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Elections for the European parliament, which took place from May 22 to May 25, were deemed as a political earthquake. Parties that were anti-European Union (EU), anti-immigration, and pro-Russian won sizable vote shares across the continent, especially in Western Europe, and significantly increased their representation in the new European Parliament. In France and Great Britain, far-right political parties defeated more moderate liberal and conservative parties and illustrated that predicting future electoral outcomes in these countries will not be easy. Since the parties of the far-right have largely been ostracized in the past due to Europe’s experiences with far-right forces in the lead up to the Second World War, their recent rise has focused attention on the continent’s economic and social problems and put the future of European integration in doubt.
This topic brief will break down the results of the 2014 European parliament elections, analyze the conditions that the far-right have used to their advantage in these recent elections, and discuss whether far-right parties will be able to maintain the political momentum given to them by the recent European elections to become a sizable force on the continent.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
The 2014 European Parliamentary Elections
Before discussing the results of the 2014 European parliamentary elections, it is necessary to discuss what the European Parliament (EP) is. The EP is a representative institution directly elected by the populations of all EU member states. There are 751 members of the EP and countries are given representatives, referred to as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), based on their populations. Germany (96), France (74), and Great Britain (73) have the most MEPs in the EP. The EP began as an unelected body in 1952, but direct elections began in 1979. Elections take place for MEPs every five years. The EP is tasked with looking over the EU budget, approves legislation drafted by the European Commission, issues proposals for the European Commission to consider, signs off on development grants, and is generally a “talking shop” for major European issues. The EP also has a non-binding vote on EU treaties, but they cannot veto those treaties.
Turnout for EP elections has been lackluster for decades. Since 1979, turnout has declined with each new election cycle and this year it is estimated that only 43.1% of Europeans cast ballots. This was above the 43% turnout rate in 2009 EP elections, but not by much. Reuters on May 25 writes that Slovakia had the lowest turnout of EU member states with 13% and Belgium had the highest at 90%. The Belgian figure is likely inflated over other EU members because voting is mandatory in that country. The Economist on May 31 has a map of the turnout of all EU member states if extempers are interested in acquiring that data. The low turnout rates signal that a good number of Europeans remain disenchanted with the bureaucracy of the European Union (EU), which they consider to be distant and foreign to them. This is somewhat surprising since the EU’s policies are having a larger impact on the continent with each passing year. I wanted to note the turnout rate, though, because extempers should be aware that more Europeans participate in national elections than those for the EP and this makes it difficult to predict the future based solely on EP election results.
In the 2009 EP elections, parties affiliated with the far-right won fifteen seats. In the 2014 elections, parties that are aligned with the far-right and/or euroskeptics (those who dislike the EU) won 142 seats. However, this does not give them sizable influence. As The Economist article previously cited from May 31 explains, the four main pro-EU groups in the EP still have 70% of the seats in the chamber, although this is down 10% from their 2009 showing. The UK Telegraph on May 26 provides a breakdown of the 2014 results: 214 seats were won the European People’s Party, which is centre-right and it features members of Angela Merkel’s Christian Union; 189 seats were won by the socialist group, which includes the British Labour Party; 66 seats were won by Liberals, of which the British Liberal Democratic Party is party to; 52 seats were won by Greens; 46 seats were won by European conservatives, of which the British Conservative Party is a member; 42 members come from hard-left political groups; 41 are independents (some far-right parties fall into this designation); and 63 are newly elected members that are not allied with existing political groups. The UK Telegraph article has a visual image to show this breakdown of the new EP, which extempers should cut for their files. The UK Telegraph in a separate article on May 26 writes that the European People’s Party, the Socialists, the Liberals, and the Greens are expected to work together to advance EU legislation and the rise of far-right groups in the chamber will likely cause them to double down on their unity rather than disintegrate.
The New York Times on May 27 writes that exit polls in larger EU countries like France signal that voters chose far-right parties over traditional political actors because they wanted to voice their anger at economic problems and EU policies. In France, 37% of voters cited immigration as their central concern, but others noted declining purchasing power, the handling of the euro zone crisis, and rising unemployment as reasons to choose a radical political alternative. The same was true in Great Britain, where The Economist on May 31 notes that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) became the first minor party in more than a century to win a national vote.
It should also be noted that the far-right was not the only winner of the EP elections. In Greece, the far-left Syriza movement of Alexis Tsipras, which opposes the austerity measures imposed on the country by the IMF and EU, won 26.7% of the vote and defeated the sitting government (led by New Democracy), who pulled in 22.8% of the vote. Therefore, European voters (or those that showed up) decided to use the EP elections as a way to express their discontent with EU policies and/or the way their countries are handling their domestic affairs.
