Understanding the European parliament, again

There’s been a lot of electoral excitement in Europe, with both Britain and France going to early elections in the next few weeks. Britain, as usual, is something of a special case, but France’s election is very much tied up with political shifts across the continent. So to understand what’s going on we need to start with the European parliament, whose election (the second biggest for the year, after India) wrapped up a week ago.

The European parliament has had a long struggle for relevance. The first time I wrote about it, 15 years or three elections ago, I was able to say that it had “a well-established reputation as a ‘talk shop’ with no real power.” And what I said about its elections is still true:

Moreover, because most people don’t take the European parliament very seriously, the election has some of the characteristics of a giant by-election: voters use it as an opportunity to express their frustrations with their own country’s government rather than basing their vote on continent-wide issues.

Five years later, in the piece whose title I am recycling, there was a bit more interest in the subject, especially with the narrative of the rise of the far right. I tried then to explain how the party system worked, and in my analysis of the results I concluded that the various strands of the far right were “hardly sweeping all before them”, winning about a tenth of the seats.

Another five years on, in 2019, it was time for another try at deflating some of the media hype, while acknowledging that the extremists had made further progress and pointing out that “when threats to democracy are concerned, over-alertness is generally to be preferred to complacency.” Since that result was the starting point for this month’s election, it’s worth having a closer look at it.

The complication in 2019 was that Britain had voted to leave the European Union but had not yet done so: it therefore participated in the election, but its 73 MPs lost their seats the following year when the withdrawal took effect. The size of the parliament was reduced by 46, and the other 27 seats were redistributed among the continuing members to produce a chamber of 705 (this year that was increased to 720).

Once that adjustment had been made (but ignoring subsequent defections and rearrangements), the numbers looked like this. The three groups in the middle of the spectrum had a substantial majority between them: 187 centre-right, 148 centre-left and 97 centre, for a total of 432. Adding in the Greens, who at the time were on the rise and becoming more mainstream, brought that figure to 499.

Of the remainder, 41 belonged to the far-left group, and nearly all the rest could be loosely described as far right. There were two right-wing groups, Identity & Democracy (76) and European Conservatives and Reformists (62); ECR started out as more moderate, and to some extent still is, but the difference between them has become hard to discern; both span a range of opinion.*

The balance was made up of 28 ungrouped MPs, usually referred to by the French term, non-inscrits. Half of the non-inscrits were from Italy’s 5-Star Movement, which started out as non-ideological (“populist” in the original sense) but has moved strongly towards the right. Counting them plus a few other miscellaneous extremists took the broad far-right total to 157, about 22% of the parliament’s total strength.

That rather disturbing number is the background to this year’s results. Going by the official figures, the middle three have held their joint majority, but it’s been dented: down to 406 in a slightly larger chamber (190 centre-right, 136 centre-left and 80 centre). The Greens also took a hit, giving up their 2019 gains to go back to 52, while the far left lost two seats for 39.

ECR can now boast 76 members (up 14) and Identity & Democracy 58 (down 18). The official figures then give 45 non-inscrits and 44 “others”, meaning members belonging to newly represented parties that have not yet chosen a group. But the large majority in both those categories really belong to the far right: by my count 62 of them, or 70 if the reduced 5-Star delegation is added in.

Totalling those gives us 204 far-right or similar MPs, 28.3% of the total. On the one hand that’s a long way short of a majority; on the other hand, it’s a large enough bloc to potentially have a big influence on how the parliament works. It’s also enough to set alarm bells ringing across the continent, even if it fails to match some of the wilder predictions being made beforehand.

As always, the totals conceal significant variations by country. Among the larger countries, the far right made big gains in France (up 12 seats), less so in Germany (up four) and went backwards in Italy (down three, or nine if the 5-Stars are included). It also scored notable successes in Austria and the Netherlands, but one of its most prominent leaders, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, lost ground slightly.

While the European parliament has won itself a larger role than it could claim a decade or two ago, ultimately the main effect of the far right’s gains will probably be felt not there but at national level – as one might expect for nationalist parties. First cab off the rank in that respect is France, where the European result has triggered a snap election. We’ll take a look at that tomorrow.

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* To pick the most obvious example, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is in Identity & Democracy but its more extreme competitor, Éric Zemmour’s Reconquest, is in ECR.