Version 2.0: Europe is moving to the Right and far Right
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Eric Toussaint
In light of the new distribution of seats among the legislative groups in the European Parliament, we are publishing version 2.0 of an article (...)
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How should we interpret the results of the EU parliamentary elections?

In Croatia the voter turnout was only 21.35%

The first observation: voter turnout was once again very low in the EU elections held in all 27 member countries between 6 and 9 June 2024. The average for the entire European Union was 51%. But keep in mind that countries where voting is compulsory also figure into the calculation of that average – for example Belgium, where voter turnout was 90%. [1] Without those countries, the election participation rate would drop below the 50% mark. Out of the 27 EU member countries, 15 had a voter turnout of less than 50%. And for the countries who recently joined the EU the rates were extremely low. Italy’s rate was six percentage points lower than in 2019. In Croatia, the voter turnout was only 21.35%. Croatia only joined the EU in 2013 and did not become part of the Eurozone and the Schengen Area until 2023. In Lithuania, which joined the EU in 2004, the voter turnout was 28.35%. The rate for the two other Baltic republics was 34% for Latvia and 37.6% for Estonia. The other countries where participation in the election was low are: the Czech Republic at 36.45%, Slovakia at 34.40%, Portugal at 36.5%, Finland at 40.4, Bulgaria at 33.8% and Greece at 41.4% (and remember that voting is compulsory in the latter two!)

Among the major European Union countries, only Germany was over the bar of 50%, at 65%.

Conclusion : The majority of European Union citizens have no enthusiasm for the EU institutions and don’t see the point in exercising their right to vote. Citizens of the countries of the former Eastern Bloc or Southern Europe, who were full of hope when their countries became part of the EU or later the Eurozone or the Schengen Area are disappointed by the promises of improved quality of life that have not come true. Hopes of progress in the area of social rights have not materialized – quite to the contrary. Whilst it sometimes adopts a few relatively positive resolutions, the European Parliament has no real power. It is the EU Commission and Council who make the real decisions, and the major countries like Germany and France have decisive influence there. And don’t forget the coercive role played by the European Central Bank Central Bank The establishment which in a given State is in charge of issuing bank notes and controlling the volume of currency and credit. In France, it is the Banque de France which assumes this role under the auspices of the European Central Bank (see ECB) while in the UK it is the Bank of England.

ECB : http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/Pages/home.aspx on several occasions, as in the case of Greece in 2015, where it used its power to destabilize a government that was not docile enough in following the policies set by the EU’s real leaders. Those policies are forced on the populations by the governments of the countries that dominate the EU economically and politically and by the major private corporations, in particular big private banks and investment funds Investment fund

Investment funds Private equity investment funds (sometimes called ’mutual funds’ seek to invest in companies according to certain criteria; of which they most often are specialized: capital-risk, capital development funds, leveraged buy-out (LBO), which reflect the different levels of the company’s maturity. . Citizens also realized during the coronavirus pandemic (2020–2021) that the EU’s leaders were incapable of adopting health policies that could protect them effectively. And since then, the EU has done nothing to improve the situation structurally – refusing to put in place a pharmaceutical industry capable of responding to a new pandemic, refusing to support the proposal of 135 countries of the Global South to suspend the application of patents, barring universal access to vaccines and instead supporting Europe’s arms industry by increasing military spending.

The conservative right and the extreme right have emerged greatly strengthened

Second observation: political forces of the conservative Right and extreme Right have emerged greatly strengthened. Political groups who promoted themselves as being centrist or center-right, despite their conducting hard-right policies regarding migrants, candidates for asylum and the accelerated remilitarization of Europe, are reeling from heavy losses in certain cases. That is especially true of the group centered around the party of Emmanuel Macron, Renaissance, which lost 10 seats, dropping from 23 to 13. Another example is Open VLD and the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who lost half their seats. Voters prefer the original (the extreme Right or hard conservative Right) to a pale imitation.

The other big losers are the European Greens, who paid for their compromises regarding climate change, the environmental crisis, managing migration and the right to asylum. They also paid for their support for the remilitarization of Europe and alignment with NATO NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO ensures US military protection for the Europeans in case of aggression, but above all it gives the USA supremacy over the Western Bloc. Western European countries agreed to place their armed forces within a defence system under US command, and thus recognize the preponderance of the USA. NATO was founded in 1949 in Washington, but became less prominent after the end of the Cold War. In 2002, it had 19 members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, the USA, to which were added Greece and Turkey in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 (replaced by Unified Germany in 1990), Spain in 1982, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999. . On certain occasions, the Greens have played a fundamental role in forming majorities in the Parliament and the approval of the principal measures of the 2019–2024 legislature (the European Green Deal, the remilitarization of Europe, the Migration and Asylum Pact, etc.) In their respective countries, for example in Germany and Belgium, the Greens have been accomplices to rightist policies. As Miguel Urbán writes: “While in 2019 they had won recognition, to a certain extent, as forces for renewal and modernization of a bipartisan governance that had become ineffectual, their inability to meet expectations caused them to pay a high electoral cost.” [2] The European Greens group lost 17 seats, going from 70 to 53 seats. The Greens group was the fourth-largest one in the European Parliament, ahead of the two far-Right groups ECR and ID (see below). It is now in sixth place. The above two far-right groups are now ahead of them. The three far-right parliamentary groups (see below) now total 187 MEPs – only one seat fewer than the European People’s Party (EPP).

