Wider Europe

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm focusing on the upcoming European Parliament elections and how they will impact the EU.

Briefing #1: Europe Votes

What You Need To Know: The European Parliament will hold elections across the 27 EU member states on June 6-9. There are an estimated 370 million eligible voters across the bloc, but don't expect all of them to turn up. In the last elections, back in 2019, the turnout across the EU was 50.7 percent. And that was regarded as respectable, a singular uptick that reversed the downward trend in voter turnout.

Of course, the turnout varies considerably across the member states. In Belgium and Luxembourg, where casting a ballot is compulsory, nearly 90 percent of the voting populations went to the polling stations five years ago; in Slovakia, in the same vote, only 22 percent went to the polls.

Citizens of the EU are electing 720 members of the European Parliament (MEPs), with the number of seats allocated to each country according to population size. So, with 96 MEPs, Germany will send the most lawmakers to the parliament; Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Malta will have a mere six each.

First, a few basics. While the elections are called "European" they are actually contested by national political parties, such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) or the Spanish conservative People's Party (PP).

But once MEPs are elected from national lists, they tend to become part of Europe-wide political families or groups. In the 2019-2024 parliament there were seven political groups, which all must contain a minimum of 23 MEPs from at least seven EU countries. It's expected that most, if not all, of the groups will remain. It's also possible that new groups might emerge.

Deep Background: The biggest group in the European Parliament is the broad center-right European People's Party -- the home, for example, of the German Christian Democratic Union and the Polish Civic Platform -- followed by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which brings together center-left and social-democratic parties.

There are a host of other groups, starting with Renew, which brings together centrist, liberal parties such as French President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance. Then there are the Greens, which, in addition to parties with an environmental focus, are a grouping also made up of Pirate parties -- which advocate for civil rights, direct democracy, information privacy, and transparency -- and Catalan separatists. Lastly, there is The Left In The European Parliament (GUE/NGL) group, which brings together far-left and communist parties.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum, there is the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which some see as nationalist, others as sovereignist. The group furthest to the right is Identity and Democracy (ID), whose members include Marine Le Pen's National Rally, the Austrian Freedom Party, and Matteo Salvini's Northern League.

Those parliamentary groups are often bolstered by unattached MEPs, many of whose parties were kicked out of mainstream groupings and haven't yet found a new home. For instance, right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party was ejected from the EPP in 2021, and the Smer party of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was cast out from the S&D last year.

Political groups in Brussels are highly influential. The larger the group, the more speaking time MEPs get in the chamber. Key roles in the European Parliament, for instance, chairpeople of influential committees, usually go to representatives of the major political groups. Those MEPs who do try their luck on their own, without joining a group, tend to operate somewhat in the political wilderness, holding little sway over policy or proceedings.

Drilling Down

• The EPP will almost certainly finish on top again as they have done in every European Parliament elections since 1999. However, their popularity is slowly dwindling. Polls indicate they will likely get around 170 MEPs out of 720 seats in the new chamber, a slight proportional decrease from five years ago and a long way from their previous heyday when they regularly got north of 200 MEPs.
• S&D will likely finish second, as they have done in the last few elections, probably with about 140 MEPs, which would be a similar result to 2019.
• It then gets a little more interesting, as the other five political groups are projected to get somewhere between 30 and 80 seats each, all vying for third and fourth place. Renew and the Greens will likely drop seats compared to five years ago, whereas ECR are likely to gain.
• There might be over 100 MEPs unattached to a political family. Many of these will be populists of various hues and -- if they haven't already burned their poitical bridges -- will likely be mopped up by the ID or ECR groups. It's also possible a new rightist parliamentary group will be formed.
• One of the big media stories in the run-up to the elections has been the rise of the populist right. If you count the projected seats for ID, ECR and the unaffiliated members, who tend to be mostly right-wingers, and then add the EPP you get over 400 seats -- a majority.
• Talk, however, of a new Euroskeptic supergroup is probably a little premature. The EPP is pretty mainstream with a strong federalist streak and might be reluctant to get into bed with populist and far-right MEPs, who tend to be spread between two groups, the ECR and ID. Plus, ideological unity on the right remains elusive. Populist and far-right MEPs may agree that Brussels should have less power, but that's where the consensus ends. Relations with Russia and China tend to divide the right, with some being super hawkish and others maintaining friendly relations with both countries. Nothing illustrated the right-wing divisions in the parliament better than in May when the Alternative For Germany (AFD) party was kicked out from the ID group after one of their leaders said in an interview that not every member of the Nazi SS during the Third Reich was "automatically a criminal."
• The move to expel the AFD was led by Le Pen, who has been trying for years to moderate her image. There have been rumors for a while that she might want to join the more "palatable" ECR in the future.
• There is also speculation that Giorgia Meloni, whose rise to power two years ago prompted fears by some that Italy was descending into fascism, could try to soften her image by taking her Brothers Of Italy party to the EPP.
• Despite a shrinking of support for the four leading groups (EPP, S&D, Renew, and the Greens), they will still likely get a majority of over 400 seats.

