The tussle for top EU jobs got under way yesterday after European Parliament elections delivered a fragmented result, with gains for euroskeptic and green parties as the traditional mainstream groups took a hit.
The main center-right and center-left groups lost their combined majority in the 751-seat parliament in the face of a challenge by euroskeptic and nationalist forces of France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Matteo Salvini and the UK’s Nigel Farage — although the populist wave was less than some had predicted.
There were big wins for the Greens, who posted double-digit scores across Europe’s biggest countries, and the Liberals, with both parties likely to play a major role in any future parliamentary coalition.
Each previous EU election since the first in 1979 has seen turnout fall, but figures from across the 28-nation bloc were at a 20-year high of 51 percent, suggesting this year’s culture clash has mobilized both populists and those who oppose them.
Boosted by French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Movement, the Liberal ALDE group is estimated to finish with more than 100 seats, and it is expected to push hard to win the plum European Commission presidency for its candidate, Margrethe Vestager.
Britain is to send a large contingent of euroskeptic legislators to a parliament they want to leave in a few months, after Farage’s single-issue Brexit Party trounced the main parties, while Salvini’s League was Italy’s biggest party and Le Pen’s National Rally squeaked ahead of Macron.
The vote had left Europe “slightly more fragmented and polarized,” and there had been a shift from the two main groups to the liberals and greens, partly as a response to the rise of the populist right, Berenberg bank chief economist Holger Schmieding said.
“To simplify a complex picture: Whereas some voters care a lot about migration, many others see climate change as the key issue,” Schmieding wrote in a briefing note.
As the dust settles on the vote, attention now turns to the fight to land the top EU roles for the next five years: presidencies of the commission and the European Council, the speaker of parliament, the high representative for foreign policy and head of the European Central Bank.
These jobs will be picked by the national leaders of EU governments, with the first formal clash set for today, when they meet for a summit dinner in Brussels.
Macron yesterday fired the starting pistol on the haggling as he announced a series of one-on-one meetings with other leaders in the hours before the summit, notably Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez — one of Sunday’s big winners — and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel has said she would back Manfred Weber, the lead candidate of the center-right European People’s Party, which suffered significant losses, but remained parliament’s biggest bloc with 180 seats.
With the center-left Socialists and Democrats projected to win 147 seats, down from 185, the two mainstream parties would no longer have a majority and would have to reach out to the liberals and greens to pass legislation — and approve a new commission president.
In Greece, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called early elections after a thumping for his SYRIZA party.
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