Recent election forecasts show that the European Parliament is moving several steps to the right in the June elections.
At the same time, parties with a tight-lipped attitude towards the EU can gain a lot of support in more countries than before. They can also become the biggest again in France and Italy.
This changes the content and decision-making of European politics.
In this story, we tell you who will probably exercise power in the European Parliament to be elected in June.
In the graphic below, you can see how the number of seats in different groups is changing according to the forecasts.
1. The European People’s Party EPP is gaining more and more power
Overall, power is shifting to the right in the European Parliament, and extreme right-wing parties are also gaining more seats. However, the extreme right is still far from the majority.
According to forecasts, the center-right EPP group will remain the largest group in the parliament after the elections. It includes the Finnish coalition and the Christian Democrats.
The power of the EPP in the European Parliament may grow even larger than its number of seats, the professor estimates Johanna Kantola From the Center for European Studies.
– It seems that it will be difficult to form a majority in the next election period without the EPP, says Kantola.
That is why it is important which groups EPP is interested in cooperating with.
It may turn its gaze to the right towards the conservative ECR group. It includes basic Finns from Finland.
The views of the moderate right and the extreme right are close to each other in climate and nature policy, for example.
The EPP is not cooperating with the ID group, which consists of far-right parties.
Right-wing groups still cannot completely dictate the policy of the future EU Parliament, because their power is probably not enough for that.
However, the EPP gets an excellent negotiating position against the left or the liberals. They seem to be losing ground in the June elections.
Then the left-wing and liberal groups would no longer be able to do what they wanted without the support of the right-wing parties.
– The EPP would no longer need to make compromises in the direction of the left in the same way as until now, says the doctoral researcher Teemu Rantanen from the University of Turku.
2. The climate falls on the agenda
In the upcoming election period, climate issues may receive less attention than before, and emission reduction targets may be relaxed.
The attention received by climate policy has already decreased, even though the crisis has not been resolved.
In the 2019 elections, the Greens gained more seats when climate policy was on the surface.
There was a huge change in politics when Europe made big decisions to reduce carbon emissions. An attempt was made to speed up the so-called green transition of industry with the money from the corona stimulus package.
Since then, other crises have taken attention away from climate issues.
The new European Parliament is still unlikely to make a complete turnaround, because for industry, carbon neutrality is also a competitive advantage. After the previous elections, the industry emphasized a clear investment outlook, reflects Juha Jokela, Program Director of the Institute for Foreign Policy.
However, conservatives and the extreme right do not tighten climate policy.
– The right-wing’s more critical attitude increases the EPP’s pressure to compromise on the most ambitious policy, specialist researcher Kimmo Elo The University of Turku’s Center for Parliamentary Studies says.
Something similar has been seen in Finland during the current government term, Elo reminds.
A decrease in ambition could be seen in Europe, for example, by extending the deadlines for climate neutrality or phasing out combustion engines.
In the current period, we already saw an example of the influence of the right-wing in nature policy, when the bill for the restoration of nature was watered down in the discussion. The ECR, the majority of the EPP and the extreme right tried to overturn the law. It finally passed with the votes of the Greens, the Left and the Liberals.
3. The immigration policy is becoming even steeper
Immigration policy has tightened this election season. If right-wing groups gain more power, the trend will continue.
In its election campaign, the EPP is pushing for the asylum procedure to be moved outside the borders of the EU.
The inspiration is the model already approved by Britain, where asylum seekers can be sent to Rwanda to wait for the application to be processed.
European politics may therefore continue to integrate, but the content may change from the original policy emphasizing fundamental and human rights.
Although the far-right in principle does not support a closer union, in some cases it has half-accidentally ended up pushing for deeper cooperation. This has happened when right-wing parties have supported the construction of a European fortress, i.e. a strict border and immigration policy.
Because of the crisis in Ukraine, security is emerging as a theme of the European elections, even though the parliament is a bystander in security policy.
Power in security policy is mainly exercised by member states, NATO and the EU Commission.
Some issues, on the other hand, may fall off the EU’s agenda. This can happen, for example, to promoting equality and emphasizing workers’ rights, as they have been policies pursued by the left and liberals.
4. The importance of the extreme right may increase during the election period
If extremist parties also succeed in national elections in different countries, it may be difficult to ignore them in EU decision-making. However, it would require closer cooperation from these parties that are at odds with each other and have a hostile attitude towards the EU.
Up until now, it has been difficult for the extreme right to leave a visible mark on the European Parliament. ID, consisting of extreme right-wing parties, is a fragmented and fractious group. It includes, for example, the German Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the French National Coalition (RN).
Other groups have excluded ID from the most important decision-making, and it has not been able to lead a single committee.
The experts interviewed by estimate that the situation will not change at least immediately after the elections.
This is because few parties belonging to the ID group are in government in their home countries.
If the far-right parties are successful in the upcoming national elections, cooperation may have to be reconsidered.
For example, a good result is predicted for the Austrian FPÖ in the autumn parliamentary elections.
– Then ID might ask that if you cooperate with us in the member states, why can’t you do it in Europe, says a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Manuel Müller.
Far-right parties may also influence the Parliament’s activities indirectly. Even if there is no official cooperation, the extremes can influence how things are talked about and what views are allowed.
According to researchers, the use of harsher language than before can already be seen in immigration matters, for example.
More moderate parties also fish for votes from extreme parties by changing their own views to align with their policies.
5. Forecasts can still change
As in Finland, in many other countries the parties’ election campaigns have only just begun. Therefore, forecasts can still change. Making forecasts is also complicated by the fact that party support is studied in different ways in different countries. Still, researchers consider the forecasts to be mostly reliable.
Just like now, during the previous European elections in 2019, an avalanche of votes for the extreme right was predicted. They did increase their support, but the greens took the biggest election victory. In many countries, such as Germany, Holland and Finland, the greens fared much better than expected.
Manuel Müller does not expect any party to experience a similar rise in this election.
On the other hand, many things can happen during the month’s election campaign.
Müller considers the rise of the extreme right to be indisputable.
– For example, in German polls, the extreme right gets almost 20 percent support. It is larger than at any time since World War II.
It matters a lot whether the supporters of these parties show up at the polling stations in different countries.