The people of Europe have spoken. With over 380 million eligible voters, the election for the European Parliament was the largest in the world after India. Because it consisted in essence of 28 national elections, it had more individual parties than any other.
The results of the elections, which are still being finalised, confirm a seismic shift across Europe that has been apparent for several months. The political and economic turmoil that followed the eurozone crisis has resulted in populist parties riding a wave of anger.
After six gruelling years of European austerity and rising concerns about immigration, Europe’s citizens have delivered their verdict to the entire political class. With the exception of Malta, the verdict has consisted of a spectacular thumbs down for the conventional parties of the centre. A record number have not even bothered to vote. But many of those who did – perhaps, on average, 40 per cent of the electorate – have been populists and extremists.
It is thought that about 25 per cent or more of the seats in the European Parliament will be filled by assorted extremists, anti-Europeans and insurgent parties.
The outcome of the European Parliament’s deliberations will be more uncertain to predict. The anti-EU political parties have eroded the support of parties of the centre. It is feared that the populist rising might make for tenser debate, less racial tolerance and even a threat to free trade.
What this will mean in reality for the composition and balance of power of the next European Parliament is a moot point, however, because the populists are divided. From France and Britain to Denmark, and from Norway, Austria and Greece to Hungary, there are parties which have stood on policies that are anti-immigrant and anti-Europe. A significant number of MEPs will be committed to blocking, or, at least, disrupting, the European ‘project’.
What is clear is that the elections will lead to European politics becoming nastier and more unstable, just at a time when Europe requires stability almost above all else. Leaders need to tackle threats from the lacklustre performance of the single currency and the risks from banking stress tests later in the year, all of which could well reignite market concerns about sovereign debts, thus causing the crisis to flare up again.
Why are European voters so disillusioned and what is to be done? The results of the European vote are an indictment of the European Union. Voters have come to associate the project with hardship and failure.
Although economies in Europe are improving and growth is returning after a grinding recession and years of battling the euro crisis, it has exacerbated a deep contradiction at the heart of Europe between the need of the eurozone economies for closer integration and voter apathy.
Europe’s political leaders will be tempted to carry on as before. But as Martin Schulz, a potential president of the European Commission, has warned, voters have spoken up loud and clear and may not accept this. A blast of reformist zeal from Brussels would be unlikely to calm Europe’s disgruntled voters.
Rather than seeking to expand the role of the EU’s institutions, it would seem to be far better to allow the leaders of the nation-states to set Europe’s broad strategic direction, rather than the European Commission.
And the European Parliament – which, at about €1.75 billion, costs more than the French, British and German parliaments combined – should be downgraded, with more democratic legitimacy, accountability and control given to national parliaments. And to the people they represent.