BRUSSELS — Europe’s conservatives are ecstatic.
The European People’s Party (EPP) scored a clear victory in Sunday’s European Parliament election, tightening its grip on the chamber even as far-right groups made major gains across the bloc.
The center-right force is on track to have around 184 lawmakers in Parliament, a quarter of the 720 in the hemicycle, according to provisional data. It is the only centrist party to have grown in this election: The center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) remained stable, while the liberal Renew Europe group was decimated.
From its position of power, the EPP is best placed to set EU policy, tilting the agenda to the right. “We are the party of industry, we are the party of rural areas, we are the farmers’ party of Europe,” Manfred Weber, the leader of the EPP Group in the Parliament, recently told POLITICO.
While the EPP could once again join a grand coalition with the socialists and liberals, it could also negotiate a working relationship on some issues with parties further to the right — if it can do so without alienating its centrist allies.
Far-right wins big
As polls predicted, far-right forces made major gains across the bloc. In France, the National Rally raked in nearly a third of the votes, consolidating itself as the leading ultra nationalist group in the next Parliament. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy similarly soared, with more than a quarter of voters backing the group.
The two groups in the European Parliament on the furthest right of the spectrum, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, will control 131 seats in the chamber. That’s not counting the Alternative for Germany’s 15 lawmakers, the 10 representatives of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, the six belonging to Poland’s Confederation party, or the three members of Bulgaria’s pro-Kremlin Revival party.
Meloni’s advance in Italy undercut the League; once the leading party within the Identity and Democracy group, it lost two-thirds of its seats on Sunday. In Spain, the Vox party was similarly undermined by The Party is Over, a new party led by far-right internet personality Alvise Pérez. That new group secured three seats that could have gone to Vox, which doubled its representation and will have six lawmakers in Brussels during the next term.
If the far right were to form a single group it would be the second largest force in Parliament, behind the traditionally dominant European People’s Party. The rivalries and disagreements within its ranks make that scenario unlikely, but its sheer size will nonetheless put rightward pressure on EU policy.
Von der Leyen’s narrow path to victory
Sunday’s results suggest European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has a good shot at remaining in office, but not a certain one.
If she wins the backing of the EU’s national leaders, she will need to get Parliament to confirm her bid. In 2019, she was elected with votes from the EPP, the S&D and Renew Europe. The same coalition could, in principle, provide her with another majority.
She’ll need to count the numbers carefully because the vote on her candidacy is a secret one. The last time she asked for Parliament’s support, five years ago, she could in theory count on the support of the 440 lawmakers belonging to the three centrist groups, but got just 383 votes.
This time, the three groups will account for more than 400 of the 720 lawmakers in the hemicycle. That should be enough if all their members vote for her, but it’s not certain they all will: Even some EPP parties have said they will not support her.
Black eye for Europe’s Greens
After five years during which Brussels made the Green Deal its signature issue, voters turned against ecologically minded parties and voted their representatives out of the Parliament.
The Green’s most substantial losses came from the delegations representing France and Germany, which had accounted for half of the movement’s strength in Parliament. Despite small advances in countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, the group will lose more than a dozen lawmakers, dropping in size from the fourth to the sixth largest party in the chamber.
Renew fails to renew
The Renew Europe group — the third pillar of the three-way grand coalition that dominated the Parliament during the past five years — got thumped on Sunday.
In France, Emmanuel Macron’s party imploded as voters expressed their frustration with the national government by voting for the far-right. The group’s Spanish subsidiary, Ciudadanos, disappeared altogether: The seven seats it had in the Parliament were all absorbed into the center-right People’s Party. Losses were also noted among related groups in Romania, Denmark and Estonia.
With around 14 percent of the Parliament’s seats, Renew spent most of the previous term acting as a kingmaker. Now, the party is unlikely to have as much power due to its smaller size — a development which is bad news for figures like Macron, who hoped to use it to push his vision for Europe in Brussels.
What this means for national leaders
As is usually the case during European Parliament elections, citizens across the bloc used their vote as de facto referendums on their national governments. In France, the overwhelming victory scored by the far-right National Rally provoked President Emmanuel Macron to react by dissolving the National Assembly and calling a snap election.
While no other national leader reacted with such dramatic flare, the negative results for governing parties in countries like Germany and Hungary were interpreted as blows for their respective leaders.
In Denmark, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats retained their seats in a vote that was cast as a referendum on her centrist government’s handling of immigration. In Spain, an attempt to present the election as a plebiscite on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez failed: His Socialist party nearly tied with the center-right People’s Party, undermining the conservatives’ bid to use the results to bring down his minority coalition government.
The post 5 things to know about the EU election results appeared first on Politico.
