The European Parliament elections proved less stormy than predicted across the bloc, while in Central and Eastern Europe, deep political rifts showed no signs of healing.
One key lesson to take from the European Parliament elections is that this EU-wide event can matter a lot for national politics in the member states, Pawel Zerka, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said in an email comment.
“In Hungary, Peter Magyar has emerged as a serious rival to Viktor Orban,” Zerka wrote. “And in Poland, for the first time in a decade, the Civic Coalition of Prime Minister Donald Tusk won over the euroskeptic Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, consolidating Tusk’s strong position at home and abroad, and putting Tusk in the position of being able to claim a share in the EU’s core leadership.”
With final results still to be released, the turn to the right in the parliament’s makeup was less sharp than many polls and pundits forecast. The two largest groupings remain the center-right European People’s Party, or EPP (winning 186 seats, 10 more than in the outgoing parliament) and the social-democrat S&D, set to hold 135 seats, a loss of four seats.
Even so, Zerka noted that the rightist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, and Identity and Democracy (I&D) groups gained seats in the new parliament. The two groups won 131 seats in the 720-seat assembly. “This shift could impact EU policies on climate, migration, enlargement, the budget, and rule of law if right-wing parties collaborate. But it also aligns with a broader rightward trend in EU member states, where radical right parties are now part of national governments in eight out of 27 countries (leading the governments in Hungary and Italy, members of the ruling coalition in the Netherlands, Finland, Slovakia, Czechia, and Croatia, and providing parliamentary support to the Swedish government), influencing EU leadership and priorities.”
Election Snapshots From Around the Region
Hungary
The outcome was mixed for the entrenched ruling Fidesz party. Easily out-polling its nearest rival, the startup Tisza opposition party led by ex-Fidesz insider Peter Magyar, Fidesz still saw its support slump by 10 points compared to the 2019 elections.
“Today we defeated the old opposition, the new opposition, and no matter what the opposition will be called the next time, we will defeat them again and again,” Prime Minister Victor Orban exulted.
Magyar, whose party earned 30 percent of the vote, 15 points behind Fidesz, tried to put the best face on the outcome, telling supporters early on the morning of 10 June, “Today an era ended. And today, the future has began in Hungary.”
“What is clear that this is the Waterloo of the Orban power factory, the beginning of the end,” he declared, Reuters reported.
Poland
“I think it can be considered some kind of a surprise that the Civic Coalition still managed to win,” commented Bulgarian-Polish journalist and political analyst Boyan Stanislavski.
The ruling Civic Coalition was less than a point ahead of the national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) it beat in the milestone national elections last December, according to almost-final results on Monday.
“We’ve shown that we are a ray of hope for Europe,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on 9 June. “Over the next few months, Poland will decide what Europe will look like,” he added, describing his country as a “leader in the EU,” Deutsche Welle reported.
Euroskeptic PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called the result “a big challenge.” Referring to Poland’s national colors, he appealed to supporters to form what he called a “red-white front,” according to Deutsche Welle.
The results proved that Poland deserves a place among the EU’s leading countries, the Guardian quoted Tusk as asserting. “Poland has shown that democracy, honesty and Europe triumph here. … We showed that we are a light of hope for Europe.”
Czech Republic
Billionaire populist former Prime Minister Andrej Babis led his ANO party to a strong showing with 26 percent of the vote, four points ahead of the center-right SPOLU (Together), a member of the current national government. The surprises came with the third-place showing of a coalition of two new anti-establishment parties, Oath and Motorists, who will each send one deputy to Brussels, followed in fourth place by a hard-left grouping called Enough!, led by the Communists, who partly recouped their awful showings in recent national elections.
Slovakia
Just under a month after an elderly man shot and seriously injured Prime Minister Robert Fico, his social-democrat/populist ruling Smer party only managed second place in the EU elections on 25 percent of the vote, just behind the liberal opposition Progressive Slovakia party.
Writing on Facebook under a photo of him casting a ballot in the hospital where he is recovering, Fico reiterated the party’s isolation from the mainstream EU position of support for Ukraine: “It is necessary to vote for MEPs who will support peace initiatives and not the continuation of war,” he wrote, vowing not to drag Slovakia “into any similar military adventures.”
Michal Simecka, Progressive Slovakia’s leader, said the first-place showing of his “strongly pro-European movement” sent an “important signal” to the country, where Fico ally, Russia-aligned Peter Pellegrini, will be sworn in as president on 15 June, replacing the pro-Western Zuzana Caputova.
Lithuania
Conservative Waldemar Tomaszewski was reelected to the European Parliament, where he has been a deputy since 2009 with the ECR group. Despite his traditional, pro-Polish and Christian views, “Tomaszewski is skeptical about Lithuania’s hostile policies towards Russia and Belarus,” public broadcaster LRT says.
On Belarus, Tomaszewski said, “Relations must be improved. I will continue my work in the European Parliament as part of the delegation for contacts with Belarus. There must be a discussion, there must not be imposed decisions from somewhere, which is very damaging to our economy.”
Estonia
Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of the staunchly pro-Western Reform party admitted that the opposition on both the right and the left outperformed her party, public broadcaster ERR reported.
Kallas, tipped by some to become the EU’s next top diplomat, insisted that these elections will not affect the state of politics on the national level or the makeup of the current government.
Reflecting on the overall message of the elections, Kallas’s party colleague, former long-serving Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, said, “There are no major changes in store on the European level. Yes, the radical right has gained ground while the greens have clearly lost some, as have the liberals, but these changes are still relatively marginal. The balance of powers remains the same in the grand scheme of things.”
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