Europe is set to pick a new Parliament. Here’s why the far right will likely do well.

The Explainer

Starting June 6, citizens of the European Union will cast votes in elections for the European Parliament – the bloc’s legislative body – which are held once every five years. 

More than 400 million people will be eligible to vote for the 720 seats that are up for grabs. Germany and France have the most seats at stake, with 96 and 81 respectively. Malta, Luxembourg, and Cyprus have the least, at six seats each.

Compared with national elections in Europe, EU parliamentary elections often are viewed as a sideshow, as public turnout drops radically and fringe parties benefit from protest voting. But the Parliament, and thus the process to select its members, is hugely important to the bloc’s economic policymaking.

Just what is the European Parliament, and what can it do?

The European Parliament is the directly elected legislature of the 27 EU member states, including Germany, France, and Italy.

The Parliament cannot directly initiate new laws, but it does set the EU budget and decide how money will be spent. Thus, it can determine whether EU money goes to Ukraine, declare blocwide carbon emission regulations, and set zero-emissions targets. It also elects the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body.

In a number of ways, the EU Parliament holds significant power over member states. For example, Germany cannot decide to enter a trade agreement with Mexico, or impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, or subsidize its solar industry, without explicit agreement by this body.

“It’s wrong to characterize the European Parliament as a toothless, irrelevant body. It’s absolutely not,” says Jacob Kirkegaard, a political economist and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “It has a very direct say in literally hundreds of billions of euros being spent or not spent every year.”

This power is both restrictive and generous. Because the EU as a whole is an economy roughly the size of the United States, “that gives individual member states bigger weight internationally, especially Germany,” says Dr. Kirkegaard. “It’s always this trade-off that you are constrained by the EU on some things, but you enable on other issues.” 

Not that it’s easy to get voters to care. Turnout in 2019, the last time EU parliamentary elections were held, was only about 50%. Meanwhile, national elections of EU member states can draw participation of more than 80%, says Dr. Kirkegaard. (In comparison, the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the 2022 U.S. congressional elections saw turnouts of 66% and 46% respectively.)

How do Europeans typically decide how to vote in the EU parliamentary elections?

When they do turn out, they typically are agnostic about EU-wide issues and instead cast votes based on what’s important in their countries. For example, voters in Germany, France, and Spain are generally expected to cast ballots as a referendum on their leadership. In Finland, the threat of Russia just over the border is top of mind, while in Croatia and Ireland, cost-of-living issues reign supreme. 

“We are living in times of crisis, which is unsettling people because they are losing their hope for the future,” says Ursula Münch, a political scientist and current director of the independent think tank Academy for Political Education in Bavaria. “This makes many people angry, and this anger is directed at politicians.”

Who stands to benefit from those protest votes?

The primary expected beneficiaries are parties on the far right, which are resurgent in Italy, France, and nearly every other country.

The EU was created after World War II to strengthen social, economic, and political bonds among countries that had been frequently engaged in bloody conflict. Nearly by definition, the bloc stands for unity. But the far right across Europe has risen largely on EU skepticism, as well as on antimigration, nationalistic platforms.

“It’s a difficult era” for the EU, says Milan Nič, a fellow and expert on Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a moment of much more fragmentation in European politics, so it is more difficult to put together some coalition. Also Europe is [being] confronted a bit more by more hostility, international competition, China, technology, all these things.”

In the last election cycle, far-right members took 17% of seats. They are forecast to possibly take 25% or more this time, shifting Parliament even further rightward. With a number of important issues – from Ukraine and mass migration to climate change and trade with China – on the table in upcoming years, such a shift would increasingly complicate the EU’s ability to move with unity.

Hungary’s conservatives, for example, have consistently opposed sending weapons to Ukraine and banning Russian energy imports. Their voices could grow louder. And notably, France’s Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party will have several dozen parliamentarians, giving them greater power than the entirety of Slovakia’s 15-member contingent.

How unified are Europe’s far-right parties?

Not as unified as they might seem.

For European members of Parliament to be effective at the bloc level, they must find like-minded politicians from across the Continent to ally with. They do that by joining EU-wide parties that align with their political affiliations back home.

The EU far-right group, known as Identity and Democracy, has seen some turmoil lately among the parties representing Europe’s largest states. Ms. Le Pen, for example, recently publicly criticized Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister, for her support of NATO – an unpopular position among Identity and Democracy members. And Identity and Democracy kicked out Alternative for Germany after one of the German party’s leaders appeared to suggest that not all members of the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS were criminals.

Still, the Identity and Democracy group may end up being a kingmaker. Ursula von der Leyen, the current European Commission president – who comes from the center-right grouping – has made it clear she wants a second term. As a clear majority may not emerge from the typical center-right, center-left, and liberal parliamentarian groups, Ms. von der Leyen has left the door open to work with Identity and Democracy if necessary.

That could throw more power to the right and result in policy changes in line with its political goals: for example, movement away from environmental reform and toward issues of national security and agriculture.