As the campaign for the European Parliament elections, scheduled for May 25 gains momentum, it is important to reflect how these elections can change Europe’s political landscape. This may lead to a reshaping of European democracy and have a direct impact on the future of the Union as well as on its ability to deal with migration and socio-economic issues which are of most concern to European citizens.
For several decades the EU institutions have been dominated by a broad alliance between the mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties. Together, mainstream parties have enjoyed a comfortable majority and have dominated the EU’s principal institutions, including the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission.
To a large extent this arrangement guaranteed the continuity and relative stability of the European integration project, though, in the view of its critics, it has also led to European institutional sclerosis.
The eight direct elections to the EP that have been held so far between 1979 and 2014, have all roughly reflected the traditional left-right ideological spectrum of most member states. However, the waning support for mainstream parties, the rise of populist parties, both radical right and radical left, and the emergence of new political players, can open the way for a more complex and confrontational political set-up at the European level.
The EP is a unique experiment in transnational representative democracy. It is the only transnational parliament that is directly elected. From a mere Consultative Assembly established by the 1952 European Coal and Steel Community Treaty, it has evolved through successive treaty changes into a fully-fledged parliamentary structure elected by universal suffrage and possessing wide ranging legislative and scrutiny powers.
The scrutiny powers of the EP are extensive and significant. With more than 20 standing committees, each responsible for a specific policy area, the EP can closely supervise all Commission and Council initiatives and monitor the compliance and behaviour of member states.
What goes on in the EP affects people’s lives much more than they think, even though they may pay little attention to what is being debated in Strasbourg and to the results of parliamentary votes.
It is quite ironic that while European citizens frequently complain about the EU’s lack of democratic legitimacy, voter turnouts to European elections remain stubbornly low.
Turnouts have fallen in each European election since they were first held in 1979. The turnout then was 61.99 per cent. Forty-five years later, in 2014, it was 42.61 per cent. Even in the case of Malta, where voter turnout is traditionally very high, a gradual decrease occurred from 82.39 per cent in 2004, to 78.79 in 2009 and 74.80 per cent in 2014.
In the EP, national parties group themselves into political families according to the right-left political spectrum found in most member states. Centre-right national parties congregate within the European People’s Party (EPP), the centre-left parties rally under the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), while the mainstream liberal parties gather under the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).
Nationalist and populist parties aspire to join forces and form a pan-European party with at least a third of future MEPs
Left leaning parties are covered by the groups of the European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) and the Greens-European Free Alliance (ALE). Populist and Eurosceptic parties fall within the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group and the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group. There is also the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which is currently the third largest group, and brings together right-leaning nationalist parties that are strongly anti-federalist.
In the current Parliament the PPE and the S&D enjoy a comfortable majority of 55 per cent. This has contributed to much stability in alliance building. Stable centre-right majorities are usually formed on economic issues and centre-left majorities on social issues, with the Liberals and the Greens joining the big parties in variable thematic alliances.
However, the EP that will be elected this May is not likely to resemble the current one.
These elections are taking place in a far more confrontational and crisis-ridden context. Tensions within the EU are not uncommon. However, there has rarely been a time in EU history when so many internal conflicts threatened not only to stall the progress of European integration, but to tear Europe apart.
For the first time in its history the EU is losing one of its members, and is doing so in an extremely chaotic manner, giving rise to unprecedented uncertainties for citizens, businesses and governments.
Moreover, the current turbulence on the international stage places the EU at a crossroads. Its extensive trade networks, stretching to East and West, which are the bedrock of its cohesion and economic growth, risk being unravelled by uncontrolled trade wars and unfair competition.
However, what is making the context of next month’s European elections uniquely confrontational, if not acrimonious, is the widespread feeling that the EU has been unable to solve crucial issues of migration, social inequality, youth unemployment, regional disparities, climate change, fiscal austerity, and many other concerns and fears troubling its citizens.
This has resulted in an unprecedented rise, since WWII, of identitarian and populist movements that focus on the EU as their common adversary and as the prime cause of all that goes wrong in their country.
Nationalist and populist parties aspire to join forces and form a pan-European party with at least a third of future MEPs. There are also moves towards a pan-European anti-immigration alliance which already has significant support in several member states.
The trend in opinion polls indicates that the major traditional parties, the EPP and the S&D, weakened by internal troubles and loss of appeal, will lose their current absolute majority, though they will remain the largest and second-largest groups. In total the populist parties likely gain between 20 to 25 per cent of the seats in the future EP.
In spite of their relatively low numbers they could become a disruptive force, strengthening the anti-integration coalition and making inter-institutional relations more difficult.
Considering the current European political landscape and the future challenges of the EU, it would be a mistake, and not in our national interest, to view the upcoming European elections from a purely parochial and partisan angle.
It is a real pity that the Nationalist Party is campaigning for these elections with the only objective of merely possibly reducing its percentage distance in terms of votes from Labour while also persisting on their already amply failed tactics of attacking Malta and its institutions in EU fora.
On the other hand, the Labour Party is making it crystal clear to the electorate that the latter is faced with a very important choice this time round. The choice is between MEPs who have Malta and our general national interest at heart and other MEPs who take every opportunity to attack Malta and its institutions in the EP solely for the reason to personally attack the Prime Minister, and the Labour Party at home within the context of a narrow, local political agenda, not bothered by the fact that such tactics do nothing else but harm the national interest.
The choice is a natural one. The vote should go to those MEPs who can best perform their duties as MEPs in keeping with Malta’s best national interest now and for the whole term of the next EP, which benefits will be felt much longer too.
Edward Zammit Lewis is chairman of Parliament’s Foreign and European Affairs Committee.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece