European elections muddy the waters

Europe watchers looking to the European parliamentary elections -- which took place last week, for a clear, cohesive message about the direction Europeans want their region to take -- must be feeling disappointed.

As predicted, some member states, including Britain, France, and Denmark, witnessed huge gains by the eurosceptic hard right. In Britain, the UK Independence Party, UKIP, won just under 28 per cent of the vote, its anti-immigration, eurosceptic message striking a chord with voters, including some in areas of high unemployment outside the capital that are yet to feel any impact from the economic recovery.

In France, the strongly nationalistic, far right Front National captured over a quarter of the vote, with support for the governing Socialist Party tumbling to just under 14 per cent, a disastrous performance by any measure. In Denmark, the far right, anti-immigrant and eurosceptic Danish People’s Party also triumphed, winning 27 per cent of the vote and securing four seats in the European parliament. In Greece, Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party with a reputation for extreme violence, won its first seats in the European Parliament, as did Germany’s right-wing extremist National Democratic Party.

At the same time voters in other parts of Europe delivered quite different messages. In Italy, it was very much a victory for the political mainstream: Beppe Grillo, a comedian-turned populist politician, who had set expectations high with his success in national elections last year, failed to dent the governing party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi which, against all expectations, managed to secure more than 40 per cent of the vote.

In Spain, where the governing People’s Party won the largest share of the vote, Podemos, a four-month-old party that sprang out of the left-wing, anti-austerity indignados movement, was the surprise success story, capturing nearly 8 per cent of the vote. In Greece, the left opposition Syriza party was the clear winner, securing 27 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere, the worst fears of those committed to the European project failed to materialise. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party of controversial Geert Wilders was relegated to fourth place, its share of the vote falling by a quarter, while Hungary’s neo-Nazi Jobbik, despite a strong performance in national elections earlier this year, failed to make any headway in relation to previous European parliamentary elections.

From this hodge-podge, certain broad findings are retrievable. First, tough austerity measures introduced at the height of the euro-zone crisis have failed to turn much of Southern Europe anti-European in a way that many had expected. Here, parties seeking a reformed Europe with a reworked agenda, rather than an exit, continue to hold sway.

Second, the surge in support for parties of the extreme right has taken place largely in countries which, while hit by the economic crisis, cannot be said to have borne its brunt. This suggests that the recrudescence of the hard right has as much to do with domestic issues as with the EU per se .

In France, for example, the Front National, overseen by the steely, media-savvy Marine le Pen, has for years been working to recast itself as a ‘respectable’ force that embodies traditional values; its weaponry is as much cultural as economic, and its assault on social change has an openly racist and homophobic edge (unsurprisingly, it polled poorly in multicultural Paris).

In Britain, UKIP skilfully played upon popular disenchantment with established parties, whether Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat. It also leeched votes from parties further to the right, notably the British National Party, which saw its vote collapse. While openly eurosceptic (it has been pushing for a national referendum which it believes will see Britons vote to leave the EU), UKIP persistently banged the anti-immigration drum, its message swelled by a chorus of approval from loud sections of the print media.

Any attempts to draw conclusions from the results themselves must be tempered by the low turnout in many countries. While the average turnout was 43 per cent, this figure hides significant variations. Belgium and Luxembourg, where voting is mandatory, saw an over 90 per cent turnout, while others registered disturbingly low figures: in Slovakia, for example, the turnout was just 13 per cent, and in Britain, just under 34 per cent of the electorate voted. The low turnout suggests high levels of disengagement and a lack of confidence that anything will change as a result. However, voters in countries that suffered most under the crisis came to the polls in some force: the turnout was 57.4 per cent in Greece, 51 per cent in Ireland and 60 per cent in Italy.

Another thing to note is the lack of unity within the hard right across Europe. While the number of eurosceptic, far right representatives in the European parliament now exceeds 140 — roughly a fifth of the total — there are divisions aplenty.

UKIP and the Danish People’s Party have been swift to distance themselves from France’s Front National, wary of its sulphurous reputation and anti-semitic pedigree; the Danish party, which wants tighter controls on welfare payments to other European citizens, is pushing for an alliance with Britain’s Conservative Party. For her part, Marine le Pen of the FN is for the moment keeping a prudent distance from the neo-nazis of Jobbik and the Golden Dawn.

Even the centre right is somewhat fractured. At the last European parliamentary elections in 2009, the Conservative Party left the European parliamentary bloc they had belonged to — the European People’s Party, or EPP — to form a new bloc, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Significantly, it was the EPP which won the largest number of seats this time round, with the ECR decreasing in strength, from 57 to 46 MEPs.

Even allowing for all these caveats, the results are troublesome for the ruling establishment in Europe. French President Francois Hollande was quick to lead calls for reform, urging European leaders to hear the message of voters, and roll back the role of the European Union in unnecessary areas. UK Prime Minister David Cameron quickly fell into step, but a somewhat different message came from German Chancellor Angela Merkel who, while expressing her regret at the success of the far right, argued that improvements in competitiveness and growth were the way forward.

The absence of consensus about where to go is demonstrated by the current struggles over the choice of a new president of the Commission. Merkel’s initial choice — Jean Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg — was fiercely opposed by British Prime Minister David Cameron and others eager for a commissioner more bent on reform, and now even Merkel has agreed for the need to at least present the European parliament with real alternatives.

Far from clarifying what Europe is about and its future shape, the latest elections seem to have just muddied the waters further.