep economic crisis gripped countries and unleashed skyrocketing inflation rates in the wake of the pandemic, the EU convinced its members to borrow money together to finance a vast stimulus plan. This kind of Rubicon (borrowing together) broke new ground and arguably prevented the collapse of the EU into a deeper and longer recession.
But it was also unpopular among the bloc’s richest nations, which are the insurers of that debt and net contributors to the bloc’s spending. This has also angered right-wing voters in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, who feel the EU takes too much from them and gives back too little.
The next test was Ukraine. When Russia launched a full-scale invasion, the EU sanctioned Russia at the same pace as the United States and other allies. It severed ties with much of the Russian economy, ultimately abandoning it as a source of energy and, in the process, giving up cheap access to electricity.
Today, while the United States remains Ukraine’s indispensable backer, the EU is sending billions of euros to kyiv for weapons and reconstruction and has offered it a future within its ranks as a full EU member in the future.
For voters who felt that supporting Ukraine had come at too high a price, and for others who favor Russia, the war has become another attractive factor for the far right.
Where to now?
After this type of crisis, national governments often try to regain some of the authority they had ceded to the EU to avoid a calamity. That reaction is being reinforced by nationalist and nativist parties that resent the loss of sovereignty to Brussels.
“The problem is that all the important areas where the EU needs to address the problems of its citizens now – competitiveness, migration, security – are issues that are at the edge of the EU’s competence,” Rahman said.
“These are areas that define state power, and it is very difficult to get countries to relinquish sovereignty and build a collective and coherent European response.”
EU policymakers – including the European Commission – have tried to get ahead of that trend, for example by moderating green policies to satisfy farmers who staged sometimes violent protests across Europe this year.
But the EU continues to push for greater coordination as it sees a new crisis looming (joint defence), an area it is not very good at.
Another thing the EU is not good at is foreign policy, but whether ready or not, these elections will influence whether the bloc can find its voice in an intensely fragmented global order.
A Trump presidency could erode American investment in NATO, push for faster peace in Ukraine on Russia’s terms and cause the United States to more aggressively back Israel.
The EU would find it difficult to maintain a hard line against Russia if the United States cuts its support for Ukraine. His promotion of international norms would also encounter challenges elsewhere, including the Middle East, where he is a supporting player.
More broadly, with a stronger far-right in the European Parliament, Trump-aligned leaders, such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, would move front and center.
With nationalist parties in coalition governments in seven of its 27 members, the EU could end up moving closer to a Trump-led United States. Their own aspirations for unity would be tested to make European power felt in the world.
“I think we should be prepared to respond to drastic changes coming from the United States, but we may not be able to do so, largely because member states are not prepared for it,” said Shahin Vallée, a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations. .
“My base case is that if Trump is elected, European leaders will individually rush to the White House to do precisely what they did last time: ask Trump for favors.”