The dominant group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party, in which the CDU-CSU of Ursula von der Leyen and the Spanish PP predominate, sought to ally with Giorgia Meloni and her extreme-Right party and with the other members of her legislative group

Third observation: the coalition of three parliamentary groups that governs the European institutions has held on to a majority, even though it has dwindled from 417 to 401 seats, and can continue to govern the EU. That coalition includes the European People’s Party; the “social-democrat” group of Socialist parties; and Renew Europe (which includes Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, Open VLD of Alexander de Croo – who resigned on the evening of the election following his party’s defeat –, and the VVD of Mark Rutte, Holland’s ex-Prime Minister.

But the dominant group in the European Parliament – the European People’s Party (EPP), in which the CDU-CSU of Ursula von der Leyen and the Spanish PP predominate – openly sought to ally with Giorgia Meloni and her far-Right party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy [FdI], a member of the ECR parliamentary group) to include Italy in Europe’s governance. Meloni, for her part, is bolstered by her electoral success on 9 June by the growth of the far-Right ECR, which she leads and which has gone from 69 MEPs to 78. She has successfully demanded and received positions of responsibility, arguing that Renew Europe has dropped from 98 MEPs to 77. During July, Meloni succeeded in obtaining the chairpersonship of three out of the 14 legislative committees for the ECR group (for the list and members of the committees see: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240722IPR22991/committee-chairs-and-vice-chairs-elected). They are major committees: Budgets (chaired by the Belgian Johan Van Overtveldt of NVA), Petitions (chaired by Poland’s Bogdan Rzońca) and Agriculture and Rural Development (chaired by the Czech Veronika Vrecionová). It should be kept in mind that Agriculture accounts for more than half of the entire budget of the European Union. Obtaining the chair positions of these three committees is a major victory for Giorgia Meloni and her group and should aid her in strengthening or consolidating her score in future elections. Renew paid the price for its electoral defeat, which was particularly pronounced in France, by winning only three committee chairs, and above all, by losing the presidency of the European Council, which will pass from Charles Michel (Belgian liberal) to the Portuguese socialist Antonio Costa on 1 December 2024. Ursula von der Leyen succeeded in being re-elected to the presidency of the EU Commission, but with a somewhat disappointing result – only 401 votes, even though the EU Greens group stooped to voting for her. The total membership of MEPs from the PPE, Socialist, RENEW and Greens groups accounts for 454 members, which means that some fifty of them did not vote for von der Leyen – including, according to our sources, 16 Green MEPs who did not follow their group’s voting instructions.

The “radical left” group has gained strength overall, going from 37 seats to 46

Fourth observation: the “radical Left” group – the smallest group in the European Parliament – despite losses in some countries such as Portugal, where both the Left Bloc and the PCP lost almost half their votes and seats, has gained strength overall, increasing from 37 to 46 seats, not least thanks to the eight MEPs of Italy’s Five Stars Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle – M5S), who joined it. Beyond the composition and the number of the radical Left group The Left, certain successes should be noted. La France Insoumise, for example, did well compared to its 2019 results: the party went from 7 to 9 MEPs, with almost 10% of the vote. Also, the Left Alliance in Finland tripled its number of MEPs (from one to three) with 17% of the vote, whereas the far-Right Finns Party dropped from 13.8% to 7.6%. We should also add the results of the radical Left in Belgium, with the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) doubling its score and its representation in the EU Parliament (see below). Italy is also a case in point, where the Green and Left alliance reached nearly 7% of the vote and won two EU Parliament seats (see below).

Fifth observation: the crisis of political systems continues to be reflected, in addition to the strengthening of the far Right, by the emergence and success of short-lived lists that take advantage of their impact on social networks and the voters’ desire for alternatives outside traditional or even “classic” far-Right political parties. Two examples of this phenomenon: the list of Fidias Panayiotou, a 24-year-old Cypriot TikToker, who ranked third and won a seat in the European Parliament with almost 20% of the vote, and Alvise Pérez, the candidate of Se Acabó La Fiesta (The Party is Over), one of Spain’s new parties, which won three seats with 800,000 votes. Alvise Pérez is very active on the social networks Telegram and Twitter / X, where they spread right-wing oriented fake news. Recently, X withdrew his access to the network. He is targeted by several criminal proceedings for defamation and hopes to take advantage of his status as an MEP to dodge them during his term of office. We might add a third example, that of the Czech party Přísaha and Motorists, which joined the far-right legislative group created out of the alliance between Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and France’s Marine le Pen (see below).

How much stronger has the far Right become?

The far Right has succeeded in becoming the leading political force in Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), France (RN), Hungary (Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union), the Netherlands (Geert Wilders’s PVV – Partij voor de Vrijheid) and Austria (FPÖ)

In the outgoing European Parliament, the two far-right parliamentary groups held a total of 118 seats; in the new EP, there are three far-right parliamentary groups totaling 187 seats – which, as noted above, puts them only one seat short of the total for the EPP group!

And it should not be ruled out that a few non-attached members and independents (of which there are around 30) could join one of the three far-right parliamentary groups. The far Right has succeeded in becoming the leading political force in Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), France (RN), Hungary (Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union), the Netherlands (Geert Wilders’s PVV – Partij voor de Vrijheid) and Austria (FPÖ). It is the second-largest force in Germany (AfD) and Belgium (thanks to the success of Vlaams Belang in the Flemish part of the country, which is in second place behind the NVA, a radical right-wing party). The far Right has grown steadily in Europe since the beginning of the century. As Miguel Urbán, outgoing MEP for Anticapitalistas, points out, 20 years ago, far-Right MEPs struggled to form a parliamentary group in the European Parliament because it meant having MEPs in 7 countries and winning at least 23 seats. Today, they have three large parliamentary groups which, if united, would constitute the second strongest – and possibly the strongest – political force in the European Parliament. Over the last ten years, the far Right has emerged in several countries where it previously had no seats. That is the case in Portugal with the far-Right organisation Chega, which in the last parliamentary elections in March 2024 obtained 18% of the vote and for the first time entered the European Parliament with two seats, after winning 9.8% of the vote on 9 June.

