A decade ago, Europe’s immigration crisis and the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union foreshadowed the stunning outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The mixed results of recent European parliamentary elections offer ambiguous but nonetheless significant lessons for both American political parties as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
Although the recent European elections did not produce the overall rightward shift many commentators expected, the situation was different in the EU’s three largest members – Germany, France and Italy – which contain almost half the total population of the Union and generate more than half its GDP.
The results were most spectacular in France, where Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist National Rally won 31.4% of the votes cast, more than twice the list of centrist candidates, and won 30 seats in the European Parliament. , compared to 18 during the previous campaign. election.1 In response, President Emmanuel Macron called for surprise legislative elections in late June and early July, the results of which could produce France’s first far-right prime minister since the 1930s.
Macron’s decision has thrown French politics into turmoil. While the left quickly formed a united front to lead its electoral campaign, the small right-wing parties are divided within themselves. Éric Ciotti, the president of the traditional conservative Republicans, secretly negotiated an electoral alliance with the National Rally. The decision that led to his expulsion from the party, although a court overturned it on Saturday, led to more chaos. A deep split broke out within the Reconquest party, founded by far-right TV commentator Éric Zemmour, when its star candidate, who happens to be Marine Le Pen’s niece, broke with Zemmour and urged party members to vote for a coalition led by the National Rally. Meanwhile, some members of Macron’s own party openly disagree with his call for early elections. The first polls indicate that his bet could fail: the National Rally came first, followed closely by the broad coalition of the left-wing Popular Front, and Macron’s centrists are far behind in third position.
In Germany, the EU’s largest member, election results propelled the far-right AfD to second place among the country’s parties, with 16 percent, although one of its main candidates defended some members of the SS during the campaign.2 The Christian Democratic opposition came first with 30% of the votes. As our Brookings colleague Constanze Stelzenmueller has pointed out, this has strengthened the central position within the European Parliament and increased the likelihood that Ursula von der Leyen will win a second term as president of the European Commission. The three parties that make up the government coalition – the Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal Liberal Democrats – have come under heavy criticism, receiving a combined in total, only 31% of the popular vote, which reduced their representation in the European Parliament from 42 to 31 seats.3 With just under 14% of the vote, the Social Democrats reached a low point in post-war history.
Italy presents a different case because the far-right Brothers of Italy are already the largest party in the government coalition and the party’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, is prime minister. Yet the European election results put an exclamation point on his party’s dominant position. The popular vote for the Brothers of Italy jumped to almost 29% of the total, surpassing the 26% achieved in Italy’s 2022 legislative elections, and the party’s seats in the European Parliament more than doubled from 10 to 24 Since becoming prime minister, Ms. Meloni has impressed other European leaders with her skill in international diplomacy, even as her party has implemented far-right domestic policies. His performance could help convince voters in other EU countries that the populist right, long seen as extreme and unaccountable, can be trusted to govern well. But liberal and center-left parties continue to insist that the center alliance in Brussels oppose any deal with Meloni in the European Parliament.
The gains of the far right show that the issues of the American election which favor Donald Trump, immigration and crime above all, continue to find an echo in Europe. Far-right parties, like Trump, continue to appeal to declining industrial cities and rural areas whose economies lag behind thriving metropolitan areas. (The far right behaved exceptionally poorly in Paris, for example.) strength of the far right among young voters is a signal to watch. And while the results are by no means uniform, the center-left and liberal parties in power – again, Germany and France are particularly important here – were punished by voters, which is not bodes well for President Biden.
Yet the right’s victories are not everything when all the ballots cast in the 27 EU countries have been counted, and Biden can take comfort in the fact that voters overwhelmingly chose traditional political parties and rejected the ‘far right. The cross was contested, but it held.
The coalition of center-right, center-left and liberal parties that effectively controlled the European Parliament went from 59% of seats to 56%, still a solid majority. If we add members of the green parties to this group, the proportion of majority members rises to 64%. According to the latest counts, the center-right won 14 seats for a total of 190; the center-left lost three, for 136; and the liberal parties lost 22, to 80 seats. Nearly half of the liberal losses are due to Macron’s rout in France.
It was a very difficult election for the Greens, who won 52 seats to 71. They suffered partly because they had done so well in the last election (they had a lot of seats to lose), but also because of intense opposition. among certain groups (farmers and rural voters in particular) for strong measures against climate change. (The Center parties further reduced the Green vote by also campaigning on the climate issue.) Supporters of climate action in the United States can usefully study the Green experience in Europe as a warning about the potential for negative reactions.
At the same time, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, one of the leading figures of the new far right and a hero to many Trump supporters, saw his Fidesz party deliver its worst performance in a European election since that Hungary joined the European Union twenty years ago. . Similarly, in Poland, the right-wing populist Law and Justice party, which lost power nationally last October, suffered another setback.
The center-left and Greens performed well in several countries – and in many of them the far right lost ground or fell below expectations. This was the case in the traditional social democratic heartland in Scandinavia— in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In the Netherlands, the coalition of the Labor Party and the Greens beat the far-right party of Geert Wilders, which came first in the legislative elections last November. Far-right parties in Spain and Portugal also performed below expectationsand behind previous high scores.
The lessons of these elections for the United States are as ambiguous as their results. Elections in the European Union are not always a good guide to the future, even for Europe, in that they offer voters something akin to a free vote. They can vote in protest without any consequences for the composition of their national government. Macron’s risky call for new parliamentary elections is based in part on the calculation that even voters who supported Le Pen’s party in the European elections will be reluctant to grant him real power in their countries.
If Trump supporters welcome the gains of the only part of the European public with any sympathy for the former president, Biden can rejoice in a majority that voted for parties that support much more pressing priorities and policies. close to his own as to those of Trump. In particular, the cause of support for Ukraine turned out to be much more of an advantage than a disadvantage in these elections, as even Meloni’s victory showed. Within the Italian right, his party has gained ground compared to its coalition partners with much softer stances toward Russia.
The European elections are therefore a warning to the mainstream, not a defeat. But it is a warning that must be taken seriously on both sides of the Atlantic.