The surprising strength of the Right in the recent EU elections faces a test in France, where national parliamentary elections will soon take place.
The surprising strength of the Right in the recent EU elections faces a test in France, where national parliamentary elections will soon take place.
O n Sunday, voters of 27 European countries headed to the polls to elect representatives to the European Parliament, the legislative branch of the European Union. These elections, held every five years, were the first since 2019, a year that now feels further in the past than it really is. Since then, a pandemic, followed by a war and a cost-of-living crisis, all have gripped Europe. Unsurprisingly, voters’ preferences and priorities have changed a lot since this decade began. As is often the case when turmoil strikes Europe, France was once again the epicenter.
Parties in the European Parliament form caucuses based on ideological alignment, currently organized into seven groups. The two largest groups are the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which traditionally form a broad coalition. Over the past five years, they have been joined by the liberal, pro-European Renew Europe in this coalition. To the right of the EPP is the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which consists of “Eurorealists” who support the EU but advocate transferring many responsibilities away from the Union and back to member states. Further to the right is Identity and Democracy (ID), a hard Euroskeptic and nationalist group, which includes parties such as France’s National Rally.
For the past five years, the ID group has been isolated through a political “cordon sanitaire” by the major groups. This, however, did not deter French voters from supporting the party: The National Rally party, previously known as the National Front and famous mostly for its former leader Marine Le Pen and her father, won a stunning 31.4 percent of the vote, more than twice as much as President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition managed. With France having more seats than any other member state except Germany, National Rally will be in absolute terms the largest party in the European Parliament.
An electoral map of France reveals that support for National Rally is not a regional phenomenon. It is, in fact, the largest party in every constituency outside of Paris. In light of these devastating results, Emmanuel Macron chose to call a snap election. Many were stunned by this move, as by law no election had to be held before 2027. Why is Macron taking such a gamble?
First, there is very little time for any other party to get organized. Unlike other European countries, where snap elections must be preceded by months of campaigning, France allows the government to call a snap election with just weeks of notice. Thus, on June 30, just three weeks after the European Parliament election, voters will vote again in the first round, followed by a second round of voting just a week after.
To an uninformed outsider, it may seem Macron was acting in a rash manner. While we may never know for sure, polls had predicted for a long time that National Rally would become the largest party in the French European Parliament election. Macron and at least some members of his inner circle have almost certainly been planning a response to this outcome for quite some time. Everybody else, however, was caught by surprise, and will now have to scramble to agree on everything from election manifestos to which candidates to field. This includes National Rally.
If the election ends in a disappointment for Marine Le Pen’s party, this will almost certainly serve to take the wind out of her and her party’s sails. Macron may reasonably hope such an outcome could have effects beyond his country’s borders and help change the narrative across Europe. National Rally does have a long history of performing better in European elections than in French national elections: It scored ten points better in the 2019 European elections than in the national-assembly elections two years prior. Much to the frustration of Brussels, voters across Europe continue to treat the European Parliament elections not quite as seriously as the elections for their own domestic parliaments. They instead frequently use these elections to send a message by voting for antiestablishment, populist candidates (on the left and right).
Macron may be hoping that voters will have quenched their thirst for populism in the European elections, as he is now effectively daring them to vote National Rally again in fewer than three weeks in a domestic election. It is important to note that Macron’s position is not in danger: Macron was reelected president in 2022 and will remain in office until 2027, when term limits prevent him from running again. His coalition of parties failed to win a majority in the 2022 legislative election even as Macron was reelected president. While this did not quite turn him into a lame duck, it did represent a serious blow to his authority. While Macron is all but certain not to win a majority in these elections, he may reason that his ability to govern won’t become significantly worse than it currently is. As such, this snap election may perhaps best be compared to an American midterm election.
If National Rally does end up winning a majority of seats in the assembly and Macron is forced to appoint a National Rally member as prime minister, he as president will still be able to veto many of the more extreme proposals stemming from the party. Yet with National Rally having real influence for the first time, French voters would get a taste of what government under this party may be like, an experience Macron no doubt hopes would inoculate them from wanting more of the same in the presidential election to be held in 2027. While very risky, there is some precedent for this strategy. In Denmark, the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party almost immediately collapsed upon becoming the largest party in the governing coalition elected in the Danish general election of 2015. Since then, the DPP has lost more than eight out of ten voters, and Macron is likely hoping that National Rally will suffer the same fate once it’s burdened with governing.
Yet, all these strategic reasons aside, Macron’s decision to call an election remains highly irresponsible. While National Rally has offered harsh and valid criticism of France’s liberal migration policy and subservience towards radical Islam, something that has gained the party fans among Republicans, the party also opposes providing aid to Ukraine. For supporters of Ukraine, and for Republicans in the U.S. who wish to see Europe take on a greater role in carrying the burden of the war effort, this should provide serious pause even though there may be agreement with National Rally on many other issues.
From Russia’s point of view, the European Parliament election was underwhelming. While pundits talk about how a “right-wing wave” has swept Europe, what is often lost is that the biggest beneficiaries — indeed, the group that looks set to gain the most seats — is the fiercely pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO national-conservative ECR group, which now looks likely to become the third-largest group in the parliament. The group with the second-largest gains is the center-right, also pro-Ukraine, EPP group.
While it is true that members of the pro-Russian ID group did score some noteworthy victories, such as in France and in Austria, where members of the group became the largest party, the group’s path to influence is unclear. Infighting is already tearing the group apart: Just two weeks before the election, the group expelled its second-largest member party (Alternative for Germany, AfD) after its top candidate made remarks seemingly defending members of the Waffen-SS (!). The AfD subsequently underperformed in the German elections, earning just half the share of votes of the largest party despite polling evenly less than a year ago. Defunding Ukraine remains a small-minority position in the European Parliament. Unfortunately, because of Macron’s decision to call a snap election, it may soon be the majority view of the French legislature.
Meanwhile, in a sign of how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting voters’ priorities, the Green group became the biggest loser of the election, in both relative and absolute terms. While European voters care about the climate, the radical environmentalism that has characterized the past term has not been well received among the masses. A closer look at the results and the campaign that preceded the election reveals that the European population is not really that tired of funding Ukraine. But it is tired of funding an ever-growing supranational bureaucracy that imposes unrealistic targets and one-size-fits-all policy approaches, not least regarding the environment, while at the same time paying only lip service to securing the union’s external border. In countries where the only (or main) parties opposing this direction of the EU happened to be pro-Russian, voters shrugged and gave them their support anyway.
The solution to this is clearly for the center-right, represented in the EU by the EPP group, to reject big-tent coalition politics. Big-tent coalitions by their nature leave voters with little choice but to vote for fringe parties if they wish to express dissatisfaction with the status quo. As evident from these elections, European voters are right now dissatisfied with the status quo. Lessons must be learned from this.
The EPP, as the largest group in parliament, should embrace increased cooperation with the national conservatives in the ECR to take the union in a different direction that may better address the concerns that voters have so clearly articulated.
As for France, those of us who wish for the war in Ukraine to end with Russia’s unconditional withdrawal can only hope that Macron’s irresponsible snap-election gamble pays off, or that a deal can be reached with the National Rally that will maintain support for Ukraine. As the French say, qui vivra verra.