European vote buoys liberals as kingmakers

The results this week of the European Parliament elections were a humiliating blow at home to President Emmanuel Macron of France, as his party finished second to the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen.

But in the Parliament itself, his party could be the kingmaker because there will be no working majority without it.

That gives Macron, who has been the biggest booster among European leaders of deeper integration for European Union members, an opportunity to push through change — and to counter the populist and nationalist right.

Macron’s party — which did not even exist in the last European elections in 2014 — together with a group of liberal ones can create a sustainable working majority of pro-European parties.

These parties, and in particular the Green Party, which did especially well with young voters worried about climate change, have made clear they intend to use their new position to effect change in both who runs the EU and its policies.

The new majority will also be able to stand up to, and potentially block, the more emboldened populist and nationalist right, which increased its share as a group by 5 percentage points and now holds about 25% of seats.

Altogether, the pro-European parties, along with the Greens, will control 502 of the 751 seats, limiting the power of the populists to gum up the system and providing leverage for Macron and his allies in their desire to shake Europe to embrace a different future.

On Tuesday, Macron, undaunted by his bruising at home, outlined a broad agenda of renewal for Europe, including items like “the climate emergency,” new technology, job creation, growth, social protections such as a minimum wage, border protection, migration and deepening the still fragile eurozone.

“We’ll have to choose people on the basis of this ambition,” Macron said. “We will need women and men who embody this renewal, who have the experience and credibility to carry out this mission.”

That does not, he and his allies in the liberal group made clear in a joint statement, mean the selection of Manfred Weber for the presidency of the European Commission, replacing Jean-Claude Juncker. Weber is the candidate of conservatives in the center right.

“For us it is important that the next president of the commission is representing a broad pro-European majority with a clear program to renew Europe,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberal group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, known as ADLE.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, ALDE and Macron’s En Marche party said bluntly, “At this hour, no candidate for the presidency of the commission has secured a majority in the European Parliament.”

The horse trading for this job, followed by the other critical ones — president of the European Council, foreign policy chief and, indirectly, the head of the European Central Bank — is likely to take many weeks, if not months, beginning with an informal dinner Tuesday night in Brussels.

Though it is up to the heads of state and government in the European Council to name a replacement for Juncker as commission president, the choice must be approved by the European Parliament.

The success of the Greens in the election will be a significant shift.

“I would expect that the Green wave that we had in many countries, not in all, will have a strong impact on the program of the next commission president,” said Martin Selmayr, the secretary-general of the European Commission.

Céline Charveriat, executive director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Brussels, said that according to the bloc’s Eurobarometer polls, in the fall of 2018, 16% of respondents thought climate change was one of the top two issues, while only 6% thought so in 2016.

“There seems to be a real change,” she said. “The electorate has really started to reflect on environmental concerns.”

In Germany, the largest member state, the Greens had a smashing victory, becoming the second-largest party as the Social Democratic Party slumped to a disastrous result, with young people and urban elites deserting the left and the right to vote Green.

The youth vote for the Greens is real, especially in Western and Northern Europe. “Partial data suggest that 1 in 3 people under 30 voted for a Green party, so there is definitely a generational element,” Charveriat said.

The Greens will be needed on many issues for a working majority, since they now hold 69 out of 751 total seats, an increase of 17 seats.

They intend to have a voice on issues like climate change, renewable energy, biodiversity, pollution from plastics and an emphasis in new trade deals on environmental and labor standards.

Ska Keller, the co-president of the Greens group, called the vote “a mandate for change in the European Union.”

The danger, however, is that the climate issue may now deepen Europe’s already widening rifts between urban and rural voters, and rich and poor.

Populists, like those in the Yellow Vest movement who have challenged Macron in France, tend to see climate as an issue of the urban elite that punishes the jobless and those in small villages and the countryside, who need their cars.

Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Relations, warned that as the European Union becomes greener in its policies, “it may simply exacerbate the detachment some Europeans feel from the whole European project.”

The Greens were largely nonexistent in Central and Southern Europe.

“The priorities of people in countries in Central and Southeast Europe are different,” said Christian Egenhofer, who studies EU climate and energy policy at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

“Climate change is not that high on their priorities,” he added, “and when you go to these countries, they often say climate change and environment protection, especially out of the urban areas, is something for the rich people in the West.”