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French President Emmanuel Macron attends a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the massacre of 643 persons by Nazi German forces, in Oradour-sur-Glane, France, June 10, 2024.
Macron rolls the dice on France’s future
Following a humbling 17-point defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right opposition party in the EU Parliament elections this weekend, France’s President Emmanuel Macron shocked the world by calling for snap elections to be held on June 30.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also suffered defeat to the far-right over the weekend, but he rejected demands for him to follow in Macron’s footsteps and call a snap election.
Macron’s logique: Macron is daring French voters to vote the same way domestically that they did this weekend for the European Parliament – which has long been seen as a protest vote.
According to Eurasia Group’s Europe directorMujtaba Rahman, “Macron believes he can defy the polls by confronting France with a stark choice between the pro-EU, pro-Ukraine & centrist status quo versus the existential risk of a far-right government.”
Macron is making a huge gamble on France's future. Polls suggest his centrist coalition will fail to win a majority, and if Le Pen’s National Rally picks up the most seats, France will be in uncharted waters. Le Pen has said she would partially withhold EU funding, toughen migration policy, infringe on the EU single market by prioritizing French business, and limit aid to Ukraine.French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party leader Marine Le Pen and party President Jordan Bardella address militants listens after French President announced he is calling for new general elections on June 30, during an evening gathering on the final day of the European Parliament election, at the Pavillon Chesnaie du Roy in Paris, on June 9, 2024.
Left in the dust: European voters swing right
Europe took a hard right turn in European Parliament elections this weekend, dealing a substantial blow to key EU leaders German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, prompting the latter to call early elections.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party surged to 31.5% support – more than twice as much as Macron’s Renaissance coalition, with 14.5%. Close behind are the Socialists and their lead candidate Raphaël Glucksmann with 14%.
A sober-looking Macron took to French television to dissolve parliament and called for elections on June 30, with a second round on July 7. The outcome of the EU elections, he said, was “not a good result for parties who defend Europe.” This is a gamble for Macron: A similar far-right wave in the French parliamentary election could see his party lose its majority.
In Germany, projections show the far-right Alternative for Germany set to secure second place with 16.5% of the vote, a record high. Support for Scholz’s Social Democratic Party and coalition partner Free Democratic Party declined, securing 14% and 5% of the vote, respectively. And Germany’s Greens took the biggest hit, dropping a whopping 8.5 percentage points to 12%, as cash-strapped voters spurned costly environmental policies.
Coalition time: Post-election, European political parties realign in blocs in the EU Parliament. The largest, the center-right European People’s Party, has recently shifted right on issues of security, climate, and migration, and could swing further to the right if joined by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy. Another scenario would see Meloni’s group and other far-right parties such as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party stay with the more hard-line European Conservatives and Reformists group, or become part of a new hard-right group that could form the wake of the elections. We’ll be watching the horse trading as coalitions take shape.Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders votes during an EU election in The Hague, Netherlands June 6, 2024.
Europe votes with the far-right on the rise
The Netherlands and Estonia kicked off the European Parliament elections on Thursday, with the rest of the bloc’s 27 member states set to vote on the composition of its ruling body by Sunday.
While each country will have local issues weighing heavily on voters, a few patterns of concern are crossing borders: immigration, the war in Ukraine, and climate policy, particularly where it intersects with energy costs. On balance, the far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, and Brothers of Italy look set to grow their seats, but barring a major upset, the ruling center-right coalition under Ursula von der Leyen is expected to stay in control.
That’s thanks, in part, to the far-right’s struggles to get on the same strategic page. The RN’s leader, Marine Le Pen, chose to distance herself from the AfD after a high official said not all Nazi SS members were criminals. That’s the kind of ideology-driven own goal that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is concurrently serving as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists coalition in Brussels, would sooner avoid.
Italy’s first female PM has leaned hard into apragmatic approach, firmly backing Ukraine and advocating for the right wing to get behind climate policy while pressing for Brussels to do more to control immigration across the Mediterranean, much of which falls on Italy. That tack has made it easier for centrists to work with Meloni, and she stands a good chance of being von der Leyen’s first call after results come in. If Meloni plays her cards right — she’s played a weaker hand almost flawlessly so far — she can stay in the inner loop of decision-making in Europe. And, of course, if the centrists can’t keep her happy, she can join back up with the Le Pens of this world to make them regret it.
Disgraced AfD leader Maximilian Krah.
Euro Parliament group expels AfD
Even the far right has its limits. The European Parliament’s “Identity and Democracy” group of populist right-wing parties – including the Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s League, among others – expelled all nine AfD members on Thursday.
The move comes just weeks ahead of European Parliament elections on June 9 in which the far right is expected to make serious gains. It also comes a day after Maximilian Krah, head of AfD, said he’d step down over two scandals – one involving a senior staffer being charged with spying for China, and another stemming from Krah telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazi SS were war criminals. But sacrificing Krah wasn’t enough – and National Rally leader Marine Le Pensaid her party needed a “clean break” from AfD.
The expulsion was a bold move, given the AfD’s popularity. As recently as January, it was Germany’s second most popular party, polling at 22%, though it has since dropped six percentage points to tie for second place with the Social Democrat Party.
Polls have predicted the Identity and Democracy group’s number of seats in the European Parliament could rise from 59 to about 84 (some predicted a high of 93 before AfD’s recent scandals). National Rally, meanwhile, is surging in the polls.
What does this mean? Apart from hurting its reputation, expulsion means AfD loses access to the group’s shared resources, collective voice in parliament, and possibly some funding. But it doesn’t mean AfD members can’t run. In fact, party leaders said Thursday that they remained optimistic about the election. “We are confident we will continue to have reliable partners at our side in the new legislative period,” they said.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives a statement to annonunce he will stay on as Prime Minister after weighing his exit from the Spanish government, at Moncloa palace in Madrid, Spain April 29, 2024.
Spain’s prime minister isn’t going anywhere
After nearly a week of uncertainty, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, announced he would remain the country’s leader. Last Wednesday, he threatened to leave the position because of what he termed a “harassment and bullying operation” being waged against him and his wife by political and media enemies.
The move came hours after a Madrid court opened an investigation into his wife, Begoña Gómez, for influence peddling and corruption. The trial was brought by Manos Limpias, a self-styled trade union with far-right links, who accused Gómez of using her influence to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course she runs. Madrid's public prosecutor asked Thursday that the case against her be closed.
Sánchez’s threat to resign spurred demonstrations around Spain over the weekend calling for him to stay put. More than 10,000 people gathered in front of the Socialist Party’s headquarters in Madrid in a show of support.
Sánchez attributed his decision to stay to this weekend’s mobilizations, and he has called for Spaniards to rise above “the global reactionary movement that wants to impose its retrograde agenda through defamation and falsehoods.”