Europe’s voters have spoken, and the result “is a shock, an earthquake,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.
Official, but still partial returns from the 28-nation European Parliament elections show an unprecedented surge by Euroskeptics and outright anti-EU politicians.
The likely upshot is that the trade bloc will find it more difficult to agree on a range of issues, including how much to liberalize its internal market in services, what to include in a proposed trade agreement with the US and how to strike the balance between different energy sources.
By winning a larger share of seats in the European Parliament, more of Europe’s outsiders also have a better platform to influence politics in their home countries.
“European politics will be different from today on,” said Doru Frantescu, policy director and co-founder of VoteWatch Europe, an independent Brussels-based organization that tracked opinion polls in the run-up to the elections that finished on Sunday.
Mainstream parties may hang on to more than 70 percent of the seats in the EU’s 751-member parliament, Frantescu said as returns were still being tallied.
So when the transnational legislature’s two biggest blocs — the conservatives and the Socialists — concur, they still should get their way.
However, when they do not, foes of the EU as it now exists will have more votes and access to the parliament’s internal machinery to demand that their views be considered.
Frantescu predicted the trade bloc, now present in many areas of Europeans’ lives, will also interpret the election outcome as meaning it must refocus its efforts to stimulate Europe’s sluggish economy and reduce joblessness.
“The signal sent by the electorate is that clearly it wants the European Union to be more effective, it wants it to deliver more results to the citizens, it wants it to solve economic issues and unemployment,” Frantescu said. “These are the reasons for which people have turned toward the far left, toward the far right, toward Euroskeptics in general.”
In a statement early yesterday, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso appeared to agree.
“This is the moment to come together and to define the union’s way forward,” Barroso said. “The concerns of those who voted in protest or did not vote are best addressed through decisive political action for growth and jobs, and through a truly democratic debate.”
In France, the anti-EU, far-right National Front party led by Marine Le Pen got one in four votes, the best showing by any of the country’s parties, incomplete, but official returns showed on Sunday.
Valls went on television to say the verdict of voters showed it was important for his government to push through the spending cuts and tax cuts it has been promising.
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