The following is an adapted version of an article written by former Minister for Regional Development and Public Administration and researcher at the Europe Strategy Research Institute Tibor Navracsics, originally published in Hungarian on the Five Minutes Europe blog of Ludovika.hu.
The European Parliament elections, held every five years, are important indicators of the political mood of European public opinion. This was, however, not the case for a long time: the literature considered the elections to be only a second-rate national election, due to the fact that neither the parties nor the voters attached much importance to this event.
However, the perception of elections has gradually changed in recent years. On the one hand, the EP has not only significantly strengthened its decision-making powers in the past two decades, but its thematizing ability has also greatly strengthened. In addition to the emerging European public opinion, it can also more effectively influence the domestic political issues of a member state, as the Hungarian example demonstrates.
On the other hand, since the 2019 election, we have also seen the emergence of European political issues that are of interest to European citizens regardless of nationality, and European parties must therefore include them in their agendas. Climate change and migration were the first to highlight these common issues, but since then, in the 2024 election, other European political issues have also increased the weight of the elections.
The increasing importance of the institution has also strengthened the authority of the European Parliament elections. Today, a stronger party family can no longer afford not to compete in the EP elections or to establish its own faction in Parliament. The 2024 election was a watershed in this respect as well, creating a more fragmented parliament than ever before, including a more fragmented right wing than ever before.
‘The 2024 election was a watershed…creating a more fragmented parliament than ever before’
The new set-up has rewritten the norms considered democratic within the Parliament in an unusual way. For example, it has become acceptable for the other parties to build a wall around the Patriots for Europe group, which is considered far-right and is the third-largest group in the current European Parliament, which makes it impossible for them to hold the parliamentary positions that would otherwise be theirs.
However, after two years, approaching the middle of the parliamentary term, the rigid isolation seems to be dissolving. In the EP, immigration is the issue where the malfunction of the traditional Christian Democrat–Liberal–Social Democrat centrist coalition is most evident. That is why the increasingly strict approach of the right-wing parties in recent times naturally fits into the right-wing coalition, and thus the Patriots’ search for an alliance.
For their part, Marieke Ehlers is the new darling of the right. The Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) MEP seems to be practical and familiar enough with her Western European counterparts to contribute constructively to a populist–conservative–patriotic cooperation on the issue of migrant repatriation. The left-wing factions are jealous of the European People’s Party’s timid approach to the party factions to its right on this issue. They clearly fear that this cooperation could be the beginning of a new era in which the centrist coalition will be replaced by the thematizing power of a strong right-wing bloc in the European Parliament.
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