A Growing Environment for the Far-Right
So what is it that makes a party far-right? Far-right parties typically espouse extreme political rhetoric that is reminiscent of fascist Italy or Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. On the political spectrum, fascism is usually deemed as a far-right ideology, whereas communism is deemed as a far-left ideology. This is not clear cut, though, as fascist regimes favored some socialist ideas such as the growth of the national government and shared a hatred of large businesses with their socialist opponents. Benito Mussolini, the father of Italian fascism, was a former socialist and the Nazi Party in Germany was deemed the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” In fact, historians are still debating where fascism falls on the political spectrum and Robert Paxton, an American historian who is an expert on European fascism, argues that what makes it difficult to evaluate fascist regimes is that they expressed a certain set of principles when taking power and then governed completely differently (extempers interested in this subject should read Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism).
Historical debates aside, far-right parties tend to glorify national identity (thereby opposing multiculturalism) and are against open immigration policies and move to severely restrict or eliminate immigration into their countries. Their leaders may also be hostile to Jews and openly admire former fascist regimes and/or Nazi Germany (this has caused some far-right leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen in France to be found guilty of Holocaust denial). These parties tend to be populist in their origin, claiming to work outside of traditional political channels and opposing the “political elites” that control the politics of various European states. They also claim to speak for the average person of European ancestry, who they claim is under siege from EU policies that are eroding national sovereignty and traditions. In recent years, fears about the rise of Islam in Europe have served as a unifying feature of populist, far-right groups on the continent. Opponents of the far-right call this “Islamophobia.” Far-right parties are hostile to the EU and the euro, but their proscriptions for curing their nation’s economic ills can vary. For example, the French far-right National Front (FN) favors protectionism, whereas the UKIP is a free market party.
The Huffington Post on May 26 gives a listing of some of Europe’s most notable far-right parties and notes their beliefs. The most notable ones for extempers to know are the FN in France; UKIP; Golden Dawn in Greece, which campaigned in 2012 to rid Greece of “filth” and has had its leaders arrested for being part of a criminal conspiracy; Jobbik, which is a far-right, anti-Semitic nationalist movement in Hungary that has the support of Vladimir Putin; and The Party of Freedom in the Netherlands, whose leader, Geert Wilders is a critic of Islam and wants to end all Islamic immigration into the Netherlands.
This year’s European elections took place in an atmosphere of hostility toward the EU. The euro zone crisis that began in Greece in April 2010 quickly threatened the fiscal standing of struggling EU nations such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Germany has led the EU’s reaction to the crisis and in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pushed for severe austerity measures to trim the budget deficits of these countries. Since those cuts have targeted social programs and threatened generous social transfers, anti-EU sentiment has given rise to political figures that are proposing a withdrawal from the EU and the euro. The UK Telegraph previously cited from May 26 writes that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the FN, wants to build an economic Maginot Line (the name of the failed defensive line around France that was constructed after the First World War) around France because she views the EU as an “Anglo-Saxon market-fundamentalist conspiracy.” As a result, the FN supports ending France’s relationship with the EU and the euro. The political turmoil in Greece in light of the cuts, which has bolstered support for Golden Dawn and far-left Syriza, lends credence to the observation that times of economic turmoil typically produce a fertile ground for radical political movements on both sides of the political spectrum. However, although it is true that economic depression helped usher in the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s, there is not necessarily a strong link between economic chaos and the rise of the far-right. Cas Muddle, assistant professor in the School for Public and International policy at the University of Georgia and author of Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, writes for the Washington Post on May 30 that only one the countries that received an EU bailout after the euro zone crisis, Greece, actually elected a far-right MEP. In fact, the far-right did best in countries that were barely affected by the euro zone crisis such as Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Muddle speculates that current far-right parties do better when socio-cultural issues like immigration are the number one concern of voters as opposed to socio-economic issues because they have few solutions for income inequality or to rejuvenate economic growth.
