According to the results of the past elections to the European Parliament, in general, the old, traditional European parties lost their positions. At the same time, new parties and right-wing conservative forces gained significant popularity, the analyst of the news agency Vestnik Kavkaza, Matvey Katkov, said today in the National Question program on Vesti FM.
He recalled that the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest in the European Parliament, maintained the lead, but showed a worse result than in the 2014 elections. "In the new European Parliament, the party will receive 178 seats, and according to the results of the 2014 elections, it received 221 mandates. The total number of seats in the European Parliament has not changed -751. In my opinion, this is typical, and it is observed among other parties, too,” the analyst said.
He drew attention to the fact that in Germany, the CDU-CSU union lost some positions. "The Union retained the majority of votes but showed a result worse than on the previous elections. This year the party received less than 29%, although, in 2014, it gained 35%. Germany ranks first in the European Parliament in terms of the number of mandates, there are 96, so the result may affect the balance of power in the European Parliament ", the expert continued.
He also noted that the elections in France, which has the second largest representation in the European Parliament, were especially interesting. “According to the results of the voting, Marine Le Pen’s party the National Rally won the elections gaining 23.31%. The Presidential party La Republique En Marhe! does not lag behind too much, but still loses to Le Pen with 22.41% of votes. In the previous European Parliament, Le Pen’s Europe of Nations and Freedoms was the smallest - only 37 seats. However, following the results of the past elections, the party won 55 seats, which is also very significant,” Matvey Katkov noted.
The expert drew attention to the fact that the EPP and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, which won the second place, cannot form a parliamentary majority and will have to form a coalition.
“Of course, assessing these results, it is tempting to state that in the European Union, there is an increase in the right-wing conservative and nationalist forces. However, it seems to me that in many respects, these elections are the result of internal political struggle in the EU member states. This partly contradicts the very idea of the common European political institutions. In theory, the factions of the European Parliament should forget about belonging to the nation states and deal with the European issues. However, today we are witnessing how the internal political issues of individual states are being taken to the pan-European level, in particular, by influencing the balance of power in the European Parliament. I do not support the view that the pan-European integration institutions have proven to be ineffective, but now we see that in practice they do not work exactly as it was initially planned,” the analyst concluded.
