The European Parliament elections: Different this time? by Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska and Leonard Schuette
The elections in May will shake up the European Parliament, as established parties will lose seats to newcomers. The resulting greater political competition might pose challenges to EU decision-making but could also generate greater public interest in European politics. The paradox of European elections has been that the more powers the European Parliament has acquired, the smaller the percentage of citizens who have voted for it. At the last election in 2014, turnout fell to a record low of 43 per cent. Mainstream political parties affiliated with the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Party of European Socialists (PES) have done little to change this worrying trend. Between them they have enjoyed a comfortable majority of seats since the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979. Instead of campaigning on pan-European issues, the national parties in the European political families have tended to focus on domestic issues outside the Parliament’s remit. This has contributed to limited public understanding of the role of the European Parliament. When pressed on their European policies, mainstream parties have demonstrated few differences in their programmes. Some national party leaders also use the Parliament as a place of exile for their political rivals or a well-paid reward for party loyalists. All this has led at best to voter apathy and at worst to public distaste for the European Parliament. There are reasons to believe, however, that the next European Parliament elections in May will be different.
First, the increasing fragmentation and volatility of national politics is redrawing the landscape at the EU level. In the past, citizens’ political affiliations were largely determined by class and faith, leading to the dominance of Christian and Social Democratic parties in Europe. But today’s postindustrial society is more disparate, and traditional party loyalties have weakened. As a result, new parties and movements, often more politically extreme, are gaining support at the expense of established centre-right and centre-left parties. For the first time in the history of European Parliament elections, the EPP and the PES combined will probably not command a majority. As of March 21st, polls suggest that the EPP may lose 41 seats and the PES 56. This would leave the two main political blocs with 310 seats out of the total of 705 (assuming the UK leaves the EU without holding elections). The support of other political groupings like the Alliance for Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) will be needed to reach the majority required for EU legislation to pass. Second, the migration, eurozone and rule of law crises have raised the EU’s profile in