If Britain had not left the European Union, we would be going to the polls this week as well as on 4 July. The European parliament elections have come round again and it is likely that there will be a mass revolt against the direction of the EU project.
Across the continent, voters disillusioned with the EU model of democracy are turning to the Eurosceptic right. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is on course to become the biggest single party in the European parliament. AfD is polling in second place in Germany. Geert Wilders’s Freedom party is comfortably ahead in the Netherlands. Chega, a new far-right party from Portugal, is expected to make big gains, as is the Freedom party in Austria and the Croatian Homeland movement. Greek Solution, a nationalist party created in 2016, has also been gaining momentum.
Some parties refused to take part in the debate for the EU presidency on the grounds that it was a sham
In recent years, insurgent centre-right Eurosceptic parties have been wrongly labelled ‘far-right’ by their opponents. Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, has brought stability to Italian politics, so much so that Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, is trying to sign her up to the EU parliament’s centre-right bloc.
Parties that could loosely be described as populist already govern or share power in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia. Yet the EU prides itself on withstanding such democratic pressure. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that the Commission will only work with ‘traditional parties’.
This week, the UK saw the first TV debate between the party leaders, whose fates depend on votes cast on 4 July. Last month there was also a televised debate involving Von der Leyen and her four rivals for the European Commission presidency, as if they too were standing for election. But some European parties refused to take part on the grounds that the debate was a sham. EU presidents are not chosen by the voters, but in closed-door discussions. Von der Leyen didn’t even take part in the pretend debates in 2019.
Some 200 million Europeans will not be voting for an EU government but rather for a chamber to rubber-stamp the laws passed down from the unelected self-sustaining oligarchy that is the European Commission. It is rather as if Sir Humphrey really did rule from on high in Whitehall, writing all parliamentary bills which were then nodded through by a compliant Commons with maybe just a change here and there.
Real parliaments hold governments to account – they don’t just fiddle around with the details. The EU has sucked powers away from national governments but without replicating the infrastructure and institutions of a functioning democracy. It has created a strange hybrid structure whereby the first the public hears about legislation which will affect their lives tends to be when it is too late, when it is passed to national governments with the instruction to incorporate it into national law – under threat of sanctions.
The success of Eurosceptic candidates this week will make no meaningful difference to the European parliament. It is a protest without power. It is outside the European parliament where the revolt against EU high-handedness has had the greatest effect, such as with the farmers’ protests earlier this year which galvanised objections against environmental and climate policies across the continent. EU policies have tended to be hidden in national legislation, but it is becoming impossible to disguise the role of the EU in imposing impractical and expensive demands on farmers and other businesses. Aggrieved European citizens are venting their anger directly at Brussels.
The European project – to promote the ‘ever closer union of peoples’ – is a noble aim. But the EU has tried to achieve that aim by taking sovereignty away from member states and imposing on them policies that cannot be changed. In so doing, it has created instability by fuelling populism. It is possible for the EU to listen to voters and start handing powers back to national governments. But it is on a very different trajectory.
In 2019, Boris Johnson formed a new coalition of Conservative voters by promising that leaving the EU would mean a fairer, better society. His promise remains unfulfilled. Brexit may have won the Tories a majority five years ago, but in 2024 it has strengthened the potential for their defeat. The party can no longer blame the EU for the public’s anger over immigration, regulation or trade.
And yet, despite the Tories’ failure to make good use of new powers, it is hard to detect much enthusiasm for rejoining the EU. Tony Benn once posed five questions for anyone who wields political authority: ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?’ In Britain, voters know the answer to these questions, which is why the Tories are cornered. In the European parliament, there is still no such accountability.
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