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Vote for European Parliament Seen as Bellwether for the Right Fringe Parties Expected to Make Gains in European Parliament Elections
(about 7 hours later)
LONDON — Voters in Britain and the Netherlands went to the polls on Thursday at the start of four days of balloting across the 28-member European Union in a parliamentary election widely viewed as a bellwether for right-wing populist parties challenging traditional political elites. BRUSSELS — Starting with Britain and the Netherlands, Europe began voting on Thursday for a new European Parliament, an election in which fringe parties of the right and left are expected to capitalize on low voter turnout and anger over immigration and anemic economies in the wake of the financial crisis.
The European Parliament ballot does not generally reflect the sentiments expressed by voters in national elections, and turnout is often low. Whether the expected success for the fringe parties marks a lasting shift in Europe — or whether it will die away in future elections — the results may provide Europe’s extremists an outsized platform to influence the politics of their home nations and beyond. With centrist groups struggling to contain radicals on both flanks, the new parliament is expected to have more populist lawmakers than ever before from parties opposed to free trade and European integration.
But the Europe-wide elections frequently provide a sense of the levels of public displeasure with the political mainstream and with what critics call the European Union’s bloated and aloof bureaucracy in Brussels. One thing it may well do, for example, is derail a trans-Atlantic trade pact that both Washington and Brussels have been pushing as a spur to economic growth. The parliament has rejected agreements with the United States in the past, but nothing on this scale.
Most of the one-day elections for national contingents at the 751-member European Parliament will be held on Sunday, and results will not be announced until then. Around 350 million people are eligible to vote. The European vote could well be overshadowed by the presidential election in Ukraine, also set for Sunday. That prospect brings into focus the growing importance of an assembly that, according to opinion polls, nonetheless may have less public support than ever and has yet to escape its reputation as a refuge for has-beens and never-will-bes who would have trouble winning office in their home countries.
Some analysts have said that the crisis in Ukraine has barely been mentioned in electioneering for the European Parliament, even though the crisis there has presented the continent with its biggest security, political and diplomatic challenge in decades. “The extremists risk exaggerating the reaction of the new parliament to the relative economic decline of Europe — not by making Europe more humble or cooperative — but by making it more confrontational and less willing to reciprocate,” said Fredrik Erixon, the director of the European Center for International Political Economy, a research group in Brussels. “That is a toxic mix for provoking big commercial fights with other parts of the world, including with the United States.”
Seats in the European Parliament are allocated according to population, so that the biggest nation by numbers, Germany, votes for 96 representatives, while smaller countries such as Luxembourg and Malta elect only a handful. The election holds the potential to sow widespread political uncertainty, and even turmoil. The four days of voting in 28 nations for the 751-member assembly could deliver significant gains for the anti-European U.K. Independence Party led by Nigel Farage, and the anti-immigration Dutch Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders. Similarly Euroskeptic parties could top the polls in France and Italy, where voting takes place Sunday, when all results will be officially announced.
In Britain, the number is 73, and much attention in the campaign has focused on the U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, led by Nigel Farage, which has no representation in the British Parliament but could emerge, according to surveys, as the biggest winner in the European vote. One poll said UKIP could win more than a quarter of the British vote, while the Liberal Democrats, the junior coalition partner in the national government, could trail all other parties here. These far-right and far-left groups will not win anything approaching enough seats to take control. But they could get around a quarter of them, amplifying their voice in debate and giving them more opportunities to slow down measures that the Brussels bureaucracy and international economists say could help save Europe from a Japan-style “lost decade” of anemic growth and policy stasis.
The anti-Islam Party of Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, is forecast to make gains in the Netherlands, as is the National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, in France. These include initiatives to bind the 18 countries that use euro currency closer together and open up Europe’s markets to greater competition, including from the United States.
The elections come at the start of a long process to choose a president of the European Commission, the union’s executive branch, to succeed the incumbent, José Manuel Barroso, under new rules designed to enhance at least the appearance of democracy. Set up in the 1950s as a common assembly to introduce an element of democracy into the nascent European project, the parliament became directly elected in 1979 as part of push to narrow the chasm between Europeans and the arcane work of integrating their economies that few ordinary people cared about and even fewer could understand.
The commission president has generally emerged from opaque horse-trading among national governments eager to ensure a share of influence in Brussels. Under the new rules, the initial choice will still lie with the leaders of the 28 countries, but their candidate should reflect the outcome of this week’s elections and must secure majority backing in the European Parliament. Instead, the parliament, which sits in both Brussels and the French city of Strasbourg 270 miles away, has increasingly become a forum for politicians bent on subverting, not fixing, the European Union. And while its powers have steadily grown, public interest and support have steadily waned.
Voters in England and Northern Ireland were also voting on Thursday for some 4,000 local council seats. The elections, warned Valdis Dombrovskis, the former prime minister of Latvia and a onetime member of the European Parliament, risk empowering “fringe groups which are against everything.” He added: “Decision-making is going to be more complicated.”
Passing legislation aimed at integrating Europe’s economy with other parts of the world is going to be particularly hard.
With moderate pro-business parties expected to lose seats, “protectionist policies are more likely to gain support when populist parties join forces with the left to form majorities against initiatives, including any trade deal with the United States,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm.
Unlike many national parliaments, the European assembly cannot initiate laws, and must wait for the union’s policy-making arm, the European Commission, to submit draft legislation.
Even so, the parliament has steadily gained powers to amend a huge range of laws — from capping bankers’ bonuses to limiting greenhouse gas emissions — that Brussels enacts each year and member countries must follow.
Since 2009, the parliament also wields a veto over a seven-year budget for the union worth about one trillion euros and over most international agreements, including plans for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership announced by President Obama in February 2013 in his State of the Union address.
There is much is at stake, particularly for British government, which wants a deal that could, according to the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a research group in London, boost overall E.U. exports by as much as 187 billion euros annually to help support its case for staying in the union. Governments in the Netherlands and across Scandinavia also strongly back a deal, which could give Europe and the United States added leverage over China in trade conflicts.
But politicians in countries like France are under pressure to protect their cultural and agricultural industries against American imports, while citizens in countries like Germany are balking at U.S. demands that would allow American companies to sue European governments. There is also widespread mistrust of the United States across the union following the revelation of surveillance of phone and Internet communications by American spy agencies.
As a result, mainstream parties contesting the European elections are already extremely cautious.
Even Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg and candidate of the business-friendly European People’s Party to run the commission, has pledged to not “sacrifice Europe’s safety, health, social and data protection standards on the altar of free trade.”
The parliament already made a dramatic demonstration against the United States in early 2010 by suspending a program to track financial and bank transfers that the Obama administration says is vital to its effort to fight terrorism. The parliament agreed to reinstate the program a few months later, but only after the United States agreed to make modifications.
The sudden emergence of the parliament as a decisive force in European policy-making has prompted American diplomats and lobbyists to give it far more attention.
European voters, paradoxically, have grown less interested.
Turnout at European elections has steadily declined, slipping from 62 percent in 1979 to 43 percent at the last election five years ago. The results of a poll by the Pew Research Center this month suggested voter-participation rates could drop further this week. Only 36 percent of Europeans in seven countries including France, Britain and Germany have a favorable opinion of the parliament, according to Pew.