This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘How much power can far-right parties win in Europe?’
Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about the elections to the European parliament. My guest is Henry Foy, the FT’s bureau chief in Brussels. The elections to the European parliament, which take place between June 6th and 9th, will span the 27 countries of the European Union. The results will tell us a lot about the mood and future direction of the continent. Much of the pre-election momentum seems to be with the far right. So is Europe about to embrace radical populism?
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This is the year of elections. Over the next week, India, Mexico and South Africa are all voting. And in early July, it will be Britain’s turn. But the European parliament elections are a bit different. The vote is for a supranational parliament, which has sometimes been dismissed as a bit powerless and irrelevant. But that’s an increasingly outdated stereotype. Actually, the parliament shapes the regulations and laws of the entire EU, which is one of the three biggest economies in the world, alongside the US and China. My colleague Henry Foy recently chaired a debate between the leaders of the four main pan-European political groupings that are contesting the elections. Here’s Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who’s the leader of the centre-right grouping, setting out her agenda.
Ursula von der Leyen voice clip
On competitiveness in the single market and comparing to the United States and China, I think we should start by look at our strength. So we have less inequality than the US and China. We have better access to education, independent of the wallet of your parents. We have less CO₂ emissions. We have better infrastructure. And actually we have a longer life expectancy. So that’s good. But of course we have to do our homework. And there are five points I want to mention. The first one is we need better access to capital for our companies. In other words, the capital market union has to be completed. Second point is we have to lower, further lower, the energy costs in the European Union. That is deployment of renewable energy, because this is not only good for the climate, but it’s also good for our independence. They are homegrown good jobs.
Gideon Rachman
All very calm, rational and technocratic as you would expect from the EU. But this is the age of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and populist forces of the right and left are also gaining ground across the EU. So I began my conversation with Henry Foy by asking him what he’ll be looking out for when the results start rolling in on June 10th.
Henry Foy
The really key results, I would say, would be how many votes to the European People’s party, the centre-right group, led, of course, by Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president. How many seats do they win? And how many seats to the ECR and ID groups? When ECR, the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists, this is the group of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the ID group, the Identity and Democracy group. This is the group of Marine Le Pen, more far right. Those three parties will really decide where the next parliament goes for two reasons. The first is the EPP, of course, if they’re big enough, they will be the party that leads the next ruling coalition and put von der Leyen back in the commission for another five years. The other two will decide how much wriggle room, how much space there is, for legislation to get done in the next parliament. If the far right group is so big that it crowds out others who aren’t willing to work with them, it could make for a very, very difficult legislative term where the EU will find it very difficult to get legislation through the parliament.
Gideon Rachman
So how reliable are opinion polls? I mean, a lot of the stories are about the far right, but they make good copy, people like reading about them. Are we in danger of exaggerating their surge? Or do you think they actually will do very well?
Henry Foy
The polling is actually pretty decent because these are existing parties. These are parties that compete on a national level. So the polling is quite mature. We have a pretty good idea of where the results will come out. In terms of the far right surge, I wrestle with this myself, Gideon. I mean, roughly the centre-right group will win about as much as it did last time in 2019. The liberals will win just about as much as they did last time. The centre-left and left will lose a little bit, and the right and far right will gain a few seats. The other problem here is, of course, these national parties join to form the larger supranational ones. And sometimes these parties move in and out of groups. And after the election itself, that’s when we’ll see the groups re-form and know the exact numbers. But at the moment, it does look like we’re going to see a shift of seats from the left and extreme left to the far right and hard right.
Gideon Rachman
And yet, as you say, a lot will depend on then whether they can form a coherent grouping after the vote takes place. And interestingly, the far right groupings are splitting up so that Marine Le Pen has made quite a dramatic split with the Alternative für Deutschland, the German far right party, which she used to share a grouping with. Why did that happen and what’s its significance?
