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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23862 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Huh, still empty?

The European Parliaments elections happened. The European Parliaments elect 720 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the member countries to represent the legislative assembly (one of the three main institutions) of the European Union. While the European Parliament is often castigated for weakness compared to the executives - the European Council and the European Commission - it still has a fair bit of power when it comes to, for instance, the various regulations of the European Union. The elections also act as an ideological barometer for political developments in Europe, though since the turnout is low, this factor is by necessity diminished.

Anyway, the theme for this election was the feared/desired rise of nationalist groups and the possibility that EPP, the center-right of the European Parliament (consisting of various center-right parties from member states - people still vote for their old domestic parties in the European elections, not the Europarties like EPP or the center-left S&D, its main partner), would start cooperating with the nationalists, like center-right parties do in many member countries. The rise did indeed took place, though in a milder form than expected, with nationalists making big gains in countries like France and Germany but getting beaten back in the Nordic countries.

There's still a high chance their influence will grow in the coming parliament, at least for the "moderate" ones (ie. the ones that do not challenge the basic idea of the European Union or the general Western thrust of foreign and security policy, like support for the war in Ukraine.) Some of the results (Irish ones, since the Irish election happen through STV and counting them takes a long time) are still waited for and there's a fair bit that depends on how the groupings inside the parliament get reformed. There's little chance that the new parliament will be much improvement compared to the previous ones in terms of getting Europe out of its deepset economic funk.

One particular result of interest, perhaps more consequential than the European Parliament elections, was the onslaught of Marine le Pen's RN and some other nationalist parties in France leading to Macron calling for new parliamentary elections. While they wouldn't lead to Macron himself getting thrown out, if RN and the other groups do well or even get a majority, France might get gridlocked for at least three years.

Imho; Nothing will ever change and nothing will ever happen. EPP is way more ideologically similar to the Greens than the other right wing groups, it will signal to the Left that maybe they will cooperate with the Right to acquire a bit more influence in the coalition, than it will form another big tent coalition and we will have for other 5 years to follow the policies of the Greens and the Socialists.

The big tent coalitions haven't formally included the Greens thus far.

Nevertheless, it's looking like now that the great coalition - EPP, S&D, Renew, will continue. It's familiar to them, and it still bears remembering how much most the EPP considers the maintenance and expansion of the European integration project to override all other concepts, barring cooperation with more hardline euroskeptics and making it uncomfortable with even the more moderate ones.

Indeed. What often people do not understand is that the Great Coalition, or at least the EPP-PSE alliance, is the mainstay of the EP and of the European Union. It will never falter because it is not supposed to fell.

Any ideas what the probable coalitions look like in the European Parliament? I presume the greens are locked out of power.

Coalitions in the EP tend to be a bit more shifting and informal than in "real" parliaments, but the standard coalition is EPP, S&D and (recently) Renew, Macron's group. Greens, Left and the less euroskeptic right have at least some influence, the more euroskeptic right tends to shut itself out of power.

So with EPP being the largest faction still, this sounds like a right-weighted version of basically the same thing?

this sounds like a right-weighted version of basically the same thing?

I'm hardly an expert on Europe, but I did just read a piece on the topic which makes an argument that this will indeed change little. From Thomas Fazi at UnHerd: "Europe’s insurgent Right won’t change anything"

Depending on where you stand politically, you might view the Right-populist surge in the European Parliament as either a grave threat to democracy, or as a striking victory for it — and a major step forward in “taking back control” from the Brussels oligarchy. But both positions would be wrong. The truth is, despite yesterday’s hysteria, compounded by Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament and call an election, the impact of these elections won’t be as significant as people fear or hope.

Consider the victors: the ECR and ID groups, who made significant gains. Both blocs are made up of various Right-populist parties who are deeply divided on several crucial strategic issues: social and economic matters, European enlargement, China, EU-US relations and, most important, Ukraine. This means that, even if they succeed in pushing the European Commission to the Right, they will struggle to turn their electoral success into political influence; on Europe’s most important challenges, it seems unlikely they will vote as a bloc. But on a more fundamental level, to assume these elections will radically alter the course of the EU’s policymaking agenda, or even threaten democracy itself, implies that the EU is a functioning parliamentary democracy. It is not.

