European elections: the little brown wave

At the election-evening event organised by the European Parliament, each political group had a room in which to follow the results, to meet the press (over 1000 journalists were accredited), and to welcome visitors. The room where the mood was cheeriest was not that of the European People’s Party (EPP, conservative), which emerged from the elections in a strong first place. Nor was it the Eurosceptic ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists) group, which also made some progress. Paradoxically, it was the Greens, who suffered the worst setback at EU level.

The Greens, alongside the Liberals, were the big losers in the European elections of 6-9 June (whose results are still provisional at the time of publication). The winners were parties ranging from the right to the far right.

So, was there a “brown” (or “black”) wave? The one many feared seems only to have hit France, Germany, Italy and Austria. It did not show up in Central and Eastern Europe, where “parties spread[ing] a pro-Russian narrative [nonetheless] won a significant number of seats”, as Visegrad Insight observes. In the Nordic countries, the populist wave seems to have peaked before the election and there was instead a modest resurgence of the left.

It should be noted that the victorious far-right parties of Italy and France (affiliated in the European Parliament to ECR and the Identity and Democracy group, ID, respectively) had already come first in 2019. In any case, radical-right parties are now taking around 21% of the vote across Europe, and about a quarter of the seats in the European Parliament. Overall, these parties improved their score by a little under 2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024.

This figure does not include a number of independent MEPs. Based on the results of previous elections, the far right is likely to account for two-thirds of their seats, with the remainder going to the far left.

All of this prompted the Italian economist Alberto Alemanno remark on X that,

“Contrary to expectations, these EU elections have NOT given the EU away to the far-right. […] Instead, the pro-EU majority – which has historically been running the EU over the past 50 years – holds.”

In a similar vein, the Italian political scientist Nathalie Tocci summed up the situation with a well-known phrase from Tommasi di Lampedusa’s book, “Il Gattopardo”:

“[The European elections have] confirmed & invalidated the rightwing surge. Confirmed in France and Germany, but invalidated in many other member states. Even in Italy , Fratelli d’Italia, [the party of Prime Minister  Giorgia Meloni] did well but much worse than the [far-right] Lega in 2019. At EU level everything changes so that nothing changes, but with the huge challenges ahead, it’s bad enough”

In many other countries – Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Sweden – far-right parties appear to have underperformed. As noted by the Dutch specialist Cas Mudde on X, the radical right’s surge was mainly due to its performance in Germany, France and Italy, and “it was under-represented at EU level by 2024 standards”. That said, he adds, “the far right is far bigger than it should be”, all while having “largely won the political battle over immigration, [and] pushing debates on the European Green Deal and gender/sexuality”.

In Cas Mudde’s view, “[t]he “Democracy Doom” hype is inaccurate and unhelpful”. Nevertheless:

“[T]he parties claiming to be liberal democrats hold all the levers of power. We shouldn’t let them get away with saying that ‘people’ want far-right policies’ or that they ‘don’t have a choice’. […] Pressuring liberal democratic parties away from [the] far right is helped by realistic rather than sensationalist analysis and reporting”

In this context, all eyes are on the EPP, the linchpin of the European Parliament. Will it be able to resist the siren song of the radical right?

In his contribution to a round-up of analyses for The Guardian, Mudde asserts that “the EPP adopted the key issues and frames of the far right in its campaign and will govern in a more rightwing manner than before – with or without the help of the divided far right”. But he also points out that the far right “does not represent ‘the people’. In fact, it represents just a minority of Europe’s peoples. Moreover, far more Europeans reject far-right parties and policies”.

In an interview with the Flemish daily newspaper De Morgen, Dutch political scientist Léonie de Jonge observes that,

 “it may seem as if we are witnessing a huge shift to the right, but over the last 30 years, the rise and normalisation of far-right thinking has continued in all EU member states”

De Jonge believes that the success of Vlaams Belang in Flanders was a major factor in this trend. She notes that the Flemish nationalist party is “one of the oldest radical right-wing parties in Europe, along with the FPÖ in Austria and the Rassemblement National in France [and] has worked hard on its internal organisation in recent years”.

In addition to the rightist drift already underway in EU policymaking, the undoing of the Greens in particular will have important consequences for Europe, says Rosa Balfour, director of the think-tank Carnegie Europe, in The Guardian. Implementation of the European Green Deal will slow down, since the Greens “will not be strong enough to oppose it”. Civil-rights measures will be rolled back; and migration policy, “which has already been shaped by the radical right for the past decade”, will get tougher.

Also in The Guardian (which offers exceptional coverage for a newspaper from a country that is no longer part of the EU) British historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash believes that,

“There’s still a large majority of Europeans who don’t want to lose the best Europe we’ve ever had. But they need to be mobilised, galvanised, persuaded that the Union really does face existential threats”.

As negotiations on key EU posts get under way, he suggests a way forward for Europe:

“What we need is a combination of national governments and European institutions that between them deliver the housing young people currently cannot afford, the jobs, the life chances, the security, the green transition, the support for Ukraine. Will Europe wake up before it is too late?”

A few bits of good news to round off this review:

The turnout was the highest in 30 years. A provisional estimate puts it at 50.97%, with a high of 89.9% in Belgium (where voting is compulsory) and a low of just over 21% in Croatia.

Ilaria Salis, an Italian far-left activist and teacher on trial in Budapest for assaulting neo-Nazi activists and under house arrest after spending a year in prison, was elected on the lists of Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, which obtained 6.8% of the vote in Italy. Her case has aroused much sympathy among the Italian public. Internazionale notes that she will be able to claim parliamentary immunity as soon as her election is declared official on 16 July.

Finally, the much-anticipated Russian interference does not seem to have had a major impact on the election. Russia’s meddling mostly took the form of “Doppelgänger” posts (that imitate those of the official media). Swedish public broadcaster SVT provides an explanation on the basis of an analysis carried out (in France and Germany in particular) by the Russian outfit Bot Blocker.

Electoral night at EU parliament