theglobalpanorama
Although Marine Le Pen claimed victory in France, her party scored less than the 24.9 percent it garnered in 2014.
A fresh wind swept through Europe on Monday as voters signaled their desire for a greener continent and kept gains by anti-Europe, nationalist forces below expectations.
Pro-European majorities in every country but Poland and Hungary rose up to counter a predicted surge by Euroskeptics, according to the provisional results of European Parliament elections across the twenty-eight-nation bloc.
Turnout in the elections, held from Thursday to Sunday, was the highest in twenty-five years, at 51 percent of the 400 million-strong electorate, up from 42.6 percent since the last elections in 2014.
The new 751-seat parliament will be more varied than in past years, during which a coalition of conservatives (center-right) and social democrats (center-left) commanded a majority. These groups lost ground to the Greens, who increased their presence by nearly 40 percent thanks to a strong youth turnout, and to liberal democrats affiliated with leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron, whose presence will rise by nearly 60 percent.
The European Parliament passes legislation on matters from international trade and investment in innovation, to data protection and the regulation of plastics. The new composition means that the Greens and liberal democrats will have a stronger voice in shaping European law, with their support essential for constructing majorities.
The new composition of Parliament means that the Greens and liberal democrats will have a stronger voice in shaping European law.
The surge in support for the Greens, who did particularly well in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, coincides with growing concern about climate change across Europe. Hundreds of thousands of students, often joined by their parents, have been marching to urge action to address global warming and threats to biodiversity.
Philippe Lamberts, who heads the Greens group in the European Parliament, said that the voice of the Greens had become indispensable for creating a stable majority.
“We will leverage the mandate the citizens gave us to effect real change,” Lamberts told the BBC on Sunday evening.
Results provided by the European Parliament on Tuesday showed that anti-European, anti-establishment parties on the far right and far left would hold 214 seats in the new parliament, or 28.5 percent. At a time of sharp tensions in many European countries over issues like migration and national sovereignty, these E.U.-critical parties had been predicted to win up to 33 percent of the seats.
The fact that inroads by anti-Europe forces were more modest than expected confirms that a strong majority continues to back the European Union’s commitment to democratic values, human rights and the rule of law, and to oppose the nationalist views of parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Germany’s Alternatif für Deutschland and Neil Farage’s Brexiteers in the United Kingdom.
In many countries, the European elections were seen as a litmus test for national politics and a barometer of sentiment on issues like immigration and globalization.
In France, Le Pen went so far as to call on President Macron to dissolve the National Assembly after her far-right party won 23.3 percent of the vote compared to 22.4 percent for Macron. (As France is a democracy with legislative elections every five years, this will not happen.) But although Marine Le Pen claimed victory, her party scored less than the 24.9 percent it garnered in 2014.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, with 28.9 percent of the vote, lost ground to the Greens (20.5 percent) and the far right (11 percent). While Merkel is staunchly pro-European, she has come under pressure from France recently for resisting Macron’s calls for stronger European integration in matters such as eurozone policy. The German Greens nearly doubled their 2014 score of 10.7 percent.
In Italy, in contrast, the Greens failed to gather the 5 percent of the vote necessary to enter the European Parliament, while Matteo Salvini’s rightwing League, with 34.3 percent, was projected to get twenty-eight of the country’s seventy-three seats. Euroskeptics also did well in Poland, winning twenty-six of the country’s fifty-one seats, followed by the conservatives with sixteen seats.
Although Marine Le Pen claimed victory in France, her party scored less than the 24.9 percent it garnered in 2014.
The run-up to this election saw the spectacle of Britain planning to pull out of the E.U. in March, only to postpone Brexit until October. The new Brexit party of Nigel Farage had the strongest showing, winning twenty-nine of the country’s seventy-three seats, compared to sixteen for the Liberal Democrats, eleven for the Greens and ten for Labour. Support collapsed for the Tories, with the Conservatives of outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May winning only four seats.
In Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives won the most seats despite an election-eve scandal engulfing his coalition partners, the far-right Freedom Party, for accepting Russian money in exchange for government contracts. Nonetheless, Kurz was ousted in a no-confidence vote on Monday when the Freedom Party joined the opposition Social Democrats in voting against him.
This election came at a time of deep divisions within Europe over the European Union’s role as a united front for all twenty-eight members.
The bloc, which began as a six-nation economic community in the 1950s, was founded in large measure in the aim of integrating the continent’s countries in order to prevent a repeat of the destruction and tragedy of World War II. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the expansion of the bloc into a prosperous union based on shared democratic principles and liberal values created a model that Eastern European countries, when freed of Soviet domination, were eager to join.
But this ideal has come under pressure in recent years due to the 2008 financial crisis and an influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa fleeing war, poverty, and climate disruption. Wealthier Western European nations with generous social safety nets have started to question how much their citizens should spend to help other countries remain economically and politically stable.
Western European nations with generous social safety nets have started to question how much their citizens should spend to help other countries.
The bloc has been further destabilized by support for Europe’s far-right parties by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and uncertainty among Europeans over whether the United States under Donald Trump is a dependable ally. Steve Bannon, who has sought to unify Europe’s nationalists and populists, was denounced by France’s president last week for effectively interfering in the election.
Despite the pro-Europe results of the vote, the question remains as to what the European Union will be able to accomplish in the coming five years given the new parliament’s increased fragmentation. With the exception of Nigel Farage, leaders on the far right and far left have largely given up their aim of taking their countries out of the European Union due to the idea’s unpopularity, but they intend to play a disruptive role.
The one area where progress seems almost certain is the response to climate change. In the outgoing body, the conservative-social democrat majority was unable to agree on a course of action. The influx of Greens will increase pressure on Europe’s legislature to move forward on this vital issue for our times.