Autore: Redazione CISE

Enrique Hernández and Marta Fraile

Once more, and as is typical in Spain (see for instance Font and Torcal 2012) the main messages and discourses of the electoral campaign were made in national (and not in European) terms. Elections took place when the incumbent government (Partido Popular, PP: conservative) was in the middle of its mandate and had already implemented a number of controversial political decisions. On the top of that, there was a general climate of distrust and disaffection with political elites and traditional political parties without precedents in Spain.[1]

The Electoral Campaign

The most relevant topic of the campaign (and again in national terms) has been the beginning of the end of bipartisan rule. Citizens’ levels of disaffection with traditional political parties and elites have reached their maximum in the history of the Spanish Democracy. Especially after a long period of social mobilization and protest that since the organization of the 15M movement (los indignados) in 2011 has constantly promoted protest initiatives during the PP mandate.

Enrique Hernández is a Ph.D. candidate at the EUI SPS department. His Ph.D. project focuses on cognitive orientations towards democracy and their relationship with political support. Enrique holds an M.A from Pompeu Fabra University and an M.A from Konstanz University. Enrique’s research interests include political attitudes, political sophistication, voting behavior, and party systems. Marta Fraile is Permanent Research Fellow at the Spanish CSIC (IPP) and Senior Research Fellow at EUI (EUDO, RSCAS). She holds a PhD’s in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI). She has previously taught at the departments of Political Science in Universitat Pompeu- Fabra, Barcelona (2000-2004), the Universidad Autónoma, Madrid (2004-2008) and the Juan March Institute for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (2002-2008). Her interests include public opinion, media effects and political participation in Europe.

European Elections constitute the best scenario for small parties to obtain a higher percentage of representation since the use of only one nationwide electoral district favors a higher level of proportionality, and the number of votes required to obtain a seat is smaller than in General Elections. Despite the fact that the majority of small parties have based their campaigns on critics towards Spain’s nearly bipartisan party system, the two main parties (the incumbent PP and the main opposition party: PSOE, socialdemocrats) agreed upon organizing a television debate only between their respective candidates but not including any other candidates.

This debate, again, focused on Spanish national problems (basically a discussion about who should be blamed for the deep economic crisis in Spain and its consequences), with a complete lack of discussion about potential projects for the future of Spain in Europe. Another topic that was debated extensively during the electoral campaign was the independence of Catalonia and its potential consequences for the inclusion of Catalonia in the European Union.

The Results

Turnout projections were very pessimistic, since they predicted the highest level of abstention since the first 1986 European elections in Spain. Consequently all parties called for participation in their campaigns. Finally, participation has been similar to previous elections. More specifically, electoral turnout in European Elections gradually decreased during the 1986-2002 period. Since then it has been stable around 45% (Figure 1). This figure however is significantly lower than turnout at the General (national) Elections where for example in 2011 a 69% of electors participated. This suggests that even if all parties campaigned on the importance (and need) to participate in the European Elections, Spanish citizens still consider the latter as “second order” Elections. (Reif & Schmitt 1980).

 

Figure 1. Electoral Participation in European and National Elections.

Spain (1986-2014)

Source: Own elaboration on data from the Ministerio del Interior

 

Figure 2 shows a decrease in electoral support for the two main parties in Spain: PP and PSOE. In absolute terms, both lost around 2.5 millions of votes, which implies a decrease of 15% of the total vote. Indeed this has been the worst result obtained by the PSOE in a European Election since 1986. The fact that that the Socialists conceived this election as a plebiscite of the incumbent’s mandate, and of their own performance as the main opposition party, motivated the resignation of the main party leaders, which was announced the day immediately after the elections. In contrast, the incumbent PP has positively interpreted these results, pointing out the fact that they have obtained the highest percentage of electoral support and seats in the European Parliament. In fact they are one of the few European political parties (together with CDU in Germany and PD in Italy) that while being the incumbent has won the elections.

 

Figure 2. Percentage of vote to different parties in European Elections.

Spain (1986-2014)

Source: Own elaboration on data of the Ministerio del Interior

 

Overall, left wing parties have enjoyed greater support in this election. The vote share of PSOE, Izquierda Unida/Iniciativa por Cataluña (IU/ICV), Podemos, Los Pueblos Deciden (LPD) and Primavera adds up to more than 50% of the valid votes. At the regional level, it is also worth noting that in Catalonia the main nationalist left wing party (L’esquerra pel dret a decidir) received 4% of the votes, defeating, for the first time, the main nationalist right wing party Convergència i Unió (CIU).

A possible interpretation of the results of this election is that large traditional mainstream parties have been the main losers, while small parties (some traditional and some new) have widely benefited from these losses. On the one hand, the party located at the left from PSOE: IU/ICV has tripled its vote share. On the other hand, relatively new parties like UPyD have doubled their vote share. At the same time, newly created parties, such as Ciudadanos or Podemos, won more than 3% of the votes. The most remarkable success has been that of Podemos, which won 8% of the vote in the first election the party had ever contested. This party was created only four months before the elections and campaigned on a simple critical message against the political system and its main parties and institutions, focusing on issues such as corruption, lack of internal democracy, or politicians being out of touch with citizens. That is, a discourse, which was clearly at odds with mainstream politics and focused on reinvigorating citizens’ political engagement through a new style of politics very much against the establishment. In fact, Podemos intended to be the political choice not only of those electors who were willing to punish mainstream left parties, such as PSOE or IU, but also of those who had abstained in previous elections but wanted to participate again as a consequence of the politicization experienced through the increase of political conflict since the onset of the Great Recession in Spain.

Another peculiarity of the Spanish case is that, even if non-mainstream parties have enjoyed increasing support, none of these parties can be classified as overtly anti-European. This clearly contrasts with other European countries where parties clearly opposed to European integration such as, UKIP in the UK, the FN in France, or AfD in Germany, enjoyed great support.

