ECFR's Krastev/Leonard: A new political map: Getting the European Parliament election right
22 March 2024
If mainstream parties want to push back against the far right, they should embrace an alternative agenda which prioritises national contexts, and develop more targeted campaigns designed to mobilise voters without fanning an anti-European backlash.
Summary
- In response to an anticipated right-wing surge in the European Parliament election, many mainstream parties and European political elites seem to be settling on a two-fold strategy. This consists of aping right-wing policies on migration and promoting a narrative of the EU’s success by focusing on its response to the climate crisis, the covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
- But our analysis of European public opinion reveals that both approaches are likely to backfire. Migration is not as central as many policymakers think, and voters hold strong beliefs about the motivations of their leaders, meaning what matters most is who speaks and not what is said.
- Focusing on the commission’s positive agenda could also counterproductively benefit anti-European parties because European publics have a negative perception of the EU’s track record of responding to crises.
- If mainstream parties want to push back against the far right, they should embrace an alternative agenda which prioritises national contexts, and develop more targeted campaigns designed to mobilise voters without fanning an anti-European backlash.
- Against the backdrop of the US presidential election in November, they should also make a new geopolitical case for Europe.
Introduction
The surest way to get lost is to follow an inaccurate map. And many pro-European parties preparing for the European Parliament election in June 2024 risk doing exactly that.
The expectation is that the election will see a massive surge in support for the far right, powered by European publics’ dissatisfaction with the latest wave of illegal immigration. In an attempt to address this challenge, mainstream parties and European political elites appear to be settling on a two-fold strategy. Firstly, they are attempting to neutralise migration as a political issue by aping right-wing policies. The European Union’s new migration compact passed in December was a clear example of this strategy, as was the migration law recently adopted in France, which was largely framed by the right and far right. Secondly, European elites are hoping to change the narrative in their favour by promoting a vision of European success centred around the EU’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, the climate crisis, and the covid-19 pandemic.
But the results of ECFR’s latest poll – conducted in January 2024 in 12 EU countries that account for three-quarters of seats in the European Parliament (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden) – show that both strategies are likely to backfire. While the former risks overemphasising the role of migration policy, the latter could end up inadvertently mobilising voters of anti-European parties by highlighting precisely those issues where public opinion is more likely to be aligned with the far right. ...
more at ECFR
© ECFR - European Council on Foreign Relations