Henry Foy
That’s right. The lead candidate for the Alternative für Deutschland in these elections defended the SS, said that the SS were not all bad people and things they did weren’t all bad. That was beyond the pale for Marine Le Pen, though I would say he did have to say it twice in two different newspaper interviews for her to decide to kick them out of the ID grouping. That means they’re now unaffiliated. They will win seats in the parliament, they will sit in the parliament, but they won’t be formally part of the ID group. Unless, of course, Madame Le Pen has a change of heart and brings them in. The bigger question is: can the ID group and the ECR group — that’s the group of Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister — can they find a way to work together? That’s important, not just because it would create roughly the second-largest group in parliament if they managed it, but it would also close off an avenue for Ursula von der Leyen to win some votes from her right, if you like. The main sort of centrist parties — the centre-right EPP of von der Leyen; the centre-left Socialist group, which is the party of Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor; and the liberal Renew group, which is the group of Emmanuel Macron, president of France — those three are sort of the pan-European centrist, pro-euro bloc that’s kind of held the parliament together for the last decade and the current sort of working majority in their existing chamber. However, they’re going to need support from outside forces. At the moment, the most likely is Giorgia Meloni’s group from Italy. If she does a deal with Marine Le Pen and the more far right groups in the ID, I think that deal would be off.
Gideon Rachman
So Meloni then becomes the kingmaker, or if it’s von der Leyen, the queen maker of Europe, really. I mean, she’s in that absolutely key position. And it’s not just in the terms of this sort of electoral jockeying, I guess it tells you something about the character of the groups we’ve got used to calling far right. Because if she chucks her lot in with Marine Le Pen, that tells you one thing. But some people, I gather, are even saying, well, she might move her grouping into the centre-right and throw her weight behind Ursula von der Leyen.
Henry Foy
There has been some discussion and gossip, if you like, about whether or not Meloni would move into the EPP. I think that’s quite unlikely, mainly because right now she is, as you say, the queen maker. She knows that she’s got people from both sides on her centrist and her far-right flank seeking her support. Ursula von der Leyen has made no real secret over the last year of her shift more towards the right, certainly on migration. She’s sort of taken more of Madame Meloni’s positions. She’s gone to Italy a lot to do quite a public event on Lampedusa, the island that’s been affected most by illegal migration into Italy. At the same time, Le Pen has made a quite public bid just this past weekend for Meloni to work with her. So Meloni knows that she is the one holding the cards, and after the election it’ll be her votes, her MEPs, her members of parliament that vote with her group, that will have the most power in the chamber. So I think the best bet for her is to keep her cards very close to her chest and not to pick sides before the election.
Gideon Rachman
These elections are interesting, aren’t they? Because they are for this supranational parliament, which is powerful. How much resonance do you think they will have around Europe? Or to put it another way, will the French partly may be interpreting this as telling them, well, might Marine Le Pen be our next president? And do you have a sense that there will be a kind of feeling that there’s a drift to what we call the far right Le Pen, but also Wilders in Holland is the kingmaker there. The Sweden Democrats are more and more powerful. A lot of these parties, which were fringe parties, are now major players. Aren’t they?
Henry Foy
That’s absolutely right. And we’ve seen in coalition governments across the EU in recent years, more and more far right parties, either in coalition or supporting from the outside. And these are 27 individual elections. The map is completely fragmented. Some countries use different voting systems, some have different laws on whether or not you must vote or not. Some allow different age groups to vote. Some have different systems for selecting their MEPs. The list goes on and on. And typically what we see is voters voting on national issues. They vote about things that they’re upset about domestically. They vote thinking much more about their own capitals as a way to show support or discontent with governments. It’s striking that Ursula von der Leyen was on stage at a debate last week arguing why people should vote for her party. She’s not on the ballot anywhere in Europe, not even in Germany. Can you go to a polling station and vote for Ursula von der Leyen in the elections? However, candidates that come on her ticket are effectively standing to elect her as the next commission president. One final thing I would say is it’s striking that in the big three states — Germany, France, Italy — we will probably see right or far right groups top the list, or at least do very, very well compared to the parties and governance. So yeah, it’s a real sign of the times. It’s a barometer of where Europe is heading at the moment. And it is in certainly in France, a harbinger of what could be quite a seismic change if Marine Le Pen was to win the presidency from Emmanuel Macron.