 

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Spain
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
POPULAR PARTY (PP)	EPP	26.1	16		-16.1	-8
SOCIALIST PARTY (PSOE)	S&D	23.0	14		-15.8	-9
UNITED LEFT (IU/ICV)	GUE-NGL & G-EFA	10.0	6		+6.3	+4
PODEMOS (PODEMOS)	GUE-NGL	8.0	5		+8.0	+5
UNION FOR PROGRESS AND DEMOCRACY (UPyD)	ALDE	6.5	4		+3.7	+3
COALITION FOR EUROPE (CEU)	ALDE	5.4	3		+0.3	+0
LEFT FOR THE RIGHT TO DECIDE (EPDD)	G-EFA	4.0	2		+1.5	+1
CITIZENS (C’s)	NI	3.2	2		+3.2	+2
THE PEOPLE DECIDE (LPD)	G-EFA	2.1	1		+1.0	+1
EUROPEAN SPRING	G-EFA	1.9	1		+1.9	+1
Total		90.1	54			35
Turnout (%)		45.8
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		none
Note: PODEMOS, C’s,and European Srping, did not run in the previous European elections. LPD did not obtain representation in the previous European election when it run as II.
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy;NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

Conclusion

In sum, small non-mainstream parties (Podemos, Ciudadanos, UPyD, Primavera) have won around 20% of the votes (see Figure 3), while traditional small parties (IU/ICV, CEU, EPDD) have increased their vote share winning also 20% of the votes. The great support of these parties, together with the fact that traditional mainstream parties have received, for the first time, less than 50% of the votes, has generated a debate among political commentators and leaders of small parties about the end of bipartisan rule. However, even if we cannot predict the results of future elections, it is worth pointing out that European elections have certain particularities that differentiate them from general elections. Firstly, European elections are usually considered “second order” elections. This might increase the likelihood of citizens’ voting new parties, or parties that, a priori, have less chances of gaining representatives, such as Primavera, Ciudadanos or Podemos. Secondly, the use of a single national district in European elections increases the degree of proportionality in the translation of votes into seats. Hence, some electors who do not live in densely populated provinces may choose to vote for these parties in European elections, but they might vote strategically for larger parties in national elections, because these are the parties more likely to gain seats in low magnitude districts.

Although it is still soon to predict the end of bipartisan rule in Spain, the capacity of new parties to address the demands of the average citizen through a new style of politics implies a great challenge for mainstream parties. The latter seem to be aware of this challenge, since PSOE leaders have already argued for the need to revitalize and reform their party through a process of open primaries. In this regard, the results of the European elections can be considered a manifestation of citizens’ dissatisfaction with the economic crisis and its related consequences such as unemployment or evictions, but more importantly, as an expression of citizens’ political disaffection and their critical stance towards mainstream politics. Hence, it seems that these elections might represent the start of a new era in Spanish politics. An era where political elites might need to change their strategies and get closer to their representatives.

 

Figure 3. Evolution of support for mainstream and non-mainstream parties in European elections in Spain (1986-2014)

Source: Own elaboration on data of the Ministerio del Interior

 

 

References

 

Font, Joan & Mariano Torcal (eds.). 2012. Las Elecciones Europeas de 2009. Madrid: CIS.

 

Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. 1980. “Nine Second-Order National Elections – a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results.” European Journal of Political Research 8(1): 3–44.

 

Sorina Soare

Over the past 25 years, Romania has experienced a complex process of democratization with moments of crisis, economic stagnation, radical nationalism and extreme polarization (Bunce and Wolchick 2006, Soare 2011). Despite Romania’s admission into NATO in 2004, and into the European Union in 2007, the political situation remained unstable, with recurrent institutional clashes between the President, Prime Minister and Parliament, such as in 2007 and 2012 (Gherghina and Mişcoiu 2013) and tough austerity measures that fuelled social tensions.

Sorina Soare is a lecturer of Comparative Politics. She holds a PhD in political science from the Universitè libre de Bruxelles and has previously studied political science at the University of Bucharest in Romania. She works in the area of comparative politics and her research interests include political parties, populism, and the democratisation process.

The results[1]

The European elections in Romania confirmed the Social Democratic Party’s (PSD) upward wave, which was already visible in the 2012 legislative elections. With over 37% of the votes, the PSD and its two small allies received half of the seats available for the Romanian delegation (16/ 32 seats). If it is easy to recognise the winner of the elections, looking for the “losers” seems to be an easy task too. Firstly, the populist parties were kept out of the European Parliament. In the previous European elections, the nationalist Greater Romania Party had 3 seats, while in May 2014 they received only 2,70% of the votes, well below the electoral threshold. In the 2012 legislative elections the People’s Party – lead by Dan Diaconescu (PP- DD) – obtained 14.65% of the votes in the Senate and 13.99% in the House. However, the European elections demonstrate the political deadlock of a party born and bread on the television network of its founder, which has been banned from broadcasting since January 2014 by the National Audiovisual Council. Deprived of its most incisive electoral tribune, the PP-DD obtained only 3.67% of the votes. The other big “losers” are the two main centre-right parties: the Democratic Liberal Party (PD- L) with 12.23% of the votes and the liberals (PNL) with 15%. Although in rough terms, the number of liberal MEPs increased from 5 to 6 in comparison to the 2009 EU elections, the electoral results have been generally understood as a major failure, not only in comparison to the PSD triumph, but also and mainly in view of the presidential election scheduled for the end of 2014. In the case of the PD-L party, the electoral defeat is even more visible considering that the party lost half of its previous delegation in the European Parliament. Part of this failure can be connected to the relative success obtained by the recently created People’s Movement Party (PMP), which gathered 6.21% of the votes (equating to 2 MEPs). Still, the PMP result can only be considered as a partial success; the party scored less than the independent candidate Mircea Diaconu and the Hungarian Alliance (UDMR) and well below the pre-election expectations[2]. Last but not least, an independent candidate succeeded in reaching the European Parliament. Similar successes were registered in the 2007 and 2009 EU elections. In 2007, the Hungarian pastor László Tőkés was elected with 176,533 votes (3.44%), and in 2009 the President T. Băsescu’s daughter, Elena Băsescu, was elected with 204,280 votes (4.22%). In 2014, following various judicial vicissitudes, a new independent candidate managed to attract the spotlight and a broad electoral support. Mircea Diaconu, a well-known theatre actor, as well as a former PNL senator and Minister of Culture, found himself out of the lists of his party and decided to stand alone. The outstanding result goes beyond the success of collecting the necessary number of signatures (100.000 signatures) in order to register as a candidate, considering that he did not benefit from the financial and logistical support of his former party. Diaconu received indirect support not only from the PSD Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, but also from the media trust Intact Media Group directed by the PC’s founder – Dan Voiculescu[3]. Devoid of a real electoral program, Diaconu sought to establish direct contact with the voters and preached in favour of a restored relationship between Europe and the Romanians, the latter being too often and unfairly seen as second-class citizens. Hence the slogan of his campaign was: “I speak the truth about our country”[4].

