The European Parliament does more than we think

When the European Parliament was founded in 1952 as the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, it was rightly considered little more than a “multilingual forum”, as Manchester University professor David Farrell called it. For two decades it was made up of deputies from national parliaments who took turns from time to time to come to Strasbourg, sitting in the hemicycle borrowed from the Council of Europe (a totally different body), and talk about pan-European issues that had not been followed up by near.

Since then it has undergone major changes, the most important in 1979, when it became a directly elected institution with Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and in 2009, when the Treaty of Lisbon gave the Parliament important new legislative powers. In all this time, the EP has had to fight for its relevance and influence against the other two legislative institutions of the EU: the European Commission, the executive branch, and the European Council, the “upper house” of the legislative branch (which brings together the governments of the now 27 EU Member States). It has been an uphill battle, and Parliament is still the least powerful of the three, but its role has changed a lot.

More than an assembly

The European Parliament is today a powerful “lower house” of the EU legislative branch through which all legislation must pass to become law. MEPs do not simply examine and approve Commission proposals, but add amendments and, in some cases, completely change the legislative text. The problem is that, due to the gradual evolution of the EU, the public has not yet understood the power of this institution.

This is especially true in Western Europe, where education systems have not updated their curricula on how the EU works since 1992, when the European Union was created from the former European Community. In Eastern Europe, where countries joined in 2004, 2007 and 2013 (with Croatia as the most recent member of the EU), there is much more awareness of the importance of the European Parliament because it was already important when they joined.

The protest vote

This year, polls predict the possibility that citizens will vote overwhelmingly for the extreme right, which could become the largest bloc in the EP. Parliament has always had a strong contingent of far-right MEPs due to the common element of the “protest vote”, in which many voters use elections to vent their frustration with their usually centrist national governments. They often do so not because they want far-right policies to be enacted at EU level, but because they are trying to send a message about domestic issues to Brussels and see EU elections as an inconsequential way of doing so.

The rise of this parliamentary group is also due to the fact that people who do not want to cast a protest vote are less likely to go to the polls. Turnout in EP elections is usually around 50% (51% in the last election in 2019), a percentage relatively lower than in most national elections in Europe, but higher than the average turnout of 40% in EP elections. midterm to the United States Congress.

Turn to the extreme right?

The success of the extreme right in the European elections has been a growing phenomenon for two decades. Since 2014, the largest French party in the EP has been Marine Le Pen’s National Front, renamed the National Rally (RN), and from that year until the United Kingdom left the European Union following the Brexit vote in 2016, the Britain’s largest party was Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP). Affiliated far-right MEPs currently make up 18% of the European Parliament, but that’s not counting the many unaffiliated far-right MEPs. The difference is that this year, a planned increase of 36 additional seats would make the extreme right the king of the next legislature.

The extreme right in the European Parliament is divided into two groups: the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), led by Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, and the Identity and Democracy (ID), led by Le Pen and the Alternative for Germany ( AfD). The ECR includes some of the biggest heavyweights of the European far right: Poland’s recently ousted ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which is the largest party in the governing coalition Italian, the Swedish Democrats, who underpin the center-right government in Stockholm, the Finns Party, who came second in last year’s elections in Finland, Vox, which was on the verge of forming a government coalition with the center -right after last year’s Spanish elections, and the Flemish nationalist N-VA, the largest party in the Belgian parliament.

The smaller group, Identity and Democracy, which has struggled since losing MEPs to Nigel Farage’s UKIP following Brexit, combines Le Pen’s RN, which is expected to once again be France’s largest party in Parliament European, and the AfD, which is currently in second place in the polls in Germany. He probe from Politico predicts that ECR and ID will win 164 seats, well ahead of the center-left Socialists and Democrats, with 139 seats, and very close to the center-right European People’s Party’s 176.

