12 June 2024

CER: What will the EU election results mean for Europe?

The European Parliament election results saw a strong performance by populist right-wing and far-right parties in many EU member-states, propelled by opposition to the Green Deal, anti-migration sentiment and economic insecurity. In France, the far-right Rassemblement National topped the poll, with more than twice as many votes as President Emmanuel Macron's party – leading him to call snap parliamentary elections. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland came second, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's social democrats. Across the EU, the vote share of parties to the right of the conservative European People's Party (EPP) rose from 18 per cent in 2019 to just over 24 per cent if we include hard-right parties currently sitting in the non-attached group.  

The stronger presence of far-right and populist right-wing MEPs in the new Parliament will, however, influence the EU's agenda and legislation over the next five years, and the election results are bound to leave their mark on European politics more broadly. Below, CER experts provide answers to pressing questions on what the results will mean for EU politics and for individual policy areas. 

Do the election results endanger Ursula von der Leyen’s chances of winning a second term as European Commission president? 

Not much. Von der Leyen is still likely to serve a second five-year-term as Commission president. Her European People’s Party (EPP) won the largest number of MEPs, 185 out of a total of 720. And she is its official candidate for the Commission presidency. 

The appointment of the president is a two-step process. First, the European Council – as the treaty says, “taking into account” the results of the European elections – must vote by qualified majority to choose its nominee. Hungary’s Victor Orbán will certainly vote against von der Leyen, as could one or two other prime ministers. France’s Emmanuel Macron has not committed to support her and has floated the idea of Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president, as president of either the Commission or the European Council. Macron finds von der Leyen’s strong Atlanticism a bit galling, but will probably end up backing the woman whose appointment was originally his idea. He presumably has a price to extract from her – such as the desired portfolio of the next French commissioner. 

So von der Leyen will win the vote in the European Council. But then the second step is to win an absolute majority (of 361 votes) in the European Parliament. This may prove difficult, though she will be formally backed by the three centrist groups – the EPP, the centre-left S&D and the liberal Renew, who between them won 402 seats out of 720. However, five years ago, despite having the backing of the same groups, she only scraped through by nine votes, because some of their MEPs refused to support her. 

This time those three groups have proportionately fewer MEPs than in 2019. If 10 per cent of their MEPs do not vote for von der Leyen, she may be in trouble. It is true that MEPs from Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party may be instructed to support von der Leyen – the Italian prime minister and the Commission president get on well. But the latter will have to be careful. Renew and S&D have said they will not back von der Leyen if she makes a pact with any part of the right-wing populist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which includes Meloni’s MEPs. 

Presumably Renew and S&D would not object to some MEPs in the ECR voting for von der Leyen, as long as she had not made promises or deals with them. In any case, the Greens – though diminished, with only 52 MEPs – seem keen to forge a pact with von der Leyen, in return for her standing by the green commitments of her first mandate. 

The difficult geopolitical situation, with Vladimir Putin threatening, and Donald Trump poised for a come-back, will reinforce the case for continuity, stability and a second term for a president who has proved herself competent. Many MEPs would be wary of the EU experiencing a leaderless period if the Parliament rejected von der Leyen, especially since there is no obvious alternative EPP candidate. ..

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