Euroskeptics pose a dilemma after EU vote
Print Edition
STUNNING victories in European Parliament elections by nationalist, Euroskeptic parties from France and Britain left the European Union licking its wounds yesterday and facing a giant policy dilemma.
Across the continent, anti-establishment parties of the far right and hard left more than doubled their representation amid voter apathy, harnessing a mood of anger with Brussels over austerity, mass unemployment and immigration.
While the center-right and center-left will continue to control more than half of the 751 seats in the EU legislature, they will face an unprecedented challenge from noisy insurgents determined to prevent business as usual in the 28-nation bloc.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the breakthrough by Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, anti-euro National Front, which topped a national vote for the first time and pushed his Socialists into third place, a political “earthquake.”
On the other side of the Channel, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, which advocates immediate withdrawal from the EU, defeated the opposition Labour party and Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives.
The anti-EU vote was amplified in many countries by a low turnout of just 43.1 percent, but the pro-European center ground held firm in Germany, the EU’s biggest member state, as well as Italy and Spain.
France is one of the EU’s founder members and the weakness of President Francois Hollande may leave German Chancellor Angela Merkel without a strong partner for the next leg of European integration which economists say is vital to underpin a single currency.
“The legitimacy of Europe is weakened, the legitimacy of France in Europe is weakened further,” said Dominique Moisi of the French Institute of International Relations.
“To function, Europe needs a strong balance between France and Germany. But France is moving the way of Italy or Greece in economic terms and moving the way of Britain in its relationship with Europe.”
In Britain, Cameron rebuffed UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s call for an early referendum on an EU exit, sticking to his plan to renegotiate membership terms if he is re-elected next year.
Center-left Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi bucked the trend of anti-EU, anti-incumbent votes, scoring a stunning 41 percent to beat populist Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement by a wide margin, with disgraced ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia trailing a weak third.
Renzi vowed to use his mandate from voters to press for an easing of the EU’s budgetary straitjacket to allow more public investment in growth and jobs, posing a policy challenge for Merkel, the guardian of fiscal orthodoxy.
The anti-immigration far right People’s Party topped the poll in Denmark and the extreme-right Jobbik finished second in Hungary.
In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam, Euroskeptic Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders underperformed but still finished joint second in terms of seats behind a pro-European centrist opposition party.
In Germany, Merkel’s Christian Democrats secured 35.3 percent of the vote, down from a 23-year-high of 41.5 percent in last year’s federal election but still a clear victory.
In Greece, epicenter of the eurozone’s debt crisis, the radical left anti-austerity Syriza movement of Alexis Tsipras won the vote but failed to deliver a knockout blow to the government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
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