A steady drumbeat of warnings suggests that the upcoming European elections in June 2024 will see as much as a quarter of the seats go to nationalistic, radical right-wing lawmakers. Such a prospect elicits great concern that the 10th European legislature could stymie EU integration and policymaking at a time when geopolitics and permacrisis call for more – rather than less – unity and ambition in the Union’s action.
Three main reasons lend credibility to these unsettling forecasts:
1. Radical-right parties continue to make inroads into power at the national level in the member states.
2. The European electoral arena has generally proven more accessible to them than many national parliaments.
3. Voters’ undiluted and sustained dissatisfaction with mainstream political representatives in today’s complex reality can easily translate into a protest vote.
Using roll-call voting records collected by Eulytix, this Discussion Paper calculated the average proportion of MEPs who aligned themselves with the winning side in voting sessions across the outgoing Parliament. The results reveal that the members of radical right-wing groups – i.e. the Independents (NI), Identity and Democracy (ID), and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – have been much less likely to agree with the outcome of a voting session compared to their centrist or left-wing counterparts. Consequently, they emerged as the least influential groups during the present mandate (2019-2014).
Read the full paper here.