With the S&D and the liberal Renew Europe group losing support, there may not be enough seats to form the traditional centrist coalition between the EPP and the S&D, even with the addition of the Liberals. This could see control of parliament fall to a right-wing coalition of the EPP and the ECR, with the ID included or acting as external support to the coalition. Three ID parties – Mateo Salvini’s League in Italy, the Danish People’s Party and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) – have already allied themselves with centre-right EPP member parties at the national level in the past.

Von der Leyen on the brink of the abyss?

The first consequence of so many European voters opting for the far right could be the appointment of a far-right European Commission president in July, preventing the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen. Unlike parliamentary democracies, in the EU the government is not elected by Parliament based on its majority. The president of the executive branch, the European Commission, is appointed by a majority of the 27 national leaders in the European Council. But that selection must be confirmed by a majority vote of the European Parliament.

Even if national leaders wanted to nominate von der Leyen, whom the EPP has adopted as its Spitzenkandidat, or leading candidate, for a second term in July, it is unclear whether she could be confirmed in a majority vote in a newly formed European Parliament with a right-wing majority. What is clear is that he would have to shift hard to the right during the next three months of campaigning, and he is already laying the groundwork to do so, for example by offering concessions to farmers following protests across Europe last month and removing environmental provisions from the Common Agricultural Policy.

It is also possible that a last-minute turn to the right by von der Leyen will not be enough to satisfy right-wing MEPs. That would mean the European Council would have to appoint someone else, either following a parliamentary rejection by von der Leyen in the fall following confirmation hearings, or going ahead and choosing someone different in July.

National leaders will not want to appoint someone who cannot survive a parliamentary confirmation vote, and von der Leyen only beat the 2019 parliamentary confirmation vote by nine votes, due to anger at the European Council’s failure to appoint someone. that would have been presented as Spitzenkandidat in elections (although European treaties make it clear that this is not a requirement). It is inconceivable that the leaders would appoint a far-right politician from the ECR or ID, but they could lean towards someone from the right wing of the EPP in the mold of Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right German CDU (who is also the von der Leyen’s party).

Flex your political muscle

The 26 European Commissioners of the presidential college, appointed by national governments, must also be confirmed by the EP this autumn. After each election, the European Parliament demonstrates its power by rejecting some of them. A right-wing majority in Parliament would ultimately give rise to a European Commission similar to the majority political sign in Parliament.

Even if von der Leyen can survive the coming months to win a second term without promises to shift to the right, a right-wing parliament will make passing climate laws and progressive social and economic legislation very difficult, if not impossible. If history is any guide, they could in fact make it difficult to pass any EU law.

In the past, when the European far right advocated for their countries to leave the EU, the traditional pattern was to not show up for parliamentary sessions or vote no on everything. That has changed since Brexit, with almost all far-right parties abandoning the idea of ​​leaving the EU and instead now working to push it to the right from within. It remains to be seen, however, whether they would be able to do it effectively because they have never done it before. It could be that, with the guidance and experience of the EPP, the far right would be able to effectively push its agenda in EU politics.

Subvert the climate goal?

This legislature has passed a huge amount of climate legislation under the Green Deal framework, so it will be protected from European Parliament legislators as it enters the national transposition and implementation phase. But a right-wing Parliament will make it difficult to pass new climate legislation. For example, von der Leyen’s recommendation last month that the EU set a 90% emissions reduction target by 2040 could not be continued in the next legislature if it cannot be approved by Parliament, or if the Commission proposes it, it is likely to be rejected. This would leave the EU without an intermediate goal between 2030 and 2050. The big defeat expected for the European Green group, which according to polls will fall from 73 to 44 seats, will leave climate legislation with few defenders in Parliament.

A protest vote for the far right may satisfy many voters in June. But it’s also possible that they won’t feel as good a year from now. Until now, the greatest legacy of the far right in the European Parliament has been its inability to coordinate or govern. The most likely outcome of a far-right parliament will be chaos and dysfunction, rather than delivering concrete victories for its voters.

Article translated from English Internationale Politik Quarterly.

Activity subsidized by the Ministry of Foreign and Global Affairs.