30 April 2019

Fondation Robert Schuman: The electoral context 2019: new and increasingly European issues

Today the focus is less on economic matters but rather more on issues, already nascent in the 2014 election, like climate change and immigration, write Emmanuel Riviere and Julien Zalc.

1) THE 2019 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS: A DIFFERENT CONTEXT FROM THAT OF 2014

Eurobarometer data[1] highlights the economic nature of the concerns of Europe’s citizens, in the same way they were concerned during the renewal of the European Parliament in 2014. Indeed, when they were asked in autumn 2013 to identify two of the most important issues the European Union faced at the time, Europeans selected the economic situation (45%), unemployment (36%) and the state of public finance (26%). Five years later, this leading trio has been overturned, making way for immigration (40%), in first place, according to Eurobarometer[2], whilst this theme was only fourth at the end of 2013 (16%). Then comes terrorism (20%), which ranks quite high, due to the emotional weight it holds, but it is also a trend that decreases rapidly when there are no attacks on European soil, and finally the state of public finances (19%). It is also important to note the progressive breakthrough of the question of climate change in European awareness, selected by 16% of citizens, makes the latter the fifth issue that the Union faces according to European opinion. 

Economic concerns were relegated to a lower position, since the relative recovery of the Member States’ economies over the last five years, the migratory crisis of 2015 and even the progressive awareness of public opinion of environmental issues seem to explain this phenomenon. However, the latter did not just suddenly appear. Indeed, European concern regarding the Union’s economic situation peaked mid-recession in 2011 and has constantly declined. However, it is important to stress that the economic situation continues to worry the populations in the Member States which were strongly affected by the crisis. In 2018, for 27% of the Greeks and Italians, 25% of the Spanish and even 22% of the Cypriots, this issue is one of the Union’s most important, with the average amongst all European citizens lying at 18%.

The same trend can also be seen regarding unemployment and public finances, in 2013 for the former, and as of 2012, for the latter. However, we should note that concern about the State budget is not the same across all of Europe. Indeed in 2018 the state of government finance continues to capture public attention in the Union’s most prosperous states, such as Austria (28%), Germany (30%) and the Netherlands (34%).

Regarding extra-economic concerns, one of them, immigration, started to rise in 2013, with an extremely sharp rise occurring in 2015. As for climate change, it developed at a slower place and more progressively between 2011 and 2017, when there was a leap in European public opinion in this regard. [...]

The left struggling

The first consequence, linked to the combination of economic anxiety and concern about migration, is that we are moving, in all likelihood, towards a more right-wing Parliament, or more exactly, less left leaning than after the election in 2014. Marked by an economic crisis with serious social consequences, the elections of 2014 recorded progress on the left of the left, sometimes to the detriment of social democracy (Spain, Greece), sometimes as part of an overall rise on the left (Portugal), enabling the GUE/NGL to win more than 50 seats. The losses for the moderate left (and for the S&D group) were compensated by the success of the social democrats in several countries where the radical left struggled to breakthrough or did not exist and which sent strong delegations to Strasbourg to support the social demographic group: Germany, Poland, the UK and Italy. The social democrats limited their losses in comparison with the previous legislature by a handful of seats.

The 2019 elections promise to be more difficult. Economic concerns are still strong, but the experience in power by governments on the left, sometimes in coalition, has not helped to lend them credibility, whether this has been in response to social consequences of the crisis or to clarify their definition of the production or redistribution model to promote in Europe. Losses are forecast to be high for these parties in Germany, Italy, France, which are not compensated by either progress made by socialism in Spain or Labour in Britain, which was already strong in 2014, nor by the good health of social democracy in Scandinavia due to the weight of these countries.

But these losses do not benefit the left of the left, which is divided in France and almost wiped from the electoral map in Italy, weakened in Spain. It looks like the development of economic concerns, the management of the post-crisis situation, are a less profitable context for these parties. In all the losses by the GUE/NGL and S&D groups might rise above 50 seats.

Concern about the climate, quoted more by the electorate on the left and which is clearly rising, is not benefiting these parties, whether they make this their battle horse or not. In the field they face competition by the Greens, who undeniably are benefiting from the constant rise in concern about the climate. It is particularly striking in some countries where the population is particularly sensitive, or much more so than in 2014. MEPs from Germany and the UK, in particular, France and Belgium to a lesser degree might strengthen the Greens/EFA group in the new Parliament in 2019.

An alignment of concern for the environment and the ecologist vote does not occur everywhere and curiously not in the Scandinavian countries where the theme takes first place and is the focus of a consensus. This is why the possible gains made by the Greens/EFA remain below the strength of this concern.

Migration: an advantage for the far right

The migratory issue is a cause for concern much more for those who vote on the right. However, it does not particularly benefit the parties on the right within the main group in Parliament, the EPP. According to voting intentions the latter is forecast to lose significantly in countries like Germany, Spain and Italy, where the moderate right is facing a breakthrough by political parties which are mainly typified by their anti-immigration stance (AfD, Vox, Lega). This concern is not extremely widespread in France, where it does not seem that the National Rally will do better than in 2014. But the right, weakened by the elections in 2017 is still struggling and France will probably one of the countries to send fewer MEPs to the EPP than in 2014.  

The issue of immigration is complicated for these parties, which have to articulate firm discourse and respect their values at the same time. The question of identity, another way of seeing this issue, is raised by several lead candidates, but with the risk of being less audible than the positions of the more radical parties. In this regard the parties sitting in the ENF group seem to be the main beneficiaries of the rise in concern about immigration since 2014, and this group may, if it remains as it stands, win 25 more seats, according to our most recent forecast, rising from 37 to 62 MEP seats notably due to the result of the Lega in Italy.

However, the EPP group would limit their losses from a relative point of view, despite its probable regression in the most populous countries, compensated by a few gains, notably in Greece. Although this group will probably retain its lead position in the Parliament, it will owe this less to its ability to surf on one of the emerging themes than on its capacity to articulate its discourse on two major themes, economic credibility and the control of migratory flows.

The central positioning of the parties in the ALDE, potentially strengthened by the French MEPs from the République en Marche (LREM), also means that it will be able to articulate its discourse around these themes well. In all events this group seems to be progressing, even without the help of the LREM. But these parties are also taking advantage of the difficulties experienced by the big parties and their discredit. Indeed, it will be because of the lassitude with two-party system. The parties in Spain, Germany, France and the Czech Republic will help to strengthen central positions in Strasbourg.

One concern still escapes both the left and the right split and it is that which haunts citizens living on the Union’s eastern flank in particular. This concern is of a completely different order, since it invites people not to look at what is happening in Europe but what Europe means for the rest of the world and what it has to protect. This then might contribute to another split, separating those who believe in the European project and those who want to turn their back on it. [...]

Full policy paper

 

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