Despite the perception that Europeans are more Enlightened and liberal than Americans on a variety of social issues, there are fault lines over immigration just like there are in the United States. The EU allows for all members to enjoy freedom of movement across the euro zone, which means that a Polish worker can move to France or Great Britain. This policy was meant to allow workers to acquire jobs throughout the euro zone and evidence suggests it might actually help countries that are receiving them like France and Great Britain in terms of tax revenue. However, a problem with the policy is that it demands that EU members have an open mindset of cultural pluralism, whereby governments respect a host of different cultural values and beliefs as long as new populations are willing to abide by the laws that govern that specific society. It also creates a problem of immigrants from Eastern Europe heading into Western European countries that are enjoying sizable economic growth and offering a better standard of living and this has pressed some governments in terms of housing and public services. Right-wing forces suggest that there is also “welfare tourism,” whereby Eastern European workers are moving to Western Europe to get on welfare as opposed to working (these views have been investigated and found without merit by several organizations). Free movement through the EU is another reason why Turkey is having a problem joining the body, since Europeans fear what could happen if Turkey becomes a member and poor, Muslim immigrants are allowed to move throughout the continent. Finally, native, white Europeans have a declining birthrate relative to immigrant populations (the same is true in the United States when it comes to whites versus Latinos) and the continent is facing a demographic shift. Numbers equal political power, so anxieties about what the continent will look like in the next fifty years have created an environment that helps the far-right and their message against new immigration. The New York Times on May 30 writes that since youth unemployment in some nations is rising to as high as 25%, politicians critical of immigration are finding a receptive audience and that the debate over immigration is beginning to become an issue in a wider European culture war. The New York Times previously cited from May 27 also reveals that 37% of French voters in the European elections cited immigration as their number one concern.
Problems with traditional political parties are also allowing populations to vote against their existing political structures by siding with the far-right. The New York Times on May 29 reports that the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), France’s mainstream conservative party, was recently hit by allegations that it breached legal spending limits on former President Nicholas Sarkozy’s re-election campaign and covered up the overspending with false billing practices. Also helping the FN was the unpopularity of the Socialist Party. Although President Francois Hollande was elected on a platform of ending Sarkozy’s austerity policies, he has actually done the opposite. The Chicago Tribune reports on May 26 that France ran a budget deficit of 4.2% last year, which is in excess of the 3% allowed by the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. The EU has given France until 2015 to bring down its budget deficit and Hollande’s government aims to shed €50 billion from the public books over the next three years. The austerity measures are unpopular among French voters and Hollande’s Socialist Party and in the European elections, the Socialists finished third behind the FN and UMP with 14% of the vote, which was the worst electoral showing in the party’s history. In Britain, the UKIP benefitted from anti-EU Britons feeling that David Cameron is moving too slowly on renegotiations of British membership with the body and antagonism toward Labour leader David Milliband, who has said that he does not favor a British referendum on EU membership. The refusal to look into a referendum, according to The Guardian on May 14, is counterproductive for British interests in the EU because it feeds into the narrative that the organization is anti-democratic.
Finally, some far-right parties in Western Europe have worked to redefine themselves and play down some of their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic pasts. In France, Marine Le Pen played down the views of her father, Jean-Marie, who, according to The Toronto Star on May 26, said that Europe’s immigration problem could be solved by the Ebola virus. Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP, also went at great lengths in the run up to the election to note that he would not work in the EP with the FN because he sees the FN as too extreme on immigration and towards Jews. Therefore, playing down some of their more radical connections is one of the ways that the far-right is trying to reach a wider number of voters and appear as a legitimate alternative to existing political parties.
A Far-Right Bloc in the EP?
The biggest fear among political commentators is that all of the far-right, euroskeptic parties that won seats in the new EP would form a sizable political bloc and disrupt the body. The EP has traditionally served as a “talking shop” for right-wing politicians, who have no real voting power due to the sizable coalitions of pro-EU groups, and their attendance has been lackluster. By acquiring nearly 150 seats, though, a far-right appears to be strengthened, but this is where appearances can be deceiving. To form a recognized political group in the EP that group must have at least twenty-five members and those members must come from seven different EU member states. Most parties trying to form a group can qualify under the first standard, but have difficulty getting members from six other countries. As mentioned above, there are some far-right groups that refuse to work together. Der Spiegel on May 27 writes that the UKIP and Denmark’s Danish People’s Party refuse to work with the FN, which take two possibly groups out of a far-right bloc. The FN also does not want to form an agreement with neo-Nazi parties in the EP like Golden Dawn or Jobbik because that would harm its attempts at distancing itself from its controversial past. The Austrian Freedom Party, The Party of Freedom (Netherlands), Vlaams Belang (Belgium), the Swedish Democrats, and Italy’s Northern League appear willing to join with the FN in a far-right alliance, but that still leaves the FN one country short of meeting the EP’s qualifications. Extempers should pay attention to whether the FN is able to form a bloc of support in the EP before the deadline in three weeks (which will also happen during NSDA Nationals). The reason forming a bloc matters is that it would increase the access of the affiliated parties to committee posts, increase their speech times in the EP, and open up funding sources for them. All of these could raise the profile of far-right parties and help them define their message for future national races back home. This is especially important for the FN because The Economist explains on May 26 that it only has two deputies in the French National Assembly and currently struggles to be heard.