Despite the fanfare that surrounds every European election — each one tediously described as “the most important elections in the history of the European Union” — the reality is that the European Parliament isn’t a parliament in the conventional sense of the word. That would imply the ability to initiate legislation, a power the European Parliament does not wield. This is reserved exclusively for the EU’s “executive” arm, the European Commission — the closest thing to a European “government” — which promises “neither to seek nor to take instructions from any government or from any other institution, body, office or entity”.

…

There’s also another to point to be considered. On the one hand, the fact that the European Parliament, the only democratically elected institution in the EU, exercises some oversight over the Commission’s policies, might be seen as a positive development. In this sense, the bigger presence of the Right-populist parties will certainly have an impact of the legislative process, especially on highly polarising issues such as the European Green Deal and immigration.

But on the other, this doesn’t change the fact that the European Parliament remains politically toothless. The entire legislative process — which takes places through a system of informal tripartite meetings on legislative proposals between representatives of the Parliament, the Commission, the Council — is opaque to say the least. This, as the Italian researchers Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mameli have written, is exacerbated by the fact that European Parliament is “physically, psychologically and linguistically more distant from ordinary people than national ones are”, which in turn makes it more susceptible to the pressure of lobbyists and well-organised vested interests. As a result, even the most well-meaning politicians, once they get to Brussels, tend to get sucked into its bubble.

…

All this means that, while we may expect a change of direction on some issues, these elections are unlikely to solve the pressing economic, political and geopolitical problems afflicting the EU: stagnation, poverty, internal divergences, democratic disenfranchisement and, perhaps most crucially for the continent’s future, the bloc’s aggressive Nato-isation and militarisation in the context of escalating tensions with Russia. In this sense, it’s hardly surprising that around half of Europeans didn’t even bother to vote. Ultimately, the EU was built precisely to resist populist insurgencies such as this one. The sooner populists come to terms with it, the better.

So consider this a data point in favor of "basically the same thing."

Has the right wing rhetoric gotten more dramatic or stayed the same? I've noticed how Farage in the UK with his Reform party has been talking about deportations and net zero immigration. Something no one would say a few years ago. A lot of that is huff and puff on the campaign trail, but its still a very clear tonal shift.

Promising deportations and a reduction of net migration to the tens of thousands has been in every winning party manifesto for the past 25 years.

Maybe in the US, it has always been a big no-no in Europe, as far as I know.

I remember politically fringe people like Sargon of Akkad bemoaning the idea when talking to Richard Spencer back in 2016 or so. Now there is talk of directly deporting people in the UK and Germany by the biggest hard right parties in politics. That's a big shift.

I'm talking about the UK.

Probably about the same. The biggest current category of receng immigrants being the Ukrainians might have moderated it a bit.

The rise did indeed took place, though in a milder form than expected, with nationalists making big gains in countries like France and Germany but getting beaten back in the Nordic countries.

Regarding the mediocre performance of the SwedenDemocrats (Sweden's far-right party) in particular, my guess is that a lot of people who vote for them domestically aren't particularly Eurosceptic, but sick of MENA immigration and perceived softness on crime. There's probably therefore less motivation for to vote in an election that they're likely to feel has less direct influence on these issues.

That's probably a large reason.

In Finland, the Finns Party crashed, getting one of their worst results in well over a decade. Probably the main reasons are:

  • They're in a government that's doing (by Finnish scale) hard austerity and anti-union policies, which their supporters don't like, and anti-migrant measures, which their supporters do like - but getting the center-right to cosign those only makes it easier for their educated wealthier voters who have voted the Finns to cut immigration but consider them too redneck and embarrassing to return back to the center-right.

  • They ran a very underwhelming campaign concentrating on things like the new EU regulation mandating bottlecaps that stick to the bottle after opening - mildly annoying and might cause dribbling when using some packs, but hardly the sort of an issue that would get the masses really moving and made them look piddling. In general, since EU membership is more popular than ever, they're in a bind - moving to the centre pisses of the remaining hardcore Euroskeptic base while doing the sort of "EU is pretty lame, Finland has no influence" spiel just evidently makes their supporters think there's no point in voting and stay home.

The Finnish Left got a huge surprise result, but this is probably mostly due to the vast personal popularity of the party leader who was running as the main candidate, and partly probably a protest vote against the government.

There are also the numerous recent scandals...

But yes, I agree motivation pays a very important role in the results of the EU elections given the low turnout. Which I feel is an underdiscussed part of these elections.

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