By Jorge Liboreiro
It’s time to decide: the elections to the European Parliament have officially kicked off as polling stations in the Netherlands opened on Thursday morning and Dutch citizens began casting their ballots. In Estonia, e-voting has been active for days. Over the next few days, the other 25 member states will gradually follow suit, enabling an estimated 360 million eligible voters to determine the 720 seats in the hemicycle. Freely and fairly.
The cross-border exercise comes at a precarious, uncertain time for the European Union, which in the span of a few years has been hit with back-to-back, make-or-break crises that have profoundly reshaped its policies, defied its old-age beliefs and deepened its existential fears.
As we go through the electoral lists to pick our ballots, the largest armed conflict on the continent since World War II rages on in Ukraine, a country that borders four member states and aims to one day join the bloc. War is a reality on our continent, no longer a chapter in a history book. The complacency of peacetime has been shattered, leaving governments scrambling to find extra cash to boost their long-disregarded defence capabilities.
Although the possibility of a Russian attack is an increasing cause for concern, particularly on the Eastern front, where memories of Soviet occupation still resonate, Europeans are first and foremost worried about the immediate, tangible impact that this and other crises have caused on their daily lives.
Poll after poll showed that high consumer prices, loss of purchasing power, rising social inequalities and sluggish economic growth are top-of-mind for voters. Bread-and-butter issues once again dominate the agenda, shaping the elections through the lenses of domestic politics.
But in other areas, the EU’s role comes into sharper focus.
The uptick in asylum applications – about 1.14 million in 2023, a seven-year high – puts pressure on the New Pact on Migration to yield fast results, even if the legislation will take two years to enter into force. The backlash against the Green Deal, best encapsulated in the farmer protests, stands in stark contrast with the worsening effects of climate change – 2023 was the hottest year on record – and the ominous reports warning the 1.5°C climate goal is irreversibly slipping away. The loss of competitiveness vis-à-vis the United States and China exposes the bloc’s deficient investment flows and fuels calls for joint borrowing, business consolidation and financial overhaul.
And let’s not forget the Israel-Hamas war, which has prompted furious contestation among the European youth; the demographic changes that foreshadow an aging, shrinking labour force; continued disregard for the rule of law; the threat of foreign interference, disinformation and sabotage; and a spat of shocking assaults against politicians, including an assassination attempt on Slovakia’s prime minister, that has sent alarm bells ringing.
Experts and observers have resurfaced the term “polycrisis” to define the volatile state of affairs in the 2020s. A phenomenon “where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part,” as the World Economic Forum put it.
Against this bleak outlook, where a silver lining appears impossible to find, Europeans are heading to the polls to decide what kind of Union they want for the next five years. It’s no surprise that far-right parties are on the rise: these forces, with their radical, untested proposals, tend to flourish in times of anxiety and despair, when voters seek alternatives to punish the ruling majority.
This isn’t, however, the first time the EU has to deal with ultra-nationalism. Extreme parties have been a staple in the bloc since the 2008 Great Recession, which unleashed a wave of contestation against globalisation and reconfigured the political agenda. A Euronews headline from February 2019 read: “Far-right rise in polls ahead of European elections.”
What’s different this time is the narrowing distance between the fringe and the mainstream. In the past few years, hard- and far-right parties have entered coalition governments in Italy, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and, most recently, Croatia and the Netherlands. They also prop up the Swedish executive and several regions in Spain.
The European People’s Party (EPP), the bloc’s largest formation, has been accused of masterminding this rapprochement to reach power. Progressives are incensed, warning these right-on-right alliances normalise reactionary policies, inflame polarisation and endanger years of social progress. The cordon sanitaire, they say, risks collapsing overnight.
This will likely be the theme of the next European Parliament, expected to be the rowdiest in the bloc’s history. But before bitter recriminations start flying back and forth and fingers are pointed furiously across the aisle, Europeans still need to vote and make their voices heard.
DON’T MISS OUT Follow the Euronews live blog to get the latest updates on the elections, as polling stations gradually open across the bloc. Here’s all that’s happened so far, including a string of cyber-attacks.
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“Far-right rise in polls ahead of European elections.”