Gideon Rachman
Sticking, though, for the moment, with the here and now on the European level, when Britain was still in the European Union, there was a lot of debate about, well, how significant all these elections. And certainly the Eurosceptic argument was always: look at the turnout, people don’t identify with this institution, turnout’s pretty low, and actually it’s kind of a pretend parliament anyway, it doesn’t really have that much power. Do those arguments still apply at all?
Henry Foy
I don’t think so. I think for two reasons. The first is that the European parliament is at its most powerful in the months following the election. This is when the new members, 720 of them, will have to select the next commission president, the most powerful person in Europe, the head of the EU’s executive for the next five years. Obviously, Ursula von der Leyen, as we’ve said, is running for a second five-year term. But if it doesn’t look like she can get the votes, the 361 votes needed for a simple majority, they’ll have to select somebody else. So that could be a big change in the direction of the EU. They’ll also select the commissioners. They’ll select the European Council president and the High Representative, the foreign minister, if you like, of the EU. And then for the rest of the mandate, these MEPs have the power to effectively throw back legislation that member states have agreed to, under the way in which the EU makes laws, both the member states, the council and the parliament have to agree. And so if there is a large shift to the right, and if we do see a coalition that doesn’t have a large majority, that has to rely on votes from the right and far right to get policy through the chamber, you could see a very different set of legislation coming out of the EU in the next five years than we’ve seen. You’ve already seen that with the Green Deal. This was a large package of climate-friendly and energy transition-friendly legislation that Ursula von der Leyen came into power, five years ago, promising. She got most of it through. But we’ve seen over the last six months a massive backlash to that. She struggled to get through the last bits of that legislative package. She’s had to make some U-turns, she’s had to roll back some of her pledges. And I think many people see that as a sign that the next parliament will not be as amenable to the commission’s wishes, certainly in areas like green legislation, than it has been in the past.
Gideon Rachman
So going back into ancient history when I was in Brussels about 20 years ago now, the parliament was always the most pro-EU institution, the most pro deeper integration, federalism, more powers to the centre. Is that likely to change? And might the parliament, with this shift to the right, become actually the biggest brake on European integration?
Henry Foy
That’s a really interesting question. I think it will probably remain the most pro-integration, the most sort of pro-EU institution of the three. The commission, of course, is naturally pro-integration. Given that the more power flows to Brussels, the more power it flows to the commission. The parliament, I think, though, will just move away from that extreme that it has shown in the past. I mean, I think you cannot replace Giorgia Meloni around the council table, potentially Marine Le Pen around the council table, other rightwing far right leaders, Viktor Orbán, of course, Robert Fico in Slovakia, you know. You’re getting quite a large number now of EU national leaders who meet in Brussels and don’t have a pro-integration agenda. They don’t have a federalist agenda, which is different from perhaps in the past. The parliament, though, as I’ve said, will probably still have this quite solid pro-EU majority. It just won’t have the space on its flanks that it used to have as the extremes grow.
Gideon Rachman
And one of the key policy areas that the parliament might then make progress on, if it remains basically with a majority in favour of integration. I mean, are we looking at a bigger EU budget? Still very small compared to national budgets or more defence spending. Or is it going to be the Green New Deal?
Henry Foy
I think the key areas that certainly are being talked about most here by the candidates for commission president from the various parties, are more integrated defence spending, and with Brussels having a role in that and potentially a budget, that’s one that I think there’s widespread support for, both inside the parliament and inside the member states. Better competitiveness, how to improve the sort of performance of the EU single market, which is really not done very well over the last decade in comparison to China or the US. How you do that, though, is a matter of debate, and I think you will see big splits among the groups as to whether or not state aid is a part of that. Of course, the more liberal and left-wing groups will want more state aid, the more right-wing groups will not. And so these are two areas where I think there’s broad agreement on how to proceed, but not on the details of it. And I think the budget, as you’ve mentioned, that will be a big fight. We’ve already seen in this campaign season, the left in the liberal groups. Macron, for example, has called for a doubling of the size of the EU budget. Ursula von der Leyen has been much more circumspect. She said maybe we just need to make existing spending more efficient, which is, of course, a classic political argument. That’s because she’s fully aware that there are large numbers of member states. The richer ones, the more frugal states the Dutch, the Danes, her own native Germany that would not be open to a much, much larger budget. And I think she will feel pressure from the right and far right that there isn’t more money flowing to Brussels. And so that’s a difficult equation for her to square, if indeed she’s reappointed.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. I mean, you said earlier that in a sense we’re looking at 27 different campaigns with a lot of local issues predominating. But is there any sense of a genuine pan-European debate? I mean, I guess in a sense, you were in it. You moderated the economics debate in which von der Leyen took part. What were your main takeaways from that debate?
