How will the ultraconservative rise influence the EU and the European Parliament?

The European elections to renew the European Chamber have certified an increase in seats throughout the European Union of ultra-conservative and far-right parties, which are positioned as the leading force in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

As a consequence, they will have more weight in decisions such as the orientation of the EU budget between 2027 and 2034, the positioning of the European Parliament in defending the rule of law and European values, future enlargement to the east or progress when it comes to implement climate goals.

The coming weeks and months will determine what their real capacity for influence is, whether they manage to coordinate their positions in the chamber and how the day-to-day legislative work in the European Union will change.

The European Commission and the Council remain as they are

In practice, the European elections redesign only one of the three community institutions that intervene in the legislative process. The European Council (the heads of state and government) and the EU Council (the ministers of the member states) remain stable, since they only renew their members when there are elections at national level.

This means, for example, that Emmanuel Macron and his ministers will continue to represent France in the Council even if Marine le Pen has won the European elections in France.

A Parliament leaning to the right may have some influence to unbalance the confirmation vote of the president of the European Commission or the approval of his team of commissioners, but these will also be by definition “multicolored” politically because their governments send them.

How can they influence the European Parliament?

Most decisions in the European Parliament require the favorable vote of half plus one of the MEPs who cast their vote, so the combined 131 seats of the Conservatives and Reformists and Identity and Democracy (waiting for the like-minded non-registered ) are not enough in a European Parliament with 720 seats.

To be noticed, they will need, as has been the case until now, practically the entire European People’s Party, which in this legislature inherits from the liberals the role of “majority facilitator”: the bloc that the popular people support in each individual vote. , whether the center-left or the extreme right, will take the lead.

Due to the nature of these groups, which often do not have sufficient cohesion or internal structure and respond to national interests rather than those of their European parliamentary group, it tends to be difficult to find a stable majority to advance legislation, but they can promote specific amendments.

“It will take longer than other times to draw conclusions from these 27 parallel elections and translate them into a clear parliamentary majority, which in my opinion will be flexible rather than permanent and will change depending on the proposals that the new Commission presents to Parliament,” said the professor in European Union Law at HEC Paris Alberto Alemanno.

How will the far-right MEPs be distributed?

The same analyst pointed to the rise of unregistered parties or newcomers without a political family that “could play a role in recomposing existing groups and shaping the new political cycle.”

And the “cake” of the hemicycle is not yet completely distributed after this Sunday’s elections, with almost a hundred MEPs who do not belong to any group or who are new to the European Chamber and have not yet joined one of the already existing.

From today, you can look to fit into existing groups or, if new groups are formed, join them. This will be the case of the Alternative for Germany, which will provide 15 seats, or Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, with 10.

With them and other related groups, it will be arithmetically possible to unite the votes of popular, ultra-conservative, extreme right and non-registered voters who sympathize with their ideas to, occasionally, achieve narrow majorities like the one that was about to overthrow the Law of the Restoration of Nature in the legislature that is now ending.

Decisions by weighted vote

The need for total cohesion in the chamber disappears in other decisions within the European Chamber. They are those taken by weighted vote in parliamentary forums such as the Conference of Presidents (which brings together the president of the institution and heads of the political groups) or between the coordinators of the political groups in the different parliamentary commissions.

In these spaces, the representative of each political group assumes the voice and vote of all its MEPs, with no room for dissent, and – if it manages to reach 361 seats – PPE, ECR and ID could tip the balance in decisions on the agenda or legislative work, among others.