This is a historic and pivotal year for democracy across the globe. Around\u00a070 countries\u00a0\u2013 from the\u00a0United States\u00a0to\u00a0South Africa, via\u00a0Mexico\u00a0and\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0\u2013 will hold elections in 2024. <\/p>\n
After India\u2019s huge and ongoing six-week ballot, however, the biggest election in terms of voter numbers will happen next week, when 373 million Europeans can go to the polls and elect 720 members of the next European Parliament. <\/p>\n
Once the votes have been tallied from across the 27-nation bloc, it is widely expected that the results will show a significant shift to the right, which could have major implications for the political direction of the European Union at a time\u00a0when it is battling\u00a0multiple crises,\u00a0many of them global. <\/p>\n
From the war in Ukraine to coping with mass migration, the rise of China to the threat of climate change, it\u2019s hard to see how a bloc of\u00a0diverse\u00a0countries could possibly speak with one voice. <\/p>\n
Of course, differences in opinion among\u00a0the\u00a0member states is nothing new. EU politics has always relied on awkward alliances between countries and political ideologies that represent vastly different electorates. <\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s political center has undeniably moved to the right over the past two decades,\u00a0however. <\/p>\n
The European Parliament is the place where this is most visible at an EU level. Most\u00a0of the lawmakers (known as MEPs)\u00a0belong to a political party in their own country.\u00a0Once they enter\u00a0the European Parliament\u00a0in the Belgian capital of Brussels, they sit in loose, multinational political groupings that broadly have similar political interests. <\/p>\n
These groupings then form even looser coalitions,\u00a0which\u00a0usually results with a majority grouping of centrists from the center-left, center-right and liberals somewhere in the middle. <\/p>\n
The rightward shift of the political center in this coalition has been gradual. In 1994, the main socialist group S&D had the most MEPs. In 1999,\u00a0it was\u00a0overtaken by the center-right European People\u2019s Party (EPP). <\/p>\n
The EPP, best explained as conservatives in the mold of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel,\u00a0has\u00a0been the dominant force in\u00a0EU\u00a0politics ever since. <\/p>\n
While the EPP has been able to lead a mainstream centrist coalition with the left and liberals at a European level, MEPs are still beholden to domestic politics happening back in their own countries. <\/p>\n
For example, it\u2019s not easy for a conservative to work with a liberal on a pan-EU policy that would share the burden of asylum seekers if voters back home are becoming attracted to loud, anti-immigration populists. The louder the domestic noise \u2013 and the greater the risk of losing their own seat in parliament \u2013 the trickier cross-party politics at a Brussels level becomes. <\/p>\n
The anticipated influx of\u00a0lawmakers into groups\u00a0to the EPP\u2019s right will\u00a0certainly\u00a0complicate matters. <\/p>\n
While the\u00a0right-wing\u00a0European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and\u00a0far-right\u00a0Identity and Democracy (ID)\u00a0groups\u00a0are expected to finish fourth and fifth respectively in terms of seat numbers, their combined tally, which could be upwards of 140,\u00a0according to the Politico Poll of Polls, will be hard for the EPP to ignore.\u00a0The EPP is currently predicted to win 165 seats to 143 for the socialist S&D. <\/p>\n
ECR and ID are typical of European\u00a0Parliament\u00a0parties in that they are home to a pretty broad group of conservatives. <\/p>\n
The ECR, for example, was founded by former British Prime Minister David Cameron who campaigned against Brexit. Its current chair is Italian PM Georgia Meloni, who garnered lots of attention during the 2022 Italian election for her opposition to\u00a0LGBTQ+\u00a0rights,\u00a0promises to curb migration and general anti-globalist rhetoric. <\/p>\n
However, since\u00a0Meloni\u2019s\u00a0election, she has been seen as considerably more moderate and has supported many key EU initiatives, including support for Ukraine. She has also resisted allowing\u00a0authoritarian\u00a0Hungarian\u00a0leader\u00a0Viktor Orban to join the ECR after he left the EPP. <\/p>\n
Hungary has been the most pro-Russia EU voice since the start of the war. Whether or not it was deliberate on Meloni\u2019s part, resistance to Orban has made working with her and the ECR more palatable to the Brussels establishment, including EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. <\/p>\n
ID, too, has sought to moderate its image. It\u00a0recently expelled\u00a0the German far-right AfD party from its ranks after one of its most senior MEPs told an Italian newspaper\u00a0that he didn\u2019t see all members of the SS, the notorious Nazi paramilitary group, automatically as criminals. <\/p>\n
There is quite a wide range in opinion from the moderate wing of the ERC to the fringes of ID, but political\u00a0currents\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0desire for influence\u00a0can result in some\u00a0odd bedfellows, especially in the opaque and fluid world of European politics. <\/p>\n
It is unlikely that the EPP would be willing to work directly with ID any time soon, but that doesn\u2019t mean they won\u2019t be important. History has shown us repeatedly that it\u2019s possible to influence policy from outside the tent. Suppose\u00a0that\u00a0parties associated with ID start putting center-right\u00a0politicians\u00a0under pressure in their own countries. You might find the center adopts their policy ideas \u2013\u00a0as has previously happened in France, the\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0and Germany. <\/p>\n
And there are\u00a0more than\u00a0enough hot topics in Europe now for the right to get its teeth stuck into. Migration, climate change, border security, military spending, rule of law \u2013 all of these have been flashpoints in pan-Europe politics for a long time and are not going away any time soon. And it is ultimately the newly-elected Parliament that vets and approves the\u00a0make-up\u00a0of the\u00a0European\u00a0Commission \u2013 the EU\u2019s executive body. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth noting that support for Ukraine is expected to be safe\u00a0for the time being, with the pro-Kremlin\u00a0groups appearing\u00a0very\u00a0isolated. But almost everything else will be handled on a case-by-case basis if the numbers work out that way. And the more MEPs elected that are to the right of the EPP, the more their influence could grow over time. <\/p>\n
Five years is a long time in politics, and that is how long this Parliament will last. In that time, France will hold an election that Marine Le Pen, who is affiliated with ID, might win\u00a0with her National Rally party. Geert Wilders, also ID, is soon expected to form a government in the Netherlands after emerging as the biggest party in their\u00a0November\u00a0elections. In other words, the domestic politics in member states could shift even further to the right, which naturally changes calculations in Brussels. <\/p>\n
The European Parliament\u00a0can often seem like\u00a0looks\u00a0like a boring, bureaucratic blob, tediously grinding its way through process. But the EU is an increasingly geopolitical player \u2013 able to impose sanctions on Russian and Chinese political figures, provide funds to Ukraine and use its economic heft as the world\u2019s largest trading bloc in diplomacy. If its political center is indeed shifting to the right, its influence will inevitably have\u00a0meaningful\u00a0and\u00a0perhaps far-reaching\u00a0consequences for people\u00a0living beyond Europe\u2019s\u00a0borders. <\/p>\n\n
This is a historic and pivotal year for democracy across the globe. Around\u00a070 countries\u00a0\u2013 from the\u00a0United States\u00a0to\u00a0South Africa, via\u00a0Mexico\u00a0and\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0\u2013 will hold elections in 2024. After India\u2019s huge and ongoing six-week ballot, however, the biggest election in terms of voter numbers will happen next week, when 373 million Europeans can go to the polls and elect <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}