How are the different political groups in the European Parliament distributed, and what are their characteristics?

Source: https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/tools/comparative-tool/

1. The European People’s Party, with 188 seats

The largest group in the European Parliament is the European People’s Party, which is present in all 27 countries of the EU and has 190 seats. It has gained 14 seats over 2019. It includes conservative parties with a Christian connotation, such as the German CDU-CSU of Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merkel, the Spanish PP, the Civic Coalition (in Polish: Koalicja Obywatelska, abbreviated to KO) led by Donald Tusk, which has governed since the end of 2023, the CDNV in Belgium, and also the party of the late Silvio Berlusconi, Forza Italia. The national parties that support the PP group in the European Parliament have radicalized their right-wing position on issues related to the rights of migrants and refugees, security, war, NATO, the offensive against social rights, the uneasy but very real support for the policies of Netanyahu’s far-Right government, the continuation and intensification of neoliberal economic policies of privatization and undermining of public services, and so on. They have generally included far-Right figures in their ranks, as is the case with the New Democracy party that has governed Greece since 2019. EPP member parties make alliances with the far Right, for instance in Spain where the PP has allied with Vox (a former member of the ECR group, which it left in July 2024 to join the new far-Right group Patriots for Europe [PfE]– see below –) to govern regions or municipalities, or in France where part of the Les Républicains party (notably its president, the MP from Nice, Éric Ciotti) formed an alliance with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s RN with the approach of the snap legislative elections on 30 June 2024. In Austria, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) was for years allied with the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ), until a scandal involving the party’s top leader made further collaboration impossible in 2019. Since then, the Austrian People’s Party has been associated with the Greens. In Italy, the member party of the People’s Party group in the European Parliament is Forza Italia, the radical right-wing conservative party of the late Silvio Berlusconi. It is part of the government of far-Right leader Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), which is also allied with another Italian far-Right party, Matteo Salvini’s Northern League (Lega Nord). In Finland, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (Kansallinen Kokoomus or Kok), a member of the EPP group, has formed a coalition government with the far-Right Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset/Sannfinländarna or PS). In Sweden, the far-Right Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) party supports but is not a member of, the conservative government in power since 2022, which includes the Moderate Rally Party (Moderata samlingspartiet, M), a member of the EPP. This government is pursuing a harshly repressive policy against migrants and in 2023 made Sweden a part of NATO, which Finland has also done. We should also add that in Hungary, President Viktor Orbán’s far-Right party, the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz-Magyar Polgári Szövetség) was a member of the EPP until 2021. The list of compromises and alliances of EPP member parties with the far Right is much longer than those mentioned above and should be the subject of a full study.

2. S&D: Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament group (136 seats), a loyal ally of the European People’s Party in governing the EU

The second-largest EU parliamentary group is the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which has 136 MEPs, compared with 138 in 2019. The Spanish socialists (PSOE) and the Italian members of the Democratic Party (PD) each won 21 seats, but the Spanish lost one seat (they had 22 in 2019) while the Italians gained 6, up from 15 in 2019. The German socialists (SPD) lost two seats, dropping from 16 to 14. In Portugal, the Socialist Party (PS) fell from 8 to 7 MPs. The Austrian Socialists (SPÖ) still have five seats, as in 2019, but have dropped from second to third-ranking Austrian political force in the EU Parliament. In Bulgaria, the Socialists (BSP) dropped from four to two seats. In Romania, the socialists won six seats, up from four. In Belgium, the 2 Socialist Parties (PS and Voruit) won four parliamentary seats, up from two in 2019. In Croatia, the socialists held on to four seats. In Denmark, the socialists held on to 3 seats (out of 15); in Finland, they stagnated at 2 seats (out of 21); in Sweden, they retained their 5 seats (out of 21). In France, the Socialists made significant gains, rising from 7 to 13, and are on a par with Macron’s party, which lost 10 seats (while at the same time, Marine Le Pen’s RN gained 12 seats, up from 18 to 30). In Greece, the Socialists went from 2 seats in 2019 to 3 in 2024. In the Netherlands, they fell from 6 to 4 seats. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Socialists have no seats in the EU Parliament. In Slovenia, they are down from 2 seats to 1. In Estonia and Lithuania, the Socialists held on to 2 seats as in 2019, while in Latvia they fell from 2 to 1.

The Socialist group in the EU Parliament supported the same approaches and the same policies as the European People’s Party, and there was no break between them on the major issues of economic policy, migration policy, increased military spending, the strengthening of NATO and alignment with Washington, the refusal to impose sanctions on Israel, and the choice not to implement a radical shift in response to the environmental crisis. This explains the fact that the group of EU Socialists, as a recompense for the compromises it has made, was given the position of president of the EU Council in the person of the Portuguese Socialist Antonio Costa, replacing de Charles Michel of Renew Europe. This will take effect as of 1 December 2024.