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Romania
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
Electoral alliance Social democratic party + National Union for the Progress of Romania + Conservative Party (PSD+UNPR + PC)	S&D	37.6	16		+6.5	+5
National Liberal Party (PNL)	ALDE/EPP	15.0	6		+0.5	+1
Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L)	EPP	12.2	5		-17.5	-5
Mircea Diaconu (indep.)	NI	6.8	1
Democratic union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR)	EPP	6.3	2		-2.6	-1
People’s Movement party (PMP)	EPP	6.2	2
Great Romania Party (PRM)		2.7	0		-6.0	-3
Dan Diaconescu – People’s Party (PP-DD)		3.7	0
Others		9.5
Total		100	32			-1
Turnout (%)		32.4			+4.8
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		5%
Note on electoral system: Proportional representation, closed lists, one national constituency
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy;NI= Non-Inscrits.

 

The election campaign and its main players

In a political landscape in turmoil, for the third time in seven years, the Romanian voters are being asked to cast their preferences for the European Parliament. 15 political parties and electoral alliances and 8 independent candidates have officially registered[5]. Even though Europe has been a constant reference on the main election billboards or in the main parties’ official programs, internal issues have prevailed in the electoral debates. Since the beginning, the electoral competition has been marked by a polarization around the personality of the incumbent President, T. Băsescu. On the one side, there are the two parties directly related to the political career of the current President of Romania: the Liberal Democratic Party (PD-L), the party T. Băsescu was leader of before his first election to the Romanian Presidency in 2004, and the new PMP. On the other side, there is the winning coalition of the 2012 legislative elections, whose members were in government until recently: the PSD, the PNL, the small Conservative Party (PC) and the National Union for the Progress of Romania (UNPR). In February 2014, the PNL leadership decided to break the Social-Liberal Union (USL) and to withdraw from the government following regular clashes with the PSD. On the eve of the European elections and in preparation of the upcoming presidential elections, the PNL’s decision was an open bet, eventually lost. The representatives of the Hungarian minority in Romania (UDMR) occupy a pivotal position with interchanging alliances between the two polls.

In the context of the 2014 campaign, the issue most covered by the media was that of the controversial photos of President Băsescu wearing a t-shirt with the PMP logo, one of the parties registered in the campaign. These pictures were posted by the PML leader on her Facebook account under a symbolic heading “Traian Băsescu with the young men and women of PMP”. In those pictures, the President was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Vote for PMP”. According to the Romanian Constitution, the President is defined as “a mediator between the powers in the State, as well as between the State and society” (art. 80, 2), while according to art 84§2, “during his term of office, the President of Romania may not be a member of any political party, nor may he perform any other public or private office”[6]. In line with these constitutional dispositions, the Prime ministered asked the Constitutional Court to clarify if the President overpassed his prerogatives. Meanwhile, President Băsescu denied a violation of the Constitution since “he is entitled to wear whatever clothes he wishes”, provokingly adding that “he will vote for the People’s Movement Party because voting is not illegal. “I will vote for the People’s Movement Party. You asked. If you hadn’t asked me, I wouldn’t have answered. (…) I’m voting for the People’s Movement Party”[7]. Four days before the Election date, the President eventually won the dispute between President Băsescu and Premier Ponta when the Constitutional Court ruled on President Băsescu’s involvement in the EP campaign.

In parallel, the European elections’ campaign was seen as a test-run of the presidential elections scheduled for November 2014. Symbolically, a lot of electoral posters reproduced the images of the main parties’ potential candidates for the presidential elections. In this context, beyond the forecasted candidacy of Prime minister Ponta on behalf of the Socialists, a major player was the PNL and, in particular, its leader Crin Antonescu. The PNL’s sudden decision to exit the coalition government in February 2014 was a prelude to the candidacy of its leader in the presidential elections. However, the 15% electoral result (-22,60% in comparison with the PSD) was attributed to lack of strategy. It is also interesting to note that the PNL leadership decided to re-assign its MEPs from the ALDE group to the European Popular Party. This political realignment was interpreted as a last strategic attempt to fight back the PSD on the European battlefield by hampering the chance of a socialist candidate to be appointed as the head of the European Commission[8]. This move was also interpreted as a first step ahead for an alliance for the presidential majority with the PD-L, former coalition partner in 2004.

In this electoral landscape, we can find elements of the founding cleavage the Romanian post-communist political life: the opposition between ex -communist vs. anti- communists. This issue has often been used by the PMP and the PD-L to distinguish themselves from the PSD whose origins led to the former PCR (Pop Eleches 2008). The exhortations of one of the most well known representatives of the PD-L MEPs, Monica Macovei, are quite significant. To motivate a vote in favour of the PD -L, Macovei criticized the alleged betrayal of the interests of Eastern Europe by the social democrat Martin Schultz – the Socialist candidate for the presidency of the European Commission. Schulz was also criticized for his attempts to calm the tensions with Russia, as well as for blocking the criminal investigations of corruption being conducted on the Romanian MEP, Ovidiu Silaghi (then PNL, today PSD). According to a syllogism that is fairly rudimentary but symbolic for its anti-Communist rhetoric, in synthesis to vote for the PSD lists was equated with voting against the interests of Romania and in favour of a pro-Russian President of the European Commission[9].

The UDMR is in a quite different position; its constant electoral successes are largely due to the characteristics of the ethnic vote. The EU was also not the core of the electoral campaign. At the opening of the election campaign, the UDMR president symbolically declared that the vote on May 25^th would have contributed to the dearest objective of “bringing Südtirol and Catalonia[10] in Transylvania”, an implicit support for the UDMR’s aim to obtain regional autonomy for its ethnic basis. He continued on the same line “our interests can only be represented by Magyars MEPs (…). If we do not enter (na – the EP), our place will be taken by the Romanian MEPs. This is about our future”.[11] Consistent with these positions, European issues such as multilingualism and decentralization were present in the UDMR’s electoral statements.

Among the participants in the May elections, there were also the representatives of the national- populist family: the PRM and the PP-DD. Rather peripheral in the public debates, both parties promoted a discourse focused on issues such as the defence of national unity and dignity, criticisms over the political establishment and a tougher fight against corruption. The PRM’s slogans were quite symbolic: “Vote with the Patriots, not the mafia!” or “Patriots vote the PRM!”. The PP-DD slogan followed the same tune: “On May 25th vote with a Romanian soul!” However, both parties’ election results placed them below the electoral threshold.

Final remarks

Rather than a campaign of ideas or a debate between different visions on Europe, the 2014 election campaign has been a tribune for the potential presidential candidates with elections scheduled for November 2014. This gives us a certain sense of déjà vu: European elections with a low participation and a strong emphasis on national issues like in 2007 and 2009. Given the results, Romanians have casted a vote of confidence for the current coalition government and penalised the two main representatives of the centre-right, the PD -L and the PNL. The shockwave of the results was immediately felt by the latter: Crin Antonescu and the PNL direction resigned and an extraordinary congress was scheduled for the end of June 2014. Without the direct support of the President Băsescu, the PD -L halved its mandates (from 10 to 5), although the total number of Romanian in the EPP group will most likely be strengthened by the 2 MEPs from the PMP and the 6 liberal MEPs. The success of the PSD also has a European consequence, which goes beyond the fact that the PSD’s two smaller allies obtained half of the mandates available: the Romanian socialists are the strongest delegation coming from a post-communist country. Note that the electoral participation registered a slight increase (+ 4.77 compared to 2009), but remains lower than the European average.

 

References

Bunce V. & Wolchick S.L. (2006) “Favorable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions”, Journal of Democracy, 17(4): 5-18

Soare, S. (2011), “Bulgaria e Romania, vent’anni dopo: il peso del passato, le sfide del presente”, in Pietro Grilli di Cortona e Orazio Lanza (eds.), Tra vecchio e nuovo regime. Il peso del passato nella costruzione della democrazia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2011, pp. 203-233.

Reif, K. & Schmitt, H. (1980) “Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results”, European Journal of Political Research, 8 (1): 3–44

Gherghina, S. & Miscoiu, S. (2013) “The Failure of Cohabitation: The Institutional Crises in Romania”, East European Politics and Societies, 27 (4): 668-684

Roth F., F. Nowak-Lehmann D. & T. Otter (2013) “Crisis and Trust in National and European Union Institutions. Panel Evidence for the EU, 1999 to 2012”, RSCAS 2013/31 (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European Union Democracy Observatory), 2013, https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/26975/RSCAS_2013_31.pdf?sequence=1

Pop Elecheş, G. (2008), “A party for all seasons: Electoral adaptation of Romanian Communist Successor Parties”, Communist and Post-communist Studies, 41: 465-479.

 

Online resources

• “Ce vrea Macovei de la Schulz privind anchetarea lui Silaghi”, HotnewsRo, May 22nd 2014 (https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-europarlamentare_2014-17326854-vrea-macovei-schulz-privind-anchetarea-lui-silaghi.htm?ref=newswire.ro)
• “Monica Macovei: Suntem sub amenintarea Federatiei Ruse; europarlamentarii polonezi si cei din tarile baltice vorbesc despre pregatiri pentru aparare in caz de razboi”, April 12th 2014, Ziarul de Iaşi (https://www.ziaruldeiasi.ro/stiri/monica-macovei-suntem-sub-amenintarea-federatiei-ruse-europarlamentarii-polonezi-si-cei-din-tarile-baltice-vorbesc-despre-pregatiri-pentru-aparare-in-caz-de-razboi–46449.html)
• “Proces verbal privind rimanerii definitive a candidaturilor la alegerile pentru membrii din Romania in Parlamentul european din anul 2014” (https://www.bec2014.ro/)
• “PSD e la scor maxim. PMP nu e in situatia de a impune prezidentiabilul dreptei. Interviu cu Cristian Preda”, May 27th 2014, www.ziare.com https://www.ziare.com/cristian-preda/europarlamentar/psd-e-la-scor-maxim-pmp-nu-e-in-situatia-de-a-impune-prezidentiabilul-dreptei-interviu-cu-cristian-preda-1301119.
• “Romania’s second largest party PNL moves from ALDE to EPP”, May 27^th 2014 (https://www.intellinews.com/romania-1019/romania-s-second-largest-party-pnl-moves-from-alde-to-epp-37988/).
• “Sa aducem Catalonia in Ardeal”, Mediafax, March 29th 2014 (https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/politic/udmr-si-a-lansat-candidatii-pentru-europarlamentare-kelemen-hunor-cere-ca-ardealul-sa-devina-noua-catalonie.html)
• Bird M. e S. Candea “Romanian renegate bids for EP seat”, EuObserver, May 19th 2014 ( https://euobserver.com/eu-elections/124174).
• Constitution of Romania (2003) (https://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/europe/RO/consitutuion.pdf/view)
• Final results (https://www.bec2014.ro/?page_id=2000).
• Tonita, Raluca, “President Basescu: I’m voting PMP!”, May 4^th 2014 (https://www.nineoclock.ro/president-basescu-i%E2%80%99m-voting-pmp/)

 

Andrija Henjak

European parliament elections in Croatia took place only a year after the special EP elections held in 2013 just before Croatia’s accession to the EU. Croatian entry into the EU, unlike the accession of other countries of central and Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007, was not an event market by palpable enthusiasm and high expectations, but rather, it was market with subdued optimism or indifference. It was seen by the public both as a chance to change the direction of the stagnant economy and improve the functioning of institutions, as well as an inevitable development with uncertain prospect for the country that might not be fully prepared to take the benefits of membership. The first year of membership in the EU was marked by Croatia’s relatively peripheral position in most important developments in the EU related to dealing with the fallout of the Euro crisis. While affected by the Eurozone crisis Croatia is not a member of the Eurozone and its economic problems started well before the accession and are unrelated to the EU. Therefore, Croatia was mainly an observer in debates about response to crisis and future directions of the EU economic governance. Furthermore, first several months of membership were characterized by the dispute Croatian government had with the EU over the implementation of the European arrest warrant, which resulted in government humbling if not humiliating climb-down after six months of argument with the European Commission. But in general, Croatian public was neither sufficiently informed about current developments in the EU, nor was it informed about the debates regarding the future direction of the EU. As a result, European Union and European questions in general featured very little in public debates before the EP elections.

Andrija Henjak is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Science of University of Zagreb. His research interest include welfare state and its impact on political divisions and party systems, public attitudes towards the European integration as well as development of political divisions and institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the impact of historical conflicts on contemporary political development of these countries. He published in West European Politics and several edited books in English language.

The context

In the year after the accession Croatian politics was characterized by persistent attempts of the opposition coalition led by Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) to challenge the government and mobilize their political base through heavy emphasis on symbolic politics and identity issues. Leader of HDZ Tomislav Karamarko relied heavily on radical nationalist rhetoric aimed at delegitimizing the government led by the Social Democrat Party (SDP) as “people who never wanted and never loved Croatia” and stating that government policies are undermining independence of the country. Radicalization was fuelled by the dispute over the introduction of the Cyrillic script, mandated by the Constitutional Law on the Rights of the National Minorities, in the city of Vukovar, a place which is heavily symbolically loaded, being besieged and destroyed by the Yugoslav Army in the 1991. Organization called Headquarters for the Defence of the Croatian Vukovar challenged government authority and repeatedly disrupted the implementation of the law, receiving substantial support from HDZ leadership in the process and for their attempts to collect signatures to overturn the provision mandating the introduction of the minority language in the city if the minority population reaches 1/3 share in the city. Radicalization was further supported also by the referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage which took place in December of 2013.

While main opposition parties attempted radicalization strategy, the government parties were beset by conflicts and internal division taking place in SDP and the second strongest member of the government coalition Croatian People’s Party – Liberal Democrats (HNS-LD). At times it appeared as if SDP leader and Prime Minister Zoran Milanović is more preoccupied with fighting his critics and opponents within the party rather than running the government, at times even undermining ministers in his own government. This led to a general perception that the government is ineffectual and directionless with no discernable long-term policies. In this context a dynamic figure of SDP minister of finance Slavko Linić dominated the government agenda with his focus on fiscal discipline, until he was forced out of office by the prime minister just a week before the European elections. The work of other government ministers was more or less characterized by apparent lack of coordination, fixed policy priorities and clear policy measures.

Despite aggressive attacks on the government and radicalization strategy used by HDZ and its minor coalition partners, the government maintained slight advantage in the polls for most of the preceding year. However, combined support for both government coalition led by SDP and opposition coalition led by HDZ slowly declined to about 50%. At the same time a number of new parties contesting political space out of the main left-right division emerged based on identity and symbolic issues. Slow decline of support for the government and persistent weak support for the opposition, as well as rising support for new political parties and coalitions indicated that a significant share of Croatian citizens cannot be still electorally mobilized with symbolic and identity issues based on divisions formed in second world war and after, attitudes toward history, religion and views about the role of Croatia in wider political unions, which dominated Croatian politics since first democratic elections. This does not necessarily mean that old political identities based on these factors are losing their strength and the ability to shape political identity of citizens. But the decline of support for the left and the right bloc in opinion polls indicates the possibility that for a large share of the electorate party choice is separated from dominant political identities of the left and the right, or at least that political identities are not anymore identified with parties of the left and right coalitions so clearly.

The campaign

Before the elections opinion polls predicted that left and right coalitions will fight for electoral support with four other parties and electoral coalition groups. The oldest of these emerging in 2011 parliamentary elections is the Labour party. Characterized by strong left wing rhetoric and criticism of past and present government policies as implementation of neoliberal economic model, Labour party had close to ten percent of support in opinion polls. The second group is a centrist group formed from a newly emerged National Forum party formed by a successful businessmen and medical doctor on the platform calling for government of experts, and what is left from Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), which for most of 1990s was the main opposition to HDZ government and which tried to establish itself as an alternative to left and right in previous parliamentary elections. The third group is Alliance for Croatia formed from Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja (HDSSB), regional party which split from HDZ in 2005 taking most of HDZ support in eastern region of Slavonia, and several smaller conservative and nationalist parties. The alliance was formed most likely with a rationale of increasing the likelihood for HDSSB to win a seat in European parliament by aggregating votes from small parties on the nationalist and conservative right nationally, or out of its regional base. The fourth group formed just before the elections was ORAH (Sustainable Development of Croatia), a party of left and green orientation, formed by a former SDP environment minister Mirela Holy after she was expelled from the party a year ago after a conflict with the prime minister. A party identified by voters mostly for its leader, ORAH gained support quite quickly; offering disgruntled voters of left coalition led by SDP a credible alternative on the left. Support for this new party grew very quickly reaching more then percent in national opinion polls just before the European elections.

Position of the left government before the elections was further complicated by the developments in SDP after Prime Minister Zoran Milanović initiated a conflict with finance minister Slavko Linić and forced his resignation from the government just a week before the elections, which could only damage the electoral prospects of the left coalition. Position of the opposition in the pre-electoral period was supported by an apparent unity of HDZ and its coalition partners, by the abandonment of the radicalization strategy in few months before the European elections, and by the greater shift on economic issues in the campaign and its political discourse. Although campaign was relatively subdued, hampered by strict campaign finance regulation and lack of resources all parties faces, HDZ was mostly able to focus their messages on relative failure of government to absorb structural funds and on economic issues. HDZ could also rely on efficient party organization capable of mobilizing large number of activists. European issues were largely absent from the campaign and domestic issues dominated campaign and electoral behaviour of Croatian voters. Four challengers to left and right coalitions tried to mobilize support by criticizing established parties and trying to establish themselves as alternatives to old political actors. Already subdued campaign was suspended after the floods hit east of the country and eleven thousand people were evacuated from the affected area. At the same time focus of media shifted to floods and its consequences while parties pledged to stop campaigning and donate remaining funds to flood relief. Thus, in the last week before the elections, there was virtually no campaigning.

The results

Elections for European parliament in Croatia are conducted with PR system where 11 seats are allocated between party lists. Voters can also indicate a preference for a particular candidate, but this affects order of candidates only if 10% of voters of a particular list indicate a preference for an individual candidate.

Turnout in 2014 EP elections in Croatia was around 25%, were more than 950 thousands out of 3,7 million voters turned out to vote. This represents a significant increase from 20% turnout (780 thousands voters) in special EP elections in 2013. While the difference in support of HDZ and SDP electoral lists in 2013 elections was less than six thousands votes, this time increased turnout mostly benefited HDZ. Since HDZ has far stronger party organization then other parties capable of more effectively mobilizing its voters, as well as more stable and loyal electoral base, it was in any case more likely to benefit from lower turnout. This result may also indicate that new party leadership after significant period of turbulence and lacklustre performance, managed to consolidate party organization and give it a renewed sense of purpose. HDZ led coalition won more than 100 000 more votes than SDP led coalition, ending with 6 MEPs to 4 MEPs of SDP led coalition. Furthermore, SDP leader and the prime minister suffered a personal rebuke from voters when 48% of SDP voters cast a preferential vote for a SDP MEP Tonino Picula, initially placed by the party leader on the 5^th place on the party list, propelling him to the top of SDP list of elected MEPs. Given that Tonino Picula is in a low level conflict with the party leader and presents a calm and competent image in opposition to arrogant and combative, but not particularly effective, prime minister, this was interpreted as a vote of censure for the prime minister. The final Croatian MEP was won by ORAH, which won more than 85 000 of votes and of which party leader Mirela Holy won more than 60 000 preferential votes. Given that Mirela Holy was expelled from SDP after a conflict with the prime minister after being forced to resign as an environment minister, the good result of ORAH and its party leader personally was also considered as sign criticism of the Prime Minister Zoran Milanović.

The big loser of these elections is Labour party, which failed to gain more voters than in previous EP elections, and lost their only MEP. Alliance for Croatia gained close to seven percent of the vote and came very close to gaining a one MEP, whereas coalition of National Forum and HSLS failed to gain sufficient support despite strong showing in the polls, and is most likely heading into political oblivion. The support for Labour party, being the oldest of the new parties, suffered most likely because their voters did not find sufficient motivation to vote in elections which were clearly not considered important in the national context and since they support party which is already established as an alternative to the left and the right in national parliament. Similarly, ORAH benefited from surge of support from voters who wanted to register their support for this new alternative on the left.

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Croatia
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2013)	Seats (change from 2013)
Croatian Democratic Union alliance (HDZ, HSP-AS, HSS, BUZ)	EPP (HSP-AS in ECR)	41.4	6		+8.6	0
Social Democrat Party alliance (SDP, HNS-LD, IDS, HSU)	S&D	29.9	4		-2.1	-1
Sustainable Development of Croatia (ORAH)	G-EFA	9.4	1		+9.4	1
Alliance for Croatia (Savez za Hrvatsku – HDSSB, HRAST, HSP…)		6.9	0		+3.9	0
Labour Party (Hrvatski laburisti – stranka rada)	GUE-NGL	3.4	0		-2.4	-1
Total		100	11			-1
Turnout (%)		25.3
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		5%
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

In conclusion

The results of the EP elections in Croatia led to a swift resignation of the Labour Party leader Dragutin Lesar. Given Lesar was an efficient and energetic parliamentary performer; his resignation might have an effect on party support and reception of it as a credible alternative to left and right bloc. However, since he stays in parliament Labour Party might recover their fortune by next elections. The elections stabilized HDZ and its support and gave it a new sense of confidence for parliamentary elections due in late 2015. Given that results were interpreted as a failure of the SDP leader and Prime Minister Zoran Milanović, and as a success of his critics, relatively weak result of SDP, which after coalition partners won 2 MEPs, down from five won in 2013, is likely to further tension in SDP and may even turn into a full blown conflict, in which case the stability of government majority might come into question and new elections might take place.

 

References

Čular, Goran (2013): Političko predstavništvo u Hrvatskoj: predstoji li korjenita promjena stranačkog sustava?, Političke analize 13, pp 3-11.

DIP (2014): Državno izborno povjerenstvo, rezultati izbora za Europski parlament 2014. accessed 05.06.2014. at https://www.izbori.hr/2014EUParlament/rezult/rezultati.html

DIP (2013): Državno izborno povjerenstvo, rezultati izbora za Europski parlament 2013. accessed 05.06.2014. https://www.izbori.hr/izbori/dip_ws.nsf/public/index?open&id=B9AE&

Henjak, Andrija (2011): Stranačka identifikacija i granice stranačke mobilizacije u Hrvatskoj nakon 2000. godine, Političke perspektive: 1, pp 29-55.

Henjak Andrija, Nenad Zakošek and Goran Čular (2013): Croatia in Sten Berglund, Joakim Erman, Kevin Deegan Krause and Terje Knutsen, Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp 443-480.

 

di Federico Vegetti

Introduction

The result of the European elections of 2014 in Hungary is all but surprising. The government party Fidesz got the absolute majority of the votes, the left-wing opposition appears to be more and more fragmented, while the far-right Jobbik remains fairly stable, far from the peaks of popularity obtained by ideologically similar parties in other European countries. However, this apparent calm conceals a quite discouraging political climate, from both a national and a European perspective. The turnout went down to 28.9%, 7 points lower than the previous EP election in 2009, and about half of the turnout registered at the national elections in April. The electoral campaign kept a relatively low profile, although this was mainly due to the difficult media access for the opposition, rather than to an actual lack of conflict. Moreover, in spite of the few seats obtained by the “official” eurosceptical party Jobbik, as readily reported by the Economist[i], the vote to PM Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz is not at all to be regarded as an “euroenthusiastic” choice.

The political context

Hungarian citizens voted on May 25 to elect their 21 representatives to the European parliament. However, the important event of the year for Hungarian politics has been the national parliamentary elections on April 6. The closeness to the national appointment further accentuated the “second order” character of the EP elections, where strictly European issues usually play a less important role in respect to national issues (see Reif & Schmitt 1980). The latter included direct attacks between members of different parties, with no great emphasis on substantive policy differences. While concepts such as “left” and “right” are quite widely employed in Hungarian politics (Todosijevic 2004), these terms are mostly used to address political groups in conflict to one another, rather than to describe substantive ideologies (Palonen 2009). In such a context, more focused on the political actors than on the issues, the long campaign for the two elections in 2014 has not been an exception.

Federico Vegetti is post-doc researcher at the Central European University, Budapest. He got his PhD in political science at the University of Mannheim in 2013. His research interests include political psychology, political behavior and quantitative research methods.

After a decisive victory in 2010, the right-wing Fidesz – born at the end of the 1980s as a libertarian student movement and turned over time into a national-conservative party – obtained the control of two-thirds of the Hungarian national parliament[ii]. This result granted Viktor Orbán’s party the power to modify the constitution and, during the last four years, change several rules of the game to its own advantage[iii]. As a consequence, the new electoral victory in April led Fidesz to control two-thirds of the parliament for the second time (see also Toka 2014).

At the same time, the political landscape on the left went through some major changes, all pointing to a greater fragmentation. The defeat of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) in 2010 led to the formation of other two brand-new left-wing parties, both starring former MSZP members. The first, Democratic Coalition (DK), is led by former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány, who was at the lead of the left-wing government from 2004 to 2009. The second, Együtt-PM, is led by Gordon Bajnai, who became prime minister after Gyurcsány’s resignation during the last year of MSZP’s rule from 2009 to 2010. The three parties joined forces in April in a coalition led by MSZP’s leader Attila Mesterházy, mainly prompted by a strongly majoritarian electoral system, but ran separately for the EP elections in May, which have been held under a PR system with 5% threshold. Finally, another left-wing party worth mentioning is LMP, more focused on environmental issues. In spite of its relatively small size, the party managed to get enough votes to obtain parliamentary seats in both elections.

Another important actor in the Hungarian political arena is Jobbik, a rather extreme right-wing and nationalist party, whose members have been repeatedly accused to hold anti-semitic views. The first relevant result for Jobbik was exactly five years ago, at the European elections of 2009, where the party obtained 14% of the valid votes. This result was followed by a 16% at the national elections in 2010, and by an impressive 20% at the elections last April. However, in mid May the party was involved in a political scandal, as one of its incumbent candidates for the EU parliament, Béla Kovács, was accused to be a spy for Russia. While both the candidate and the party rejected the accusations, the news has been reported by several media, and might have had an impact on Jobbik’s result on May 25. Among all Hungarian parties, Jobbik is the only one taking clear eurosceptical positions.

The campaign

The campaign for the European elections in Hungary was conducted in a rather passive manner by most of the parties. Fidesz and MSZP did not even bother publishing an electoral program, as an indicator of how low was the interest of the two parties for a substantive debate after the elections in April. In fact, the protagonist of the campaign was Viktor Orbán and his government, to the obvious advantage of his own party Fidesz. This has been the case to a large extent because of the new law on election procedures, which restricts the media access during the campaign for all parties, but not for the government[iv].

Orbán’s strategy during the campaign aimed at presenting an image of the government as the defender of the interests of the hungarians against a European Union that is unable or unwilling to understand the needs of the country. In this way, from its power position, Fidesz tried to appeal to the eurosceptical electorate, entering in direct competition with Jobbik.

Two issues where Orbán followed this strategy have been the cuts to the gas and utility costs for the households[v], and the new restrictions on land ownership to foreign farmers, mostly coming from the neighboring Austria[vi]. Both issues are rather an “echo” of the national campaign, where they have been discussed maintaining, among other things, that the European Union would certainly oppose the government’s struggle to pursue the interest of its citizens[vii].

After “neutralizing” the left at the elections in April, Orbán redirected his attacks against the eurosceptical right-wing of Jobbik, trying to profit from Béla Kovács’ espionage scandal by talking about “treasonous activities” of “a party that considers itself national”[viii]. This can in part explain Jobbik’s loss, compared to the result in April, and Fidesz’ success at an election where eurosceptical parties obtained significant results in several other European countries.

The results: stability on the right, fragmentation on the left

Orbán’s strategy seems to have paid out. Fidesz got 51.5% of the valid votes, about 5 percentage points less than in 2009, but 7 points more than at the national elections in April. This seems to go to Jobbik’s disadvantage, as the party drops from 20.5% in April to 14.7% in May, a quite similar result to the EP elections five years ago.

The left-wing opposition obtains a slightly better result compared to the national elections. This essentially confirms the suspicion that the forced cohabitation in the same coalition did not help the three parties, which gain in total 27.9% of the valid votes, compared to 26% obtained in April by the coalition (inclusive of the liberal party MLP, which did not run for the European elections). However, what is more interesting to point out is the relative similarity of the shares of the three parties. MSZP is still the strongest party of the trio, although its 10.9% represents a quite large loss after the 17.9% obtained in 2009. However, DK is only one percentage point below, on 9.8%, and Együtt-PM follows closely with 7.2% of the votes. This result suggests that the post-MSZP left is passing through a moment of transition characterized by a reorganization of the supply. While the outcome of this process is not yet easy to foresee, it might result into a new left-wing coalition leader different from MSZP. To be sure, the new electoral law, heavily majoritarian, was conceived by he party in government to profit exactly from this fragmentation, at least forcing the three parties to join unenthusiastic coalitions. However, the European elections might have work as an “internal headcount”, questioning the predominant role of MSZP within the coalition, and showing the potential of the two new parties. A case apart within the left-wing block is LMP, which does well enough to pass the 5% threshold and send one candidate to Brussels. In spite of the party’s efforts to propose itself as a different take on left-wing politics, compared to the rather traditional image of MSZP, left-wing Hungarians seem not to be fully convinced of its relevance.

Tab. 1 – Results of the 2014 European elections – Hungary
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats				Votes (change from 2009)		Seats (change from 2009)
Hungarian Civic Union / Christian-Democratic People’s Party (Fidesz/KDNP)	S&D	31.1	8			+5.0		+1
Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik)	NI	14.7	3			-0.1		+0
Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP)	S&D	10.9	2			-6.5		-2
Democratic Coalition (DK)	S&D	9.8	2			+9.8		+2
Together 2014 / Dialogue for Hungary (Együtt-PM)	G-EFA	7.2	1			+7.2		+1
Politics Can Be Different (LMP)	G-EFA	5.0	1			+2.4		+1
Others	–	0.9	0
Total		100.0	21					–
Turnout (%)		28.9				-7.4
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		5
Abbreviations for EP groups: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy;NI=Non-Inscrits.

A final remark is about the turnout, which drops 7 points since 2009, reaching the all-time low of 28.9%. This might be in part due to the redundant campaign, or to the lack of interest of Hungarian voters in expressing themselves so soon after a so clear result as the one in April. However, such a low turnout might also reflect the alienation of the electorate from the current political offer, in a political climate where Fidesz is likely to stay in power for long time.

References

Palonen, E. (2009). Political Polarisation and Populism in Contemporary Hungary. Parliamentary Affairs, 62(2), 318–334.

Reif, K., & Schmitt, H. (1980). Nine Second‐Order National Elections – A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results. European Journal of Political Research, 8(1), 3–44.

Todosijević, B. (2004). The Hungarian Voter: Left–Right Dimension as a Clue to Policy Preferences. International Political Science Review, 25(4), 411–433.

Toka, G. (2014). Constitutional Principles and Electoral Democracy in Hungary. In E. Bos & K. Pócza (Eds.), Constitution Building in Consolidated Democracies: A New Beginning or Decay of a Political System? Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag.

Sorina Soare

Bulgaria, which formerly belonged to the Communist bloc, entered the EU in 2007. Nevertheless, compared to the other countries of the former Warsaw Pact, the Bulgarian process of European integration was carried out with 3 years of delay; as demonstrated by Noucheva and Bechev (2008), the reasons Bulgaria as well as Romania lagged behind in meeting the EU accession criteria had to do with a set of domestic factors linked to a tortuous democratization process, with relevant veto players and institutional structures that obstructed democratic and market reforms for almost a decade. Despite the acceleration of political and economic reforms beginning in the 2000s, the 2005 Accession Treaty signed with Bulgaria contained a number of safeguard clauses designed as monitoring mechanisms to ensure certain conditions are met before the country can have the full benefits of EU membership; the imposition of stricter conditions to the admission was indicative of the persistence of structural weaknesses (Trauner 2009, Bechev 2013). Seven years after obtaining the status of a Member State, Bulgaria held its third European elections with 15 political parties, 6 coalitions, and 6 independent candidates competing for the 17 seats available. The competition involves two main actors (Rashkova 2013): on the one hand, the heir of the former Communist Party, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), and, on the other hand, the representative of the center-right, the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party.

Sorina Soare is a lecturer of Comparative Politics. She holds a PhD in political science from the Universitè libre de Bruxelles and has previously studied political science at the University of Bucharest in Romania. She works in the area of comparative politics and her research interests include political parties, populism, and the democratization process.

The results

As in all post-communist countries, the specter of a high level of abstention was hovering over the Bulgarian European elections; the adoption of a proportional system through preferential voting for national lists was supposed to give voters more power over which party candidates win office and increase voter turnout. Significantly, since the beginning of the campaign, the outcome of 2014 has been predicted in reference to GERB’s ability to mobilize voters, where the BSP electoral results seemed to be favored in the case of low participation. In the end, with a higher level than the initial estimate, the electoral participation was 36.15%, slightly lower than in 2009 (-2,77%) and definitely inferior to the EU average. The preference was expressed by about 25% of the voters, not without some confusion, as in the case of the BSP: the socialists’ voters ticked not only the 15th list corresponding to the party, but also the candidate with the 15th position in the list, the young Momchil Nekov who eventually displaced the party leader Sergei Stanishev from the top position on the ballot[1]. In the case of the Reformist Coalition, the preferential vote sends to European Parliament the second name on the list, Svetoslav Malinov, replacing the list’s leader, former Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, for the only EP seat the coalition won.

All in all, the center-right party, GERB, got 6 seats in the European Parliament thereby defeating the current ruling BSP who only obtained 4 seats (11,46% less of the votes in comparison with the GERB). The remaining seven seats were divided as such: 4 seats for the BSP coalition partners from the Turkish-ethnic Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), 2 seats for the recently created party led by the journalist-turned-politician Nikolai Barekov – Bulgaria Without Censure (BBT) and 1 seat for the center-right coalition of the Reformist Bloc (RB)[2]. The biggest Bulgarian delegation joins the EPP (6 GERB MEPs), the 4 BSP MEPs join the S&D alliance, and the DPS mandates reinforce the ALDE group. The recently created BBT still has to define the EP affiliation. Most probably, the RB will affiliate with the EPP.

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Bulgaria
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)		Seats (change from 2009)
Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB)	EPP	30.4	6		+6.0		1
Coalition for Bulgaria (KB)	S&D	18.9	4		+0.4		0
Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DSP)	ALDE	17.3	4		+3.1		1
Coalition Bulgaria without Censorship (BBT)	NI	10.7	2
Reformist Block (RB)	NI	6.5	1
Alternative for Bulgarian Renaissance (ABV)		4.0	0
National Union Attack (Ataka)	NI	3.0	0		-9.0		-2
Others		9.3
Total		100	17
* part of KOD (Coalition United Democrats)Source: Central Electoral Commission
Turnout (%)		36.2			-2.8
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)	Implicit threshold – the national quota
Additional notes on the electoral system	Proportional system through preferential voting for national lists in a single multi-member constituency
Source: Idea Voter Turnout Data, Central Electoral Commission  EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

Election campaign and the main political parties

A simple glance at the election campaign allows us to see that beyond the billboards with EU logos and images, the election debate was mainly framed by domestic issues – in particular the performance of the 2013 born rainbow coalition government, formed by the socialist BSP (within the Coalition for Bulgaria with other smaller parties) and Turkish-ethic minority representatives (DPS), a coalition without a parliamentary majority and hence forced to rely on the radical nationalist party Ataka’s support. The lack of a clear parliamentary majority and the highly criticized alