The E.U. Is Voting. It’s Never Mattered More.

Hundreds of millions of voters are electing a European Parliament this weekend. The outcome will help tip the balance of the continent’s struggle between unity and nationalism.( )

It’s tempting to dismiss the European Parliament elections as the most important elections that don’t actually matter.

Hundreds of millions of voters across 27 nations will turn out this weekend to cast their ballots, but the European Parliament is the least powerful of the European Union institutions. It is often derided as a talking shop. Its 720 members have limited powers, and, while a few are ascendant stars, a few are retired politicians, or even criminals.( )

But, the European Union has never been more important in delivering tangible benefits to its citizens, or to the world in being a force for stability and prosperity, since its inception as an economic alliance nearly seven decades ago. The Parliament that emerges from these elections, weak though it may be, will serve as a brake or accelerator for the crucial policies that will help shape Europe’s immediate future.( )

In the five years since the last election, the bloc jointly bought Covid-19 vaccines and started a massive economic stimulus program to recover from the pandemic. It sanctioned Russia and paid to arm and reconstruct Ukraine. It ditched Russian energy imports and negotiated new sources of natural gas. It overhauled its migration system. It adopted ambitious climate policies.( )

But in that time, the E.U. has also been criticized for failing to heed demands for more accountability and transparency, and for pushing policies that favor urban elites over farmers and rural voters. The loss of sovereignty to an obscure center of power in Brussels, manned by technocrats, doesn’t sit well with many Europeans either.

Incensed by Covid-era policies, and the arrival of more migrants, and desperate to regain a sense of control and identity, many voters are expected to swing way to the right. The two further right parties running in these elections are poised to make significant gains.( )

That shift is also charged by some of the same culture-war issues pertaining to gender politics, especially in Eastern Europe, as in the United States and other parts of the developed world.

Against this backdrop, Europe’s election will produce a new compromise with political extremes. It looks likely that centrist parties will have to work with the far right to get anything done.( )

If the the projections are right, then the Parliament will may well have a harder time performing even the limited functions it does have — approving E.U. legislation, the bloc’s budget, and E.U. top leadership positions. Smaller, more disruptive actors will become more powerful. And the far right is itself splintering, leading to further instability in the European political process.( )

“Normally, these elections would be of a second or third order of importance,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy. “But the vote matters because of the context.”( )

Never waste a crisis

The European Union grows through crisis. At the heart of this unique experiment at super-national governance lies the idea that the countries of Europe can achieve more together than each on its own.Still, the way the bloc works rests on an inherent tension between the joint E.U. institutions mostly based in Brussels, primarily its executive arm, the European Commission, and the national governments in each of the 27 member states.( )

The commission fancies itself the guardian of a vision for a federal Europe, herding its members toward “an ever closer union,” per its founding document. The national governments oscillate between empowering and funding the commission, and seeking to control it, blame it for failures and grab the credit for successes.( )

This weekend’s elections will send a strong signal to European leaders of which side of the scale citizens want to place their finger. Each consolidation of power by Brussels has tended to be followed by some popular pushback, making Europe’s integration a process of two steps forward, one step back.

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