Briefing #2: What Impact Will The Vote Have On The Rest Of The EU?

What You Need To Know: For years, the European Parliament has tried hard to make itself more relevant for the average European voter. And in some ways, it has succeeded.

Take, for example, the "lead candidate" idea -- known in Brussels under its German name, Spitzenkandidat. This was devised for the 2014 European Parliament elections and means that all political groups nominate one candidate and then the candidate from the political group that finishes first in the elections will be the nominee for the top EU job, the European Commission president.

Prior to that, the three top jobs -- European Commission president, president of the European Council; and EU foreign policy chief -- were selected by the leaders of the 27 EU member states in backroom deals. In addition to party affiliation, geography (where the candidate was from) and gender were part of the calculus. Essentially the three top roles needed to be occupied by both men and women who represented the geographical diversity of the bloc.

Normally, the EPP, S&D, and Renew parties take one of the three positions each -- with the EPP usually taking the presidency of the European Commission.

In 2014, the EU leaders followed the Spitzenkandidat system by selecting the former prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, the EPP's top candidate, as the European Commission president. However, EU leaders stepped away from it in 2019, provoking the anger of the European Parliament, when the German MEP Manfred Weber was the EPP's lead candidate. Instead of choosing Weber for president, they chose then German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who was plucked from relative obscurity as a compromise candidate. This year, von der Leyen is seeking re-selection and is the lead candidate for the frontrunner, the EPP.

Deep Background: Will von der Leyen get a second term? If the EPP gets a decent result, say over 170 MEPs, the German politician will be hard to ignore. But they could still ignore her, particularly as many grumble that she has too much power. Macron is reportedly keen to promote former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, although he is not a member of a political group.

It might be that another person from the EPP could emerge. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and the Bulgarian head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, might also be in the running.

The position of European Council president will likely come from the S&D, as they are the likely runners-up. The leading candidates appear to be former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa and his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen.

If the Renew group manages to take third place, they will rightfully claim the role of EU foreign policy chief, now held by Josep Borrell. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is a strong favorite. However, if ECR takes third place in the elections, we could even see someone like Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala taking on that role.

Drilling Down

• It is not only the EU leaders that will decide the fate of von der Leyen (or an alternative candidate for the commission's top job). It is the newly elected European Parliament that will vote on the proposed candidate via a simple majority.
• In 2019, von der Leyen scraped through by nine votes. This time, the European Parliament might want to flex its muscles and reject whomever the European Council, where the EU leaders meet, puts forward. That would be unprecedented but not unsurprising.
• Remember that it doesn't end here. Later in the year, each EU member state will propose their candidates for the 27 European commissioners, the president of the European Commission will assign them a portfolio, and then it's up to the European Parliament to grill the candidates.
• Per tradition, the European Parliament will reject a few commissioners. Last year, the initial candidates from France, Hungary, and Romania were nixed. It could take until the end of the year for parliament to approve the entire commission.

Looking Ahead

Also keep an eye out this week for the EU ambassadorial meeting in Brussels on June 5. Representatives from the 27 member states will try to agree on the EU accession negotiation frameworks for Moldova and Ukraine. This should have been a formality with accession talks with the duo opening at the end of June, but recently Hungary signaled it wouldn't give a green light to Ukraine's framework, noting it has 11 outstanding bilateral issues with Kyiv concerning the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine.

That's all for this week. Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

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