Weren’t European Parliament elections supposed to be boring, predictable and ultimately unimportant in the general scheme of things? Also, don’t we have enough worries in Europe already? Apparently not.
Over four days last week, a little over 50% of the voters of 27 member states of the European Union went to the polls to deliver a somewhat contradictory message to their representatives in Brussels and in national capitals: they reinforced mainstream forces—and at the same time they increased the representation of the hard right.
In this latest newsletter from the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings, Tara Varma sorts through the rubble of the election’s most explosive impact: after a breakthrough win by the hard right in France, President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections. Cue France’s first right-wing prime minister since World War II? (Stay tuned.) Meanwhile, I attempt to explain why the German vote, while less dramatic, is also worrying. And, in case you missed it, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Carlo Bastasin, Anna Grzymała-Busse, and yours truly discussed the results across Europe in a webinar yesterday.
For a much-needed note of optimism, we then turn (somewhat unusually for both the topic and our author) to Aydıntaşbaş’s essay in Foreign Affairs. In it, she explains why a pragmatic reconciliation between the U.S. and Turkey is possible and desirable. And in a Q&A, Mariana Budjeryn updates us on the coming weeks of summitry between Ukraine and its Western supporters.
This past weekend, Europeans cast their votes in the European Parliament elections. Results show a win for the center-right European People’s Party group but also saw significant gains for far-right parties at the national levels in France, Italy, and Germany.
On June 11, CUSE held a webinar with a panel of Brookings experts to unpack the results. Watch the discussion.
In a Brookings blog post, Tara Varma breaks down the French results and President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble to call snap elections following the victory of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
Constanze Stelzenmüller covers the German results, arguing the gains made by the far-right Alternative for Germany and the new left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance add to the woes of an already-beleaguered coalition government.
After years of increasingly strained relations, the U.S.-Turkey relationship is at a turning point. Ahead of U.S. elections this fall, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş argues that there is currently a diplomatic opening for the two states and leaders should push for a stronger, more transactional partnership to avoid further tensions.
“What mischief does [Russian President Vladimir Putin] have to make when you have people within the American system itself denigrating it and pulling it down?”
This month, several diplomatic summits and conferences are happening across Europe which could have direct consequences for the war in Ukraine. CUSE Nonresident Senior Fellow Mariana Budjeryn discusses this series of upcoming summits, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership, and how the Ukrainian people are feeling about the war.
This week sees the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Germany, followed by the G7 Summit in Italy, then the Summit on Peace in Ukraine in Switzerland. What can Ukraine hope for from these efforts? What do they tell us about the diplomatic path leading up to the July NATO summit in Washington, D.C.?
These high-level meetings are bound to raise the international profile of the continued war in Ukraine, which has been waning in view of other crises and policy priorities. They will discuss Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction and how to finance it, including the fate of frozen Russian assets, as well as how to end the war, per Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula. But as the war drags on, it is the pressing issues of wartime electric grid security, economic resilience, and safety of the civilian population that will determine the scope of damage and reconstruction needs in the future. The survival and resilience of the Ukrainian economy, indeed of the Ukrainian state and its ability to provide basic services to the civilian population, depends greatly on the timely provision of Western military aid, especially effective air defenses. This focus will sharpen minds in the lead up to the July NATO summit, which will have to produce something more tangible than declarations—a process or a set of specific requirements—for Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO.
On May 20, Zelenskyy’s five-year term as president expired. But the war has made it impossible for Ukraine to hold elections this year. How do Ukrainians think about this extension, and do they still support him even without a formal mandate?
Ukraine’s citizens, whatever they think of Zelenskyy and his team, seem to agree that a presidential election in the middle of an ongoing war is unfeasible and undesirable. But civil society is keen to keep the Zelenskyy government accountable by other means. His office has been increasingly criticized for stymieing the freedom of press, for not doing enough to eradicate corruption, and for consolidating power in the executive in Kyiv, away from the legislative branch and local governments. Ukrainian society will have to navigate a very delicate line between maintaining societal cohesion, vital during the war, and preserving the democratic values over which this war is waged in the first place. Accession to the EU is crucial here: it should not be a reward for Ukraine’s democratic and liberal reforms but rather a constitutive process through which a set of incentives and pressures is applied to the Ukrainian leadership and levers given to civil society in order to guide Ukraine through a treacherous path, on which the consolidation of power, in the name of wartime efficiency, is an ever-present temptation.
Russia has recently stepped up its attacks on the battlefield and on Ukraine’s energy grid—more than half of which it has destroyed. Your roots are in Ukraine, and you travel there regularly. How do Ukrainian people feel about the war?
I have been to Ukraine five times since the great war started. The popular mood, as much as one person can gauge it, shifted from the initial shock to adrenaline-fueled euphoria, bolstered by Ukraine’s successes on the battlefield in 2022, to a darker, sober realization that this is going to be a long, cruel slog of a war, marked by endless cycles of anger, exhaustion, and defiant resilience. What does not seem to change is the determination to stay in the fight, to resist, and to not only survive but to eventually thrive. Gratitude for Western support is tempered by an increasing exasperation with the West’s excessive caution and fear of escalation vis-à-vis Russia, that qualifies its commitment to a Ukrainian victory. As one Ukrainian said to me, “Please tell leaders in the West not to provoke Russia—with weakness.”
More research and commentary
U.S.-Europe relations. In a contribution to an Observer Research Foundation report, Tara Varma writes that both the European Union and the United States must make changes to fortify the trans-Atlantic alliance against a changing status quo.
A nuclear Kremlin. Russia regularly threatens the use of nuclear force in Ukraine. Steven Pifer argues in the Kyiv Independent that, while escalation is unlikely, Western governments need to understand the stakes of Putin’s saber-rattling.
About the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings
The Center on the United States and Europe(CUSE) offers independent research and recommendations for policymakers, fosters high-level dialogue on developments in Europe and global challenges that affect trans-Atlantic relations, and convenes roundtables, workshops, and public forums on policy-relevant issues.
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