Post by Admin on May 29, 2019 7:49:06 GMT
The European parliamentary elections were expected to test the rise of the far right — and their nationalistic, populist, and generally euroskeptic approach to the EU.
The far right will hold about 25 percent of the seats in the European Parliament, up from about 20 percent. It’s their best showing ever, but also not exactly a European sweep. And the nationalist parties did better in some EU countries compared to others.
In Italy, Salvini’s Lega party dominated the polls, winning 34 percent of the vote compared to 6 percent in 2014, for a gain of about 28 seats. And in France, Le Pen’s National Rally edged out French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist reformist coalition.
“They’re neither a tidal wave of taking over nor have they gone away,” Mabel Berezin, a professor of sociology at Cornell University, said of the far-right nationalists.
The reality, though, is that these parties are here to stay — and while they haven’t conquered Europe, it’s also hard to make the case that they are outlier, fringe parties. They’re part of the European political landscape now.
But the question that dogged these far-right populists before last week’s election still holds: Will they be able to work together in the European Parliament when what they all have in common is a desire to advance their own national interests and weaken the EU?
“Their positive agenda is that they want to be better off than their neighbors,” Josef Janning, a Berlin-based senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me. “If something is zero-sum, it should be in their favor, and that makes it very complicated for them to make a real, coherent political agenda.”
The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) have essentially ruled the European Parliament since 1979. This weekend’s election effectively ended their 40-year majority. “It has very much been under the control of these two political families, and now this is going to be different,” Janning said.
The far right will hold about 25 percent of the seats in the European Parliament, up from about 20 percent. It’s their best showing ever, but also not exactly a European sweep. And the nationalist parties did better in some EU countries compared to others.
In Italy, Salvini’s Lega party dominated the polls, winning 34 percent of the vote compared to 6 percent in 2014, for a gain of about 28 seats. And in France, Le Pen’s National Rally edged out French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist reformist coalition.
“They’re neither a tidal wave of taking over nor have they gone away,” Mabel Berezin, a professor of sociology at Cornell University, said of the far-right nationalists.
The reality, though, is that these parties are here to stay — and while they haven’t conquered Europe, it’s also hard to make the case that they are outlier, fringe parties. They’re part of the European political landscape now.
But the question that dogged these far-right populists before last week’s election still holds: Will they be able to work together in the European Parliament when what they all have in common is a desire to advance their own national interests and weaken the EU?
“Their positive agenda is that they want to be better off than their neighbors,” Josef Janning, a Berlin-based senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me. “If something is zero-sum, it should be in their favor, and that makes it very complicated for them to make a real, coherent political agenda.”
The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) have essentially ruled the European Parliament since 1979. This weekend’s election effectively ended their 40-year majority. “It has very much been under the control of these two political families, and now this is going to be different,” Janning said.