Over the last several days, hundreds of thousands of people across the European Union’s 27 nations voted in the European Parliament elections. While centrists remain in the majority, far-right parties from throughout the bloc made inroads picking up a record number of seats.
The European Parliament is the legislative body for the 27 member states of the EU. The governing body works with the European Commission.
“The commission responds to the Parliament just like any democracy,” Dan Hamilton, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University and former deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe, told Straight Arrow News. “The commission is like the executive branch, and the Parliament is the legislative branch.”
The European Parliament consists of 720 seats in total and roughly 150 of those went to what are characterized as far-right parties.
“There were some far right or hard right gains in a few countries, and that got the headlines,” Hamilton said. “The center, kind of held yesterday. Conservative mainstream got the largest amount of votes. The Social Democrats, the kind of center-left, lost a few votes, but not too much. And then the liberals, in the European sense of liberal, not the U.S. sense, liberals in Europe are more like Wall Street Republicans. They did badly, but not everywhere.”
While moderates remain in the majority in the European Parliament, French voters dealt a blow to President Emmanuel Macron, which could have a lasting impact. Macron-opponent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party made significant gains, doubling the votes received by the French president’s party.
The situation resulted in Macron calling for a snap election. A snap election is an election called earlier than expected. Generally, this is done in parliamentary systems where a prime minister is chosen from lawmakers of the ruling party or a coalition government. In that system, Parliament is dissolved and all seats are up for election again.
In the case of France, the nation’s lower chamber, the National Assembly, is dissolved. The first round of the election will be held on June 30, and the second round takes place on July 7. France’s Senate cannot be dissolved.
While terms like dissolving Parliament sound like chaos, this process is not all that uncommon. The United Kingdom will hold a snap general election on July 4 after polling showed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party had lost some favorability in the nation.
“You’re going to suddenly have two big elections in the next few weeks in France and the U.K., in which probably the hard right wins in France, but the Social Democrats, the Labor Party wins in the U.K.,” Hamilton said of the situation.
However, Hamilton said that while Macron may not have received a favorable turnout in the EU election, he is hoping for a higher turnout later this month.
“People aren’t that interested in, you know, the European Parliament,” Hamilton said. “Many of them don’t know what it does, either. So it’s a lower turnout. But European turnout is usually higher than American turnout for almost any election.”
“Most of the elections to the European Parliament turn on national issues. People are focused on their issues at home, not really on, quote, European issues,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton added that voters in the EU looked at many of the same issues that American voters will be focused on come November.
“Migration is a big issue in Europe, illegal migration, in particular, the economy, inflation,” he said. “European gas prices are about four times what they are in the United States. You think we have it bad?”
“And they have some divisions over how to support Ukraine, how far do you go? So you know, they’re kind of similar issues,” Hamilton added.
