Making Sense Of The European Elections

Making Sense of the European Elections

by Soeren Kern

• The election results reflect a generational shift and suggest that European politics increasingly will be dominated by ideological clashes over two competing mega-issues: the fight against climate change championed by the pro-EU globalists; and the opposition to mass migration and multiculturalism led by the anti-EU national populists.
  
  
• "Of the five individual political parties with the biggest representation in the new European Parliament, four are anti-European Union." — Ivan Krastev, Bulgarian analyst, The New York Times.
  
  
• "The social institutions have long been dominated by sympathizers of the Greens — especially the media and education, but also the churches. That 37% of first-time voters now vote for the Greens is also a consequence of the fact that in schools green creeds are propagated as certainties of modern education.... The awareness of what market economy/capitalism is and should be has almost completely disappeared in Germany." — Rainer Zitelmann, German historian, The European.
  
  
  
  

Mainstream center-left and center-right parties — especially in Britain, France and Germany — performed poorly in European parliamentary elections held between May 23-26. The traditional centrist duopoly lost its majority in the next European Parliament, which opens on July 2 and will sit for five years, until 2024.

Most of the political vacuum left by the so-called legacy parties was filled by Greens and pro-European Union liberals. Pro-EU parties will control around 75% of the seats in the 751-seat European Parliament.

Anti-EU nationalist parties made important gains — especially in Belgium, Britain, France, Hungary, Italy and Poland — but fell short of expectations. Euroskeptic parties will hold around 25% of the seats in the next European Parliament.

The election results reflect a generational shift and suggest that European politics increasingly will be dominated by ideological clashes over two competing mega-issues: the fight against climate change championed by the pro-EU globalists; and the opposition to mass migration and multiculturalism led by the anti-EU national populists.

What follows is a selection of commentary by Europeans on the future of European politics: