Q&A with Manuel Muñiz
On June 6-9, voters across the European Union (EU) will be casting their ballots to elect representatives for the European Parliament. We asked CUSE Nonresident Fellow Manuel Muñiz what he thinks about the upcoming election.
What are some of the most important issues to European voters this election?
The new Parliament and the new Commission will inherit an immense portfolio. There will be a need to further legislation on the Single Market, on European competitiveness, on the European Green Deal, on the banking union, on the regulation of emerging technologies, and on many others. The EU’s legislative capacity is so significant that in fact most member states receive more legislation from Brussels than they approve nationally.
What is truly at stake, however, is the general direction of the EU project. It seems clear that the parties at the far right of the European Parliament are going to do well in the elections. This is true for Identity & Democracy, a group which brings together Germany’s Alternative for Germany, Italy’s Lega, and France’s National Rally, as well as for the European Conservative and Reformists Group, which gathers Spain’s Vox, Poland’s Law and Justice, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, amongst others. These far-right groups are poised to double their number of members of the European Parliament.
This extraordinary performance would send a message to voters across Europe that the EU project is fragile, and that questioning is now becoming common and acceptable. The implications of this for subsequent national elections are hard to overestimate.
How could the results from this election affect the trans-Atlantic relationship ahead of the U.S. elections this fall?
On a more practical level, the increased weight of far-right parties might affect the appointment of the European Commissioners (the EU’s executive branch) given that the Parliament needs to approve it. These parties might also manage to get their hands on a parliamentary committee or two, gaining the capacity to affect EU legislation in the coming years. Some of their main targets would include the EU’s green agenda, the current immigration policy, and social policies of various kinds.
It is still unclear, however, if this increased representation will truly affect EU governance as the center left and center right look likely to retain the majority of the Parliament. But the message will be clear: nationalist forces are on the rise in Europe.
On the foreign policy front, the relative rise of the far right could have an impact on Europe’s Ukraine policy and on attitudes towards NATO. This is not very likely, thought, given the immense heterogeneity within these groups when it comes to foreign policy outlook, and the margin of maneuver that member states have retained on the diplomatic dossier.
Regional elections in Spain this month resulted in a major loss for the Catalonian independence party. What does this mean for Spanish president Pedro Sánchez and the future of Spanish politics?
For the past five years Pedro Sánchez has had a policy of what he has called “de-inflammation” in Catalonia. This policy included controversial measures such as a reform of Spain’s criminal code to reduce the severity of punishment for certain crimes committed during the Catalan independence push of 2012, pardons for the leaders of that movement, and, finally, a general amnesty law which is being now considered by Spain’s Congress and Senate. The ultimate goal of this complex set of measures was to undo the Catalan political axis and to move it from a unionist vs. pro-independence one to a much more ordinary left vs. right. In the former, the secessionist forces can claim to be under constant attack from “Madrid” and tend to retain control of the institutions. The last 15 years of Catalan politics are a testament to this. But in a left-right dynamic, traditional nationalist parties in Catalonia cease to form a solid block around the objective of independence, the Socialist Party of Catalonia begins to have a real chance at ruling, and, most importantly, support for independence plummets. This month’s elections have proven Sánchez right. The Socialists received the highest vote share in Catalonia for the first time since the restitution of democracy in Spain, and Catalan nationalist parties, in turn, the worst since 1980. This is, for all intents and purposes, the end of the pro-independence push in the region.
