The elections are important, as their outcome will influence the European political agenda over the next five years, in a particularly delicate phase in which Europe is facing multiple challenges such as climate change, border security, and financial wealth, placed at risk by increasingly aggressive competition from China and the United States, committed to protecting their industries by resorting to subsidies and trade tariffs.
How will the elections take place, and why are they important?
The elections to renew the European Parliament take place every five years.
At the next elections in June, 720 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will be elected, 15 more than at the last mandate.
The number of MEPs elected by each EU country is defined before each election and is proportional to the country’s population. The minimum number of MEPs or any country is six, an the maximum 96. The country with the largest population, i.e. Germany, will have 96 MEPs, followed by France with 81, and Italy with 76.
The elections are held in each EU member state and citizens vote for their political parties, that consider the election an important test of their popularity.
The MEPs are elected based on the national electoral systems, but in respect of certain common principles, defined by EU regulations, that must be applied, with particular reference to the proportionality rue: the number of MEPs elected from a political party is proportional to the number of votes it receives.
Once elected, the MEPs sit in political groups based on shared ideals, rather than on nationality. There are currently seven political groups in the European Parliament:
• Group of the European People’s Party (EPP)
• Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D)
• Renew Europe Group
• Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA)
• European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR)
• Identity and Democracy Group (ID)
• The Left Group in the European Parliament (The Left)
• MEPs that do not adhere to any of the political Groups are known as non-attached members (NA).
The Members of the European Parliament have the power to approve, reject and modify the legislation that governs the life of the citizens of the European Union.
The Parliament also has the important task of electing, on proposal of the European Council (formed by the Heads of State and Government of the 27 member states), the President of the European Commission, i.e. the Union’s executive arm, tasked with defining the European Political Agenda for the next five years. In 2019, the fundamental objectives of the a agenda were the European Green Deal and the Digital Transition.
Furthermore, the European Parliament is called to approve the Budget of the Union and to appoint, again on proposal of the EU Council, the Commissioners, and to supervise their work.
What do the polls tell us?
And how safe is von der Leyen’s re-election?
Based on the latest opinion polls, the majority of seats should go to the PPE again, albeit with a slight loss of consensus compared to the previous elections in 2019. The Social Democrats (S&D) should prove essentially resilient, confirming their status as the second-largest Group in the Parliament. By contrast, polls point to losses in consensus for Renew Europe, The Left, and the Greens, as opposed to growth for the more rightist parties, such as the ECR and ID (far right).In essence, the picture drawn by the polls outlines a more fragmented and a more right-leaning Parliament.
However, the absolute majority of seats should again be won by the pro-Europe centrist formations, often referred to collectively as the “Super Great Coalition”: PPE (centre-right), the Social Democrats (centre-left), and the Renew Europe Group (liberals).
In 2019 this coalition had supported (albeit not unanimously) the appointment Ursula of von der Leyen as President of the EU Commission. Should the Greens also side with this front, considering their moderate and pro-Europe positions, the centrist majority would be even broader.
This, at east “on paper”, should guarantee the re-election of von der Leyen at the helm of the Commission.
Nonetheless, her re-election cannot be taken entirely for granted.
This is because the current system provides for the appointment of a “Spitzenkandidat” by each political group before the election, i.e. their candidate to the Presidency of the EU Commission. The PPE’s candidate is the President currently in office, Ursula von der Leyen.
If, as suggested by the polls, the three political Groups of the centre, namely the European People’s Party, the Social Democrats, and Renew Europe, manage to obtain the absolute majority of Parliamentary seats, with the PPE winning more votes than the other formations, then von der Leyen would be the natural candidate for the presidency.
The problem is that the Spitzenkandidat system has not legal foundation, as it is not provided for by the Treaties that assign the task of selecting the candidate to the Presidency of the Commission to the European Council (formed by EU country Heads of State and of Government), for the Parliament’s subsequent ratification.
As a result, the Council could opt for another candidate. This was the case at the latest elections in 2019, when the EPP Spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber, failed to clinch sufficient consensus among the EU governments, therefore the European Council proposed Ursula von der Leyen as the candidate, ultimately elected in Parlaiment by a slim margin (383 votes vs. 374 needed), thanks to the support offered by her Group (the PPE), sided by the Social Democrats and Renew Europe.
In addition to the limitations of the Spitzenkandidat system, von der Leyen’s re-election also faces the risk of not receiving sufficient support from the centrist parties that had voted for her in 2019 (for instance, Macron has refrained so far from officially supporting her candidature), while a potential hand offered by the Greens remains uncertain. This would force the outgoing president to seek help among the conservative right-wing ECR Group, where the Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni could come to the rescue. However, such a move would risk alienating the support of the Social Democrats and of Renew Europe.
In any case, the PPE’s refusal (recently reasserted) to seek an agreement with the sovereignist far-right Group Identity and Democracy (ID) (which in addition to Salvini’s Lega or Italy and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, also includes the German party Alternative für Deutschland, recently accused of accepting neo-Nazi activists in its ranks, as well as having surreptitiously received funds from Russia and China), means that a centre-right or right-centre collation is unlikely to take shape.
Therefore, it is hard to imagine particular changes in the political agenda.
In essence, the picture drawn by the polls outlines a more fragmented and a more right-leaning Parliament than the previous one, although the resilience of the centrist pro-Europe parties should guarantee overall continuity to the European agenda, if not for a softening (already under way, in fact), of the goals imposed by the Green Transition, and greater focus on themes such as common defence, security, illegal immigration containment, and the competitiveness of European industry to counter the challenges from China and the US.
The fact remains that a Parliament leaning more to the right, with nationalist and euro-sceptic parties at the fore, would risk sowing the European integration process that is essential for the survival of the Union. As recently stressed by Draghi and by Macron, only a more united Europe will have the strength to take on the challenges posed by the new picture in which the superpowers are again heavily in competition with each other, in both economic and military terms, with the risk of relegating Europe to a secondary role, toe he point of threatening its very survival.
What are the implications for European fiscal policy?
One of the European Parliament’s functions is to approve the Union’s multi-year Budget, although it has no active role in application of the European Budget Rules, that have just been reformed.
The assessment of the fiscal policy of individual EU member states, as also the decisions on opening excessive deficit procedures, pertain to the Commission and the European Council.
However, via the process of appointing the President of the Commission and the Commissioners, the European Parliament may influence the flexibility granted to the national governments in defining their multi-year spending plans, as provided for by the rules of the new Stability and Growth Pact. These flexibility margins, in place until 2027, allow an easing of the required fiscal consolidation, taking into account higher interest expenditure, as well as investment in the green transition and in defence. The Commission will play a central role in deciding if and to what extent to grant such flexibility.
For this reason as well the European elections are important, all the more so for a highly indebted country such as Italy, that will be asked to implement a challenging fiscal consolidation process.
