The European Parliament elections, which are held every 5 years, took place between June 6 and 9 of this year. Despite the relative weakness of the powers of this Parliament, as an institution of the European Union, its approval is necessary to elect the President of the European Commission, and it is not a power of little importance, in addition to the significance of the election results on the general political mood.
The elections took place in light of a bleak economic situation in which the compliance of European policies in general with the American policy towards the war in Ukraine played an important role, not to mention that the atmosphere entered a stage of increasing insinuation of the possibilities of a nuclear confrontation. Despite repeated talk about the dangers of the rise of the European radical right in previous years, the election results were described as a political earthquake, given the gains achieved by right-wing parties that made them the second force in Parliament, in addition to the implications of their results for important European countries such as France and Germany.
If we start with these indications, perhaps France is the clearest example, as the leader of the National Rally Party and its candidate in the recent presidential elections, Marie Le Pen, won 41.5% of the votes, compared to 58.5% for Macron, which indicates the party’s continued rise compared to the results. The 2017 elections in which the two candidates faced off, in which Le Pen obtained 33.9% of the votes compared to 66.1% for Macron, meaning that the latter fell by about 7 points while Le Pen advanced by about 8 points. Then the results of the European Parliament elections last week strongly confirmed this upward trend, as the “National Rally” obtained 31.5% of the votes, compared to 15.2% for Macron’s party, that is, a difference of more than double. This result had a sharp impact on the French political scene, and prompted Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call for new elections on the 30th of this month, a step that was cheered by the hard right while other movements considered it a “leap in the air,” according to Dr. Nevin Massad’s words in Her valuable article published last Saturday in Al-Ahram newspaper under the title “Challenges to the Republican Arc in France,” in which she recalled the precedent of Chirac dissolving the National Assembly in 1997 to get rid of the left, and then he came to head the government. Perhaps Macron is betting on public opinion’s continued fear of extreme right-wing tendencies, which is an uncertain bet in light of its results in the recent elections. Let us imagine what would happen if the far-right succeeds in forming a government coalition, and what are the European repercussions of that, whether in terms of France’s weight within the European Union, or in terms of its effects on other European countries according to the domino model, especially since France is not unique in the phenomenon of the rise of the far-right.
As for the overall level, it is expected that the election results will not have an impact in the short term with regard to the renewal of the President of the European Commission, which needs Parliament’s approval to complete the renewal, given that the anti-radical right camp still maintains a majority in Parliament, even if it is reduced (398 seats out of 720), even though it was We must not forget that the current president won in 2019 by a margin of only 9 votes. After that, the common hypothesis is that the continued rise of the extreme right threatens the survival of the European Union, or at least its cohesion, given its anti-European unity tendencies. This is a logical analysis, but I propose the opposite. A different idea is that the continued rise of the extreme right until it obtains a majority can preserve and strengthen the union, after making it an important mechanism for implementing and strengthening its trends, which requires in-depth discussion.
*Professor of Political Science – Cairo University
#European #Parliament #elections