When the dust settles from the elections for seats in the European Parliament, the Left will emerge intact and renewed. The biggest loser is the center-right European People's Party (EPP) which includes members from the French Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. The public responded to their default public policy of fiscal austerity. The EPP lost 61 of its seats, almost a quarter of them. However, it will remain the largest single political group in the incoming Parliament.
The Parliament is organized into officially recognized groups that unite representatives from political parties in their home countries. A side-by-side comparison of the outgoing and incoming Parliaments summarizes the election. The numbers come from the Parliament's election results website. The platform descriptions come from each group's statement on the Parliament website.
Euro Parliament Political Groups |
Platform |
# of MEPs - Outgoing |
# of MEPs - Incoming |
Euro United Left/Nordic Greens Left (GUE/NGL) |
economic/social justice, progressive, left |
35 |
42 |
Socialists and Democrats (S&D) |
socialist-labor, center-left |
196 |
190 |
Greens/Euro Free Alliance (Greens/EFA)
|
ecologists, inclusive democracy, left |
57 |
53 |
Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) |
center |
83 |
64 |
Euro People's Party (EPP) |
social-market, center-right
|
274 |
213 |
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)
|
national sovereignty, social conservative, right |
57 |
46 |
Freedom and Democracy (EFD) |
Eurosceptic, far-right |
31 |
38 |
Unaffiliated/Independent (NI) |
non-members of any group |
33 |
41 |
Others |
unaffiliated incoming members |
0 |
64 |
The seats lost by the EPP and the two far-right groups will be taken by 64 unaffiliated incoming members. Included in this grab bag of representatives are the 20 or so Front National members elected in France. To have power and influence, they would need to form a political group that the European Parliament recognizes. It takes a minimum of 25 MEPs from 7 or more countries. It appears that there will be enough far-right MEPs to form a political group with the FN, but finding them in 6 countries outside France appears unlikely.
As this article explains, the FN's leader, Marine Le Pen, was counting on the election of like-minded candidates from Sweden, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, with a possibility of Italy and Lithuania completing the required set of 7 member states. Le Pen spent 3 years trying to sanitize the FN's brand of its former association with fascist ideology. For that reason, it seemed that Le Pen ruled out members of certain parties elsewhere, as too radical.
The porridge would have to be the exact temperature Le Pen deems to be palatable. Her plan was in doubt all along. With the election returns coming in from Belgium and the Netherlands, it looks like the FN's potential partners failed to win any seats in those countries. Finding them elsewhere may be impossible.
When the European Parliament convenes, it could very well be with its representatives on the far-right disorganized and unable to form a political group.
In the map, the départements are shaded to show the Front National's relative strength in each. The départements outlined in white were carried by candidates of the traditional right or center. The département outlined in red was carried by the Socialists. The FN's share of votes was lowest in the Paris region where it was 9%.
There's a fair amount of chatter right now about the results achieved by the Front National in France. For those who don't know their Rhine from their Rhône, or their Seine from their Saône, it might be useful to have a few essential facts.
- Yesterday's election was for the members of the European Parliament and not for France’s national government. The Front National still has only 3 members in the 577-seat Assemblée Nationale, the legislative body that makes the laws for France.
- 89% of the registered voters in France didn’t vote for the Front National yesterday. In fact, voter turnout was only 42% which means that only 10.5% of those registered gave their vote to the FN. There's a reminder here for Democrats to keep in mind for November. Who wins when voter turnout is low? You know this. Don't forget it.
- While voters who voted tilted heavily to the right in France, and also somewhat in the UK, the same isn't true everywhere in Europe. The table above outlines the composition of the incoming Parliament compared to the outgoing.The FN isn’t new. Although the traditional media acts like it's new every time there's an election in France, the FN was founded in 1972 by its current leader's father.
- The FN received more votes in past elections than it did yesterday. For comparison, the FN's total on May 25 was 4,711,339. In 2002. which was long before the party's image was sanitized, Jean-Marie Le Pen ran for President. In the first round of voting, he received 4,804,713 or 16.9% of the votes. It was enough for him to earn second place and proceed to the run-off which is only for the top two candidates. The Socialists came in third by less than 200,000 votes and they were shut out. In the run-off against Jacques Chirac, a candidate of the traditional right, Jean-Marie Le Pen received less than 18%. In 2012, Marine Le Pen ran for President. She received 6,421,426 votes in the first round and came in third. Only two months ago, the municipal elections were held. Clearly, the French weren't enthusiastic about having the FN in their local city halls and town councils because they only got 6.75% of the vote. Sending the FN to serve in the European Parliament in Brussels is a strategy of French voters to express their dissatisfaction with the EU.
An increasing number of French people see the EU as the source of their problems. It meddles in the fiscal policy of France as a condition for financing the French government's debt. France can't issue sovereign debt like the US does because it traded its national currency for the Euro. With its own currency and central bank, France would be able to conduct its own monetary policy like the Federal Reserve does in the US. This opinion is gaining popularity in France because economic recovery from the recession has been noticeably stronger in the US.
The EU has no solution to offer except cuts in government spending. Many Americans swoon when they hear the numbers for the French government's budget. Something gets lost in translation. France doesn't have state and local government spending like the US does. It has one central government and one budget. If Americans summed their federal, state, and local budgets for a cumulative amount, it wouldn't be so far anymore from spending and revenue amounts in France. It's important to note that the total amount of government debt in France is still lower than it is in the US, as a percent of GDP.
Comparison of unemployment numbers in France and the US also lose in translation.
The EU is also blamed for erasing the borders of France under the freedom of movement policy that applies to most of the member states. The Front National stokes resentment directed toward anyone who isn't "français de souche," an expression I never even heard until a few years ago. "Native-born French" is the best translation I have. In almost eerie similarity, the election of the Socialists in 2012, seemed to awaken hatred and bigotry that was dormant in France the way that there was a resurgence of open racism after the election of Barack Obama in the US. François Hollande is the first President to appoint a black woman as a member of the cabinet. As the Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira has become the focus of racism in France in a way that almost seems to be a copycat version of events in the US.
The Socialists aren't exempt from criticism either. Hollande foolishly alienated his base by abandoning his party's historical principle as an ally of labor. This, too, is eerily familiar when compared with politics in the US in recent years.
There's are reasons why the voters' feet didn't carry them to the polls yesterday. And the result is familiar as well.