3. Patriots for Europe (PfE) is the third-ranking parliamentary group with 84 MEPs

A new far-right parliamentary group was created in early July 2024, with the name “Patriots for Europe.” It will be chaired by France’s Jordan Bardella. It is present in 12 countries. It includes, on the one hand, the MEPs of the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and those of the two Czech far-Right parties Ano and Přísaha and Motorists, 20 in all, and on the other the former EU parliamentary group led by France’s Marine Le Pen, Identity and Democracy, which had 58 MEPs, along with the six MEPs from Spain’s Vox, who have left the far-Right group ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists Group), headed by Giorgia Meloni.

Member parties of Patriots for Europe in order of importance: ■ Rassemblement National: 30; ■ Fidesz-KDNP: 11; ■ Lega: 8; ■ ANO: 7

■ FPÖ: 6; ■ Vox: 6; ■ PVV: 6; ■ Vlaams Belang: 3; ■ Přísaha and Motorists: 2;

■ Chega: 2; ■ Danish People’s Party: 1; ■ Latvia First: 1; ■ Voice of Reason (Greece) : 1

France’s Rassemblement National (RN), led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, which came first in the EU Parliament election in France with twice as many votes as Emmanuel Macron’s party, is the largest contingent, with 30 MEPs compared to 18 in 2019. Next comes Hungary’s Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union under Viktor Orbán, which came first in the elections in that country and has 11 seats. In third place within the parliamentary group is Italy’s League (Lega) under Matteo Salvini, which has suffered huge losses compared to 2019. Its group now has just 8 MEPs, down from 22. Salvini’s party is part of Giorgia Meloni’s government, in which he is deputy prime minister (a position he also held in 2018–2019). Salvini’s party includes far-Right personalities who have expressed sympathies with Mussolini, such as former general Roberto Vannacci. In fourth position is the Czech party ANO of billionaire Andrej Babiš – who could be compared, to some extent, with Silvio Berlusconi.

In Austria, the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) took part in the government between 2000 and 2006, and then again from 2017 to 2019. Several of its members and leaders openly show Nazi sympathies. The party has been banned from participation in government since a scandal that broke out in 2019 in which videos proved that one of its top leaders had negotiated financing for the party with a Russian oligarch. Nevertheless, between 2019 and 2024 it doubled its number of votes and of EU Parliament seats, from 3 to 6. In 2024 it became the leading Austrian party, with one EP seat more than the party of the EPP group and the Socialist party.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) is part of the Identity and Democracy group, and now of Patriots for Europe. It became the country’s main political force in November 2023 and has just formed a government with the VVD, which is part of Renew (see above). In the European elections, it confirmed its position as the leading party by winning 6 parliamentary seats, while Mark Rutte’s VVD won 4. In Belgium, in the Flemish part of the country, Vlaams Belang, a member of Identity and Democracy, and since only recently of Patriots for Europe, made strong electoral gains in June 2024, becoming the leading party in terms of votes in the EU Parliament elections. In the Belgian parliamentary elections, it is the second-largest party after the NVA, which, as we have seen, is part of the far-right parliamentary group ECR. The Patriots for Europe group is also present in Latvia, Denmark and Greece, but these are marginal forces, each having just one MEP.

The decision by the Spanish party Vox, with its 6 MEPs, to leave Giorgia Meloni’s ECR group and to join the alliance between Viktor Orbán and Marine Le Pen deserves some explanation: Vox is the product of a schism with the PP; over the recent years it has governed regions in Spain in collaboration with the PP, but recently it decided to break with those alliances, and in so doing lost its institutional weight, adopting a more extreme Rightist stance to pull in more votes from people who are disillusioned with the traditional right and are responsive to racist arguments. Vox’s pretext for doing this was that in the regions it governs, the PP has allowed refugees and migrants who are minors. That was at the request of the Socialist government of Pedro Sanchez. This explains why Vox, to strengthen its radicalization toward the Right, decided to leave the far-Right ECR parliamentary group led by Meloni to join the group led jointly by Victor Orbán and Marine Le Pen. Former MEP Miguel Urbán has written of Vox’s “Le Pen-icization.” [3] It is also clear that Vox, following the same reasoning, is asserting its proximity with the policies of Javier Milei in Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the USA, with all of whom they cultivate relations.

The Patriots for Europe group has not succeeded in obtaining a seat on any of the 14 committees of the European Parliament, let alone a chairpersonship. The leanings of Victor Orbán and other members of his group towards the policies of Vladimir Putin and his strong misgivings regarding the policies of NATO, of which his country is a member, contribute to explaining why the EPP, the Socialists, Renew, the Greens and The Left have created such a cordon sanitaire around the Patriots for Europe group.

4. ECR: The European Conservatives and Reformists, the second-largest far-Right grouping.

The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) is now the second-ranking far-Right EU parliamentary group, with 78 MEPs

The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) is currently the second-largest far-Right EU parliamentary group, with 78 MEPs. Compared to the 2019 elections, this group has gained 9 seats. Giorgia Meloni’s party (Fratelli d’Italia) is the main political force in this group, with 24 MEPs elected in 2024, compared with 10 in 2019. Next is Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PIS is the acronym in Polish), which governed the country from 2015 to the end of 2023 and has 20 MEPs compared with 27 in 2019. It should be noted that in 2019, it was the main political force in the country and that in 2024, it was overtaken by the Civic Coalition (in Polish: Koalicja Obywatelska, abbreviated to KO) led by Donald Tusk, who has governed since the end of 2023, as we saw when discussing the EPP. In Spain, the far-Right Vox party left the ECR group in mid-July to join the Patriots for Europe group. Vox won 6 seats in 2024, compared to 4 in 2019. In France, the 4 members of ECR are issued from the far-Right Reconquête group of the racist Éric Zemmour, from which they were excluded three days after the 9 June EU election. [4] In Belgium, the NVA, the main ultra-neoliberal and racist Flemish nationalist party, is part of ECR with 3 MEPs (the same number as in 2019). The NVA obtained 22% of the vote in Flanders and narrowly edged out Vlaams Belang in the elections to the federal parliament, which were held at the same time as the European elections. It is NVA’s leader who is leading the negotiations to form a new government in Belgium – a government that will be made up of four right-wing parties and the Flemish Socialist party, which has veered even farther into neoliberalism. Vlaams Belang, which is even more right-wing than the NVA, narrowly beat the latter in the European elections and also has 3 MEPs. Vlaams Belang is part of the other major far-Right group in the European Parliament, Patriots for Europe. During the election campaign for the Belgian federal parliament, the NVA adopted a line not too far removed from that of Vlaams Belang to avoid losing too many votes to the latter. Bart de Wever, the leader of the NVA, has presented himself as a sort of bulwark against the danger posed by Vlaams Blok. Nevertheless, on election night on 9 June, Bart de Wever was pleased to have (narrowly) edged out Vlaams Blok and congratulated the latter on its improved performance. The NVA’s economic program is modeled on the program of the Belgian and Flemish business lobby Lobby

Lobbies A lobby is an entity organized to represent and defend the interests of a specific group by exerting pressure or influence on persons or institutions that hold power. Lobbying consists in conducting actions aimed at influencing, directly or indirectly, the drafting, application or interpretation of legislative measures, standards, regulations and more generally any intervention or decision by the Public Authorities. .

In the Czech Republic, the SPOLU coalition, which is part of the ECR group, has 3 MEPs. In Sweden, the ECR includes the far-Right Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD), who have 3 seats in the European Parliament, as they did in 2019. Finland’s Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset/Sannfinländarna, PS), which lost votes in 2024 and now has only 1 MEP, compared with 2 in 2019. This is good news and shows that the party is paying for its participation in the Finnish government, in which it has 7 ministers. In Greece, the party affiliated with the ECR is the Greek Solution (Ellinikí Lýsi), which gained ground in the 2024 elections, winning 2 seats compared with 1 in 2019. All the ECR’s European parties are clearly far-right.

In any case, it is important to remember that in at least two EU countries, ECR member parties are leading the government: this is the case in Italy and probably will be in Belgium in the coming weeks or months. They are also part of the government of Finland. Their pro-NATO, pro-EU, pro-austerity, and pro-“Fortress Europe” positions have brought them closer to the EPP and Renew Europe, which earned them the chairpersonship of three key committees in the EU Parliament – Budget, Agriculture and Petitions.

5. RENEW Europe

Renew Europe is the fifth-largest European parliamentary group. Its clout has been greatly diminished following the 2024 elections, dropping from 98 seats in 2019 to 77 in 2024. The main political groupings in the Renew group are the party of French President Emmanuel Macron (Renaissance), three right-wing parties from Belgium: the MR, the party of EU Council President Charles Michel, whose term of office is coming to an end; Open VLD of former Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo; and the Engagés, a party which comes from the EPP family and which has just joined Renew after its good performance in the European elections. Also a member of Renew, Holland’s VVD – the party of former prime minister Mark Rutte, who has just been named the new head of NATO – is now part of a coalition government led by the far-Right party of the racist Geert Wilders (PVV). It was Wilders’s party that propelled the new Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, who was head of the intelligence services and is officially not a member of any party.

6. The European Green Group (53 seats compared to 70 in 2019))

The European Greens suffered a major defeat in the 2024 elections, dropping from 70 MEPs to 53

The European Green Group suffered a major defeat in the 2024 elections, dropping from 70 MEPs to 53. The group is roughly back to the size it had between 1999 and 2019, before experiencing strong growth in 2019 for the legislature that is ending. It has now slipped from the 4th position it climbed to in 2019 to 6th, overtaken by the two far-Right parliamentary groups, the ECR and the ID. The German Greens (Die Grünen), part of a broad coalition government with the Socialists and Liberals, lost almost half their seats, going from 21 MEPs to 12. If we add the other small German lists which also belong to the European Green group, the total has dropped from 25 to 16. The German Greens have accepted the orientation of the government led by the socialist Scholz, which is resolutely in favour of Netanyahu’s fascist government, pro-NATO and in favour of a sharp increase in arms spending. Belgium’s Greens also suffered a terrible defeat, particularly in the French-speaking part of the country where they paid a high price for their participation in a government with two right-wing parties and the Socialists. They have gone from 2 MEPs to 1. The Flemish Greens fared slightly better, keeping one MEP. The Austrian Greens, who have been in government since 2019 with the ÖVP, a member of the EPP, also lost out, dropping from 3 seats to 2. The French Greens (Les Ecologistes, LE), who have adopted an increasingly moderate position without actually being in government, also lost a large number of votes, dropping from 10 MEPs to 5. The exception to this huge downward trend was Denmark, where the Greens increased their number of EP seats from 2 to 3. In Italy the Greens held on with 3 seats in the EP, as well as in Sweden with 3 seats. In Eastern Europe, they are virtually non-existent.

7. The Left parliamentary group, which has grown from 37 to 46 seats

If the Left does not offer alternatives to disorder, the climate crisis, social insecurity, the management of migration and growing inequality, these issues will be taken up by the far right to exclude, punish and criminalize those who are different

The seventh-ranking European parliamentary group is The Left (formerly GUE/NL). At the outset, 25 years ago, it was made up of Euro-Communist parties plus two Trotskyist MEPs – Alain Krivine (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and Arlette Laguiller (Lutte Ouvrière). It expanded to include parties of the Nordic left (Denmark, Finland and Sweden) that did not come from the communist tradition. In 2004 there were no longer any Trotskyist MEPs, but the GUE was joined by Portugal’s Left Bloc (the result of a merger between Eurocommunists, Maoists, Trotskyists, etc.) and Ireland’s Sinn Féin, as well as the Progressive Workers’ Party (AKEL) of Cyprus and the Communist Party of the Czech Republic. In the wake of the 2009 elections, the GUE suffered a major setback, with the various Italian communist organizations losing all representation, whereas they had had 7 EP seats in the previous legislature. The GUE was reduced to 35 MEPs. However, from 2014 onwards, new and fast-growing parties strengthened the GUE – notably Syriza in Greece, which was at its peak – or joined it, like Podemos in Spain, which had just been created and elected 5 radical-oriented MEPs at its first attempt. Spain’s Izquierda Unida also had MEPs. As a result, in the 2014 elections, the GUE experienced significant growth, gaining 18 seats, from 35 to 53. Following Syriza’s capitulation in 2015 and the more moderate direction taken by Podemos and Die Linke in Germany, the GUE/NL lost momentum and fell back to 37 seats in 2019. The results of the 2024 elections put The Left (the name that has replaced the GUE/NL acronym) at its 2009 and 2019 levels. The results were positive in France, where La France Insoumise won 4 seats, up from 5 to 9; in Belgium, where thanks to the PTB, The Left won 1 MEP; and in Italy, where the Green and Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, AVS) list won 2 MEPs; and in Finland, where the Left Alliance went from 1 to 3 seats. On the other hand, for the first time in a long time, Izquierda Unida (IU), which includes the Spanish Communist Party PC (IU-PC is part of the Sumar (SMR) alliance, which is part of the government of the Socialist Pedro Sánchez) and the French CP (PC) will be absent from the European Parliament, while AKEL in Cyprus is in retreat. Podemos, which exited the government of Pedro Sánchez and Sumar in 2023 on a left-wing line, won 2 seats (compared with 5 in 2019). Anticapitalistas, which had one seat, did not stand again. Die Linke obtained just 2.7% of the vote and lost 2 seats, going from 5 MEPs to 3, having suffered a split organized by one of its former leaders, who created a movement bearing her name: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW).

The new party, which won 6.2% of the vote (nearly two million votes) and 6 MEPs in its first election, will probably not be part of The Left. We shall see... The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance scored high in the former East Germany, sometimes garnering 15% of the vote and coming in third place behind the far-Right AfD and Ursula von der Leyen’s CDU/CSU, a member of the EPP. It does not rule out striking an agreement with that party (and with the socialist SPD) to govern the eastern provinces and thus prevent the AfD from coming to power. Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party took votes away from Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, Die Linke, the AfD, the Liberals, the Greens and the CDU-CSU. According to Reuters, in order, they amounted to 500,000 from the SPD, 400,000 from Die Linke and 140,000 from the AfD. Sahra Wagenknecht and her party have adopted a position in favor of controlling migratory flows, refusing to send arms to support Ukraine following the Russian offensive and the need to begin negotiations to end the war, etc. They are not in favor of anti-capitalist measures. The environment plays a marginal role in the program, as do LGBTQI+ rights. The new party cannot therefore be classified as a radical left-wing party, but it would be a mistake to classify it as a right-wing party. In a way, its program is reminiscent of the program of the Communist Parties of the 1960s-1970s (such as the French Communist Party): a large dose of protectionism to defend social gains, the pursuit of an alliance with the middle classes and entrepreneurs who invest in national production and create jobs, and opposition to globalized, internationalized and monopolistic capital. It is more an anti-monopoly rather than an anti-capitalist line. We will have to follow the development of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance closely, without demonizing, but criticizing and debating all the issues that require a clear radical left, internationalist, environmentalist, socialist and feminist orientation.

Among the successes of parties or lists which are part of The Left, we should mention the good results of the PTB (Workers’ Party of Belgium), a party of Maoist and Stalinist origin which publicly renounced those allegiances some twenty years ago. [5]

In the Flemish-speaking part of the country, the PTB doubled its vote to 8.2% and obtained its first elected MEP in the Dutch Electoral College. In the French-speaking region (Wallonia and French-speaking Brussels), it scored 15.4%, keeping one MEP. While the European elections were taking place, federal and regional elections were also being held in Belgium. In the elections to the Flemish Parliament, the PTB scored 8.3%, representing a sharp rise. In Wallonia, the PTB fell back slightly with a score of 12.1% (down 1.5% compared to 2019) and in French-speaking Brussels, the PTB climbed to 21% (compared to 22% for the PS). In some municipalities in the working-class heart of Brussels, the PTB took more than 25% of the vote, as in Anderlecht (28%), Molenbeek (27%) and the District of Brussels (26%). In central Liège, the party scored 16.5%, while in Liège’s industrial suburb of Herstal, the PTB achieved 24.3%. In Charleroi, it scored 20%. The PTB has a radical Left orientation and is internationalist, but avoids proposing anti-capitalist measures.

It should be noted that there was also an Anti-Capitalist list (Fourth International) running in French-speaking Belgium in the European elections. In Wallonia, it scored 2.5% of the vote.

The most pleasant surprise comes from Italy, where the Green and Left Alliance (AVS) list won 6.8% of the vote and 5 seats in the European Parliament, up from 1 seat to 6. Two of the 6 seats will add heft to The Left, 3 will go to the European Green Group and one is in the non-attached category.

Public debt, which has risen sharply, will be used as an argument to impose more austerity policies

Italian teacher Ilaria Salis, 39, detained in Hungary on charges of violence against neo-fascists during an anti-fascist demonstration in early 2022, was arrested in early 2023 in Budapest and has been imprisoned ever since, facing a sentence of up to 24 years. A candidate on the AVS list, she was elected to the European Parliament and as a result was released. This is very good news. Another piece of good news is that an Italian mayor, Mimmo Lucano, who was threatened with prison by Matteo Salvini’s government in 2019 for allowing a migrant boat to arrive in the port of his small town of Riace, has also been elected to the European Parliament on the same list as Ilaria Salis.

8. Europe of Sovereign Nations, a new far-right parliamentary group with 25 MEPs formed in July 2024 around Germany’s AfD

On 10 July 2024, the German far-Right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), along with seven other political parties, created a new far-right parliamentary group called Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN). In the EU elections held on 9 June in Germany, AfD had done extremely well, growing from 9 seats in 2019 to 15 MEPs, and became the second-ranking political force, behind the CDU/CSU, which is a member of the EPP group. AfD was excluded from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in May 2024 at the initiative of Marine Le Pen, after its main candidate allegedly expressed Nazi sympathies during the EU campaign. Following the EU Parliament election, AfD jettisoned the list leader, who was too closely identified with Germany’s Nazi past. As a result, with the loss of an MEP, AfD has slipped to third place behind the Greens, who have 15 seats in the EU Parliament. AfD, after trying in vain to join the group created by Viktor Orbán and Marine Le Pen, succeeded in creating the new group, made up of 25 MEPs – 14 in Germany, 3 in Poland, 3 in Bulgaria, and one each in the following countries: Hungary, la Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and France (with the one MEP who remains in Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête! party, which expelled four of its five elected MEPs). The far-right groups that make up Europe of Sovereign Nations set as priorities opposition to immigration, Islamization, the European Green Deal and military aid to Ukraine.

The Left needs to profoundly rethink its policies

Outgoing MEP Miguel Urbán’s analysis of the crisis of the Left is entirely correct. I wholeheartedly endorse it and would like to quote a long passage from one of his recent articles:

While the far Right seems to be on the rise throughout Europe, the Left remains stuck in an existential crisis as the smallest group in the European Parliament, and must ask itself what it has done wrong to allow the far Right to be perceived as an expression of malaise and a vehicle for electoral protest. Why has the Left ceased to be a means of federating discontent and protest, of protesting against the establishment and its ‘gaslighting’ of the people on the bottom rung of the ladder? And, above all, how can we again become that?

It was only ten years ago that the radical-left SYRIZA coalition won the June 2014 European elections in Greece, a precursor to its victory in the national elections a year later, and that for the first time since the Second World War, a force to the left of the social democrats took control of a government in an EU country. Only ten years ago, a new political force, Podemos, burst onto the floor of the European Parliament and, in just over a year, almost overtook the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) with over five million votes and 21% of the vote.

With a few years’ hindsight, we can’t help but recall Walter Benjamin’s classic thesis: ‘Every rise of fascism bears witness to the failure of a revolution.’ A statement that, if extrapolated from its literal meaning, is still relevant for understanding how the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism and/or the far Right is also linked to the current weaknesses of the Left. This is a useful thesis to help us keep in mind the risks of moderation on the part of left-wing governments and their inability to respond to the working classes’ expectations for change, as happened with SYRIZA in Greece and the PSOE and Sumar in Spain. Because when those expectations are disappointed, dissatisfaction and frustration arise, and the logic of ‘it’s impossible,’ of ‘they’re all the same,’ of the neoliberal anti-politics that feeds the dark passions on which the reactionary international is built, prevails.

The majority of the European institutional Left has yet to learn the lessons of the defeat of the SYRIZA government experiment, of the limits of a reformist project in a context of regime crisis where there is no room for reform, and of the role played by the EU as a concentrated expression of neoliberal market constitutionalism where the set of so-called EU rules prevails over the law of national states and therefore over popular sovereignty. The experience of the first SYRIZA government, the anti-austerity referendum in Greece in July 2015 and the imposition of the austerity Memorandum by the Troika Troika Troika: IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank, which together impose austerity measures through the conditions tied to loans to countries in difficulty.

IMF : https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/index.en.html clearly demonstrated this.

Read more on SYRIZA and Tsipras government: Greece 2015: There was an alternative (By Eric Toussaint Preface by Michael Roberts)

If the Left does not offer alternatives to disorder, the climate crisis, social insecurity, the management of migration and growing inequality, these issues will be taken up by the far Right to exclude, punish and criminalize those who are different. The Left needs to understand the crisis of the capitalist regime in which we find ourselves, a crisis that is generating growing discontent among more and more social sectors. On many occasions, the Left is seen as part of the system and therefore part of the problem.

There is no doubt that in a time of crisis such as today, the Left needs to rethink itself – a task that must under no circumstances lead it down a very dangerous path, that of certain fascination with the issues raised by the far Right: protectionism, exclusionary sovereignty and anti-immigration policies. By not tackling these problems within the framework of rebuilding a project based on the autonomous self-organization of the working class, with hegemonic ideals and a proposal for an eco-socialist and feminist society, it can seem as if we are trying to ‘challenge’ the proposals of the far Right, in another vain attempt to mimic the opponent to ‘steal’ its successes. Such a tactic may work for the Right when it copies the most superficial aspects of the Left, but it leads the Left to total impotence and self-destruction.” (From an article by Miguel Urbán, soon to be published in its entirety)

Also see, by Eric Toussaint, Paul Murphy and Miguel Urbán Crespo, “The Drums of War are Banging in Europe,” 6 June 2024

Conclusions

The Commission, the Council and the ECB ECB

European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html are going to increase the pressure to tighten the screws on social spending by EU governments

The rightward shift of the institutions that govern the EU will be markedly accentuated. The Commission, the Council and the ECB are going to increase the pressure to tighten the screws on social spending by EU governments. Public debt, which has risen sharply, will be used as an argument to impose more and more drastic austerity policies. In the battle of ideas, we will have to explain that the governments, the Commission and the ECB wanted to increase public debt to finance expenditures in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic and social crisis that has been amplified by it. European leaders and national governments have been unwilling to tax the super-profits of the big pharmaceutical companies – in particular vaccine producers – which have made scandalous profits at the expense of society. The same goes for retail companies – particularly those specializing in online sales and IT services – which have also made huge profits. Then, when gas and electricity prices rocketed in the wake of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, governments were unwilling to control energy prices and freeze them, allowing fossil fuel and energy (including nuclear) companies to also make huge profits at the expense of society. Lastly, when food and fertilizer prices soared as a result of the war in Ukraine and speculation on cereals, cereal and fertilizer companies made super-profits. Just like the major retail chains, which have increased retail food prices disproportionately and abusively, causing a sharp rise in inflation Inflation The cumulated rise of prices as a whole (e.g. a rise in the price of petroleum, eventually leading to a rise in salaries, then to the rise of other prices, etc.). Inflation implies a fall in the value of money since, as time goes by, larger sums are required to purchase particular items. This is the reason why corporate-driven policies seek to keep inflation down. and a loss of purchasing power for the working classes. Governments have refused to impose extraordinary taxes on their profits. Arms production companies are also reaping yet more profits from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In this situation, and with this refusal to levy taxes on the companies that benefited from the crisis and on the richest, the States have increasingly resorted to debt financing instead of financing themselves via tax revenues, except for those from indirect taxes on consumption (Value Added Tax - VAT), which are extremely damaging for the vast majority of the population and in particular for the lowest income sectors.

In the battle of ideas, we need to show that for these reasons, a large part of the public debt is illegitimate and must be audited, with active participation by citizens, and canceled.

The migration policies of European leaders and national governments will also be hardened, and human rights abuses will increase. Human rights violations will increase, despite denunciations by the European Court of Human Rights and human rights associations.

The climate inaction of European governments and institutions will also worsen.

Rearmament will accelerate.

Those on the Left who still harbor the illusion that the EU is somehow less neoliberal and more favorable to the defense of human rights are making a serious error. The EU’s policies are a mechanism for strengthening the far-right and steering policy more and more towards multiple attacks on human rights, the right to protest and what is left of the Commons.

Far-right rhetoric and policies that support it are likely to continue to spread. As a result, the antifascist struggle and protest actions against the rise of the far Right will become increasingly important. The encouraging results of the French legislative elections of 30 June and 7 July 2024 show that if the Left unites around a program that constitutes a clear break with neoliberal policies and is backed by popular mobilizations, it is possible to resist the rise of the far Right.

Also see: France: Thanks to a massive mobilization of the Left the Far Right cannot control the government, 10 July 2024,

Social movements and political parties of the Left must regain the initiative with a resolute program for breaking away from capitalism and be no less resolute in their efforts to unite. Wherever possible we must work on building a social and political front on a foundation of unity – in neighborhoods, in the workplace, and elsewhere. A social and political front capable of raising mobilizations to build a favorable balance Balance End of year statement of a company’s assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. of power and win victories, and in any case push back against the offensive of the Right and far Right.

We must work to rebuild an international meeting space for political organizations and social movements oriented towards action, in particular against the rise of the far Right, at the same time endeavoring to include environmental, feminist, LGBTQI+, internationalist, anti-imperialist and anticapitalist dimensions.

The First World Anti-Fascist Conference was to be held in Porto Alegre (Brazil), the cradle of the 2001 World Social Forum, in May 2024 and had to be postponed due to the tragic floods that affected the capital of the State of Rio Grande Do Sul and its region. It’s rescheduling for May 2025 is well underway, thanks to the combined action of the forces that were ready to unite behind it.

Also see: The singularity and importance of the 1st World Anti-Fascist Conference to be held in Porto Alegre from 17 to 19 May 2024, CADTM, 4 May 2024

The genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people being conducted with total impunity by the far-Right neo-Fascist Netanyahu government is one more argument for strengthening international actions in opposition to the policies of the European Union and Washington, who are arming the génocidaires. The looming electoral victory of Donald Trump must also be a powerful driving force for mobilization. We must reaffirm solidarity with all peoples who are struggling for self-determination and facing aggression, as is the case of the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples. The environmental and climate emergencies must also drive the will to mobilize.

The author would like to thank Peter Wahl, Angela Klein, Roland Kulke, Fiona Dove, Thies Gleiss, Gerhard Klas, Manuel Kellner, Tord Björk, Raffaella Bollini, Franco Turigliatto, Gigi Malabarba, Miguel Urbán, Alex De Jong, Roberto Firenze, Gippo Mugandu and Roland Zarzycki, who answered questions regarding the results of the European elections. Thanks to Maxime Perriot for rereading. The author is solely responsible for the opinions expressed in this article and for any errors it may contain.