Henry Foy
The issues that really became most prominent in that were economic security. You know, to what level does Europe have to become more protectionist? Does it need to step a little more away from this very open, pro-free trade position that it’s naturally occupied in the sort of global discussion over trade? That’s, of course, in response to China and the way in which the Chinese economy and certainly its overcapacity has influenced Europe, but also learnings from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And this wake-up moment for the EU, that it relied way too much on Russian gas. Should we be relying on Chinese trade, Chinese raw materials, Chinese critical raw materials, the really important, quite rare earth metals that make up a lot of the green transition technologies? That’s one issue. Another is about America. How much should we rely on America in terms of trade, in terms of defence as well? I think two other key issues are pan-European are migration, which of course is an evergreen issue in Europe and something that does cut across national boundaries and campaigns from the centre about migration and how Europe should be either open or closed to more migration that’s cut across. And also Ukraine, the war in Ukraine, you know, to what level should the EU be stepping up its support for Kyiv? And I think I’ve been quite surprised by how that’s held up quite well over this past year. And I think a lot of people were worried in the spring that arguments against continued support for Kyiv were going to be a central part of this campaign, and it’s been quite striking that they haven’t. It’s only really fringe groups. The widespread opinion across pretty much all of the main serious parties is that support for Ukraine must increase.
Gideon Rachman
So looking at the day after, you said that a lot of the horse-trading begins, then. So let’s finish with the figure of Ursula von der Leyen, who I think has been one of the most high-profile European Commission presidents that I can remember, maybe since Jacques Delors in the 1980s and ‘90s. Do you think she is likely to get the second term that she wants?
Henry Foy
At the moment she’s really the only serious candidate and from what I hear from discussions from people inside her team and indeed in rival camps, her biggest threat is that somebody emerges from elsewhere that could win a majority in the European parliament. Even though there might be leaders, national leaders out there, or even the political leaders in the parliament that don’t like her too much, or perhaps think it’s time for a change. They’re not going to throw this whole situation into chaos. I mean, it would be unprecedented if the 27 EU leaders, or majority of them, selected von der Leyen as their candidate and then the European parliament rejected her. You then be in some kind of constitutional crisis, or some such of the EU on that level, where we would take probably months and months and months to come up with an alternative who might be able to command a majority. So in the absence of a credible and serious candidate against her, she really is the frontrunner. However, there will be weeks and weeks and weeks of negotiations after the election. That’s when Ursula von der Leyen’s election campaign really begins for her. That’s when she sits back down with the leaders, the 27 member-state leaders, and works out what they need from her next commission the goodies, the jobs, the appointments, the policy levers in order for them to back her. It’s going to be pretty intense. There’s the G7 leaders’ meeting just straight after the election. There’s an EU leaders’ summit coming up a week after that. There’s another EU summit at the end of June. There’s the Nato summit in July in Washington. The same leaders are going to be meeting time and time again and essentially haggling out in the corridors what their country needs from von der Leyen in order for her to get their backing. Once that’s secured, she goes to the parliament and hopefully for her in the time in between, the parties are formed, the deals have been done, and a legislative programme from her that could pass muster with a majority will be put forward. The key thing, Gideon, is that it’s a secret ballot in the European parliament. That, of course, works against her because members of her own coalition, people that have pledged to vote for her, could change their mind secretly. But it also works for her in the sense that you could have MEPs from the far left and the far right secretly voting for a candidate, essentially working with the enemy.
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Gideon Rachman
That was Henry Foy, Brussels bureau chief for the FT ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening and please join me again next week.
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