The victories by far-right parties might be a foreign policy victory by Vladimir Putin since parties of the far-right express some of the nationalist and socially conservative views he shares. Foreign Affairs on March 25 explained that Putin has sent advisors to help some far-right parties on the continent like Hungary’s Jobbik and that he might be aiming to destabilize the EU so that it cannot grow to encompass more countries near the Russian border. Slate on May 30 writes that far-right leaders such as Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage have publicly declared their admiration of Putin’s “patriotism” and Farage has said that Putin is the world leader he “most admires.” For those extempers that believe Putin is trying to present himself as a conservative counterweight to the liberal culture of Western Europe, these pronouncements provide evidence of how some Europeans are embracing Russia as a partner and also show how Putin could use the political turmoil of EU member states to his advantage.
Looking ahead, far-right parties will need to show that they can replicate their results on the national level. Doing well in European elections with low turnout is one matter. Doing well in national elections when significant power is at stake and the population is more mobilized is another. The Economist article previously cited from May 31 reports that only 51% of British voters that backed UKIP in the EP elections are prepared to back them in next year’s British general election. In the 2009 EP elections, the UKIP pulled in 16.5% of the vote, but when the 2010 British general elections rolled around, it only pulled in 3.1%. Marine Le Pen has made it clear that she wants to become France’s first female president and it is true, as The Christian Science Monitor points out on May 26, that the FN just pulled in its largest share of the vote in any French national election, but obstacles remain. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen surprised the world by pulling in 18% of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election, beating out Socialist candidate and prime minister Lionel Jospin and qualifying for the runoff against then-President Jacques Chirac. However, Chirac trounced Le Pen by the widest margin in the history of a French presidential election by winning 82% of the vote. It is hard to see how Marine, even if she positioned herself as a more moderate candidate, would ever convince French voters to give her the presidency. It is very likely that if Francois Hollande runs that he could finish in third place and fail to qualify for the runoff, but when faced with the mainstream UMP and the far-right FN, the general French electorate is almost guaranteed to side with the UMP. In addition, some far-right parties like the Dutch Party of Freedom underperformed in the EP elections. All of this evidence suggests that Henri Malosee, president of the European Economic and Social Committee, is getting ahead of himself when he told Time on May 26 that the latest EP elections “may be the last” if there were not sizable changes in the EU.
The biggest impact of the recent European elections might be that the success of far-right parties causes mainstream conservative parties in France and Great Britain to move farther to the right to win these voters over. Next year, Britain has a national election and France has a regional election (an election where the Socialists are expected to lose a great deal of regional administrative bodies as they hold twenty of the twenty-one up for election). David Cameron has already promised a vote on British membership in the EU by 2017 if he is returned to 10 Downing Street, which is a signal that he is trying to steal one of the issues from the UKIP. The French UMP might begin to embrace more anti-immigration principles as well to steal votes from the FN, and its protectionist wing may push for taking those elements from the FN platform as well. The problem for the EU is that if Britain and France become too conservative, the future of the European experiment could be open to doubt. Germany needs France to become a more successful economy to share the financial burdens of the euro zone, but the problem is that the FN’s economic platform is likely, according to The UK Telegraph previously cited from May 26, to produce a ruinous series of trade wars and devaluations on the continent (that is, if it were ever enacted). The noise that far-right forces may generate in the upcoming EP may cause the EU to be more lenient with British demands to renegotiate its EU membership in regards to restricting the free movement of peoples in EU member states and giving the UK more sovereignty in handling its affairs versus EU mandates (this is the principle of subsidiarity whereby the EU is supposed to let decisions be taken on the national level if possible before taking actions on its own).
When discussing the European far-right, extempers should make sure to describe the conditions that have produced the movement and not immediately write it off as a short-term, reactionary movement. The FN has been around for decades in France and concerns about economics, immigration, and national identity are likely to continue for years. However, extempers should avoid any doom and gloom scenarios as well. Although the FN and UKIP were successful, they face a steep climb to win significant national races and other countries on the continent, such as Italy and Germany, elected conventional political forces allied to their respective leaders to the EP. The forces of the far-right also did much better in Western Europe than Eastern Europe, so the movement is not quite as continental as some of the news would have you believe. Therefore, while the rise of the far-right is disconcerting for Europe’s mainstream parties, leaders, and some of its people, its ability to make national policy is still very limited.