It is easy to consider the European Parliament elections as the most important and not really important elections.
Hundreds of millions of voters across 27 countries will go to the polls this weekend, but the European Parliament is the least powerful of the European Union’s institutions. It is often derided as a talk shop. Its 720 members have limited powers, and while a few are rising stars, a few are retired politicians or even criminals.
Yet the European Union has never been more important in delivering tangible benefits to its citizens or to the world as a force for stability and prosperity, since its inception as an economic union nearly seven decades ago. The parliament formed after these elections, weak as it may be, will act as a brake or accelerator for important policies that will shape Europe’s immediate future.
In the five years since the last election, the bloc has come together to buy Covid-19 vaccines and start a program major economic stimulus program to recover from the pandemic. It sanctions Russia and pays to arm and rebuild Ukraine. It abandoned Russian energy imports and negotiated new natural gas sources. It overhaul its movement system. It has adopted ambitious climate policies.
But at the time, the EU was also criticized for failing to meet demands for greater accountability and transparency and for promoting policies that favored urban elites over farmers and voters. tri in the countryside. The loss of sovereignty to a little-known power center in Brussels, run by technocrats, is also unpopular with many Europeans.
Angered by Covid-era policies and the arrival of more migrants, and eager to regain a sense of control and identity, many voters are expected to lean to the right. The next two right-wing parties contesting these elections are poised to make significant gains.
That shift is also driven by some of the same culture war issues related to gender politics, especially in Eastern Europe, as in the United States and other parts of the developed world.
In that context, the European elections will create a new compromise with political extremes. It looks like centrist parties will have to work with the far right to get anything done.
If If predictions are correct then Parliament may find it more difficult to carry out even the limited functions it has – approving EU laws, the bloc’s budget and filling top leadership positions. of the EU. Smaller, more disruptive actors will become more powerful. And on the far right it is crumblingleading to further instability in the European political process.
“Normally, these elections would be second or third in importance,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at consulting firm Eurasia Group. “But voting matters because of context.”
Never waste a crisis
The European Union develops through crisis. At the heart of this unique experiment in supranational governance is the idea that European nations can achieve more together than either individually.
However, the way the bloc operates is based on inherent tensions between the EU’s general institutions, mainly based in Brussels, mainly the executive, the European Commission, and national governments in each of the 27 member states.
According to its founding document, the commission sees itself as the guardian of a vision for a federal Europe, guiding its members toward “an ever closer union.” National governments vacillated between empowering and funding the commission and seeking to control it, blaming failures and taking credit for successes.
This weekend’s election will send a strong signal to European leaders about which side people want to put their hands on. Each consolidation of Brussels’ power tends to be followed by some popular resistance, making European integration a process of two steps forward, one step back.
The pandemic is a case in point. After a devastating first wave that left Europeans without full access to vaccines, the EU organized buy billions of vaccine doses and Europeans quickly escaped punishing lockdowns.
In many ways, the response was considered a success. But it has also caused deep distrust of Brussels among voters, especially on the right, who are wary of government overreaction and may also be vaccine skeptics .
Vaccine procurement contracts remain secret and there is a widespread feeling that the EU has 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 ravaged countries and caused dizzying rates of post-pandemic inflation, the EU persuaded its members to borrow money to fund a massive stimulus plan. big. This kind of Rubicon – borrowing together – broke new ground and arguably prevented the EU from collapsing into a deeper and more lasting recession.
But it is also unpopular with the bloc’s richest countries, which underwrite those debts and are net contributors to the bloc’s spending. It has also angered right-wing voters in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, who feel that the EU has taken too much from them and given too little in return.
The next test is Ukraine. When Russia launched a full-scale invasion, the EU punished Russia along with the United States and other allies. It severed ties with much of the Russian economy, eventually abandoning it as an energy source – and in the process, giving up access to cheap electricity.
Today, although the United States remains Ukraine’s indispensable supporter, the EU is sending billions of euros to Kyiv for weapons and reconstruction, while offering the country a future within its ranks as an official member of the EU.
For voters who feel that supporting Ukraine has come at too high a price and others who are pro-Russian, the war has become another driving force behind the appeal of the far right.
Which way to go now?
After such crises, governments often seek to regain some of the powers they ceded to the EU to avoid disaster. That backlash is being reinforced by nationalist, nativist parties that resent Brussels’ loss of sovereignty.
“The problem is that all the main areas where the EU needs to solve problems for its citizens today – competitiveness, migration, security – are problems that lie within the borders,” Mr. Rahman said. EU jurisdiction”.
“These are the areas that define state power and it is very difficult to get countries to cede sovereignty again and to build a collective and coherent European response.”
The EU political mainstream – including the European Commission – has tried to get ahead of that trend by, for example, Moderate green policy to please farmers who have staged sometimes violent protests across Europe this year.
But the EU continues to push for closer coordination as it sees a new crisis looming – common defense – an area in which the EU is not very good.
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 a highly fragmented global order strong or not.
A Trump presidency could erode America’s investment in NATO, push for a faster peace in Ukraine on Russia’s terms, and push America more firmly toward Israel.
The EU will have difficulty maintaining a tough line against Russia if the US cuts support for Ukraine. Its push for international norms will also face challenges elsewhere, including in the Middle East, where it is only a minor player.
More broadly, with the far right stronger in the European Parliament, Trump-friendly leaders such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, will move front and center.
With nationalist parties in coalition governments in seven of its 27 members, the EU could move closer to a Trump-led America. Their own unifying aspirations to make European power felt around the world will be tested.
“I think we should be prepared to respond to drastic changes coming from the US, but we may not be able to,” said Shahin Vallée, a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. , largely because member states are not ready for it.” .
“My basic scenario is that, if Trump is elected, European leaders will personally come to the White House to do exactly what they did last time: beg for Trump’s help.”
