Grabbe (Bruegel): 'If the populist right wins, it will have to change its approach to count'
In order to carry weight, the radical parties will have to be able to join forces and be more involved in the legislative work of the EU Parliament
from our correspondent Michele Pignatelli
3' min read
3' min read
BRUSSELS The right-wing avalanche is yet to be proven, given the particularity of the European vote. But, above all, the ability of these parties to weigh in on the future legislative activity of the Parliament will have to be assessed. Heather Grabbe, senior fellow at the political-economic think tank Bruegel, argued this in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore.
Many commentators have called these elections the most important in the history of the European Union. Do you agree?
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It depends on the results. Let us see how far the populist parties, the radical right, actually translate media coverage into electoral gain. Europarliamentary elections are more unpredictable than national ones, because voters see them as second-order elections, as political scientists call them, in a sense parallel elections where voters vote more on domestic than European issues and tend to penalise the parties in power. But I am not entirely convinced that this will be the case, because we may see a fragmented protest vote distributed among a wide range of parties.
To what extent will the turnout affect the results?
I believe it will be the determining factor for the success of the centre parties over the more extreme ones. The 2019 elections were historic because the turnout increased for the first time since the birth of the European Parliament; after a trend of ever decreasing participation, down to 42% in 2014, the turnout finally rose again to over 50%. And this was mainly thanks to the vote of young people, aged between 18 and 30, mobilised by environmental issues. And this is what led to the green wave. Youth participation also weighs in perspective, because if younger people vote, they will tend to continue to do so. What makes turnout important, results aside, is democratic legitimacy: it is difficult for Parliament to call itself the voice of the people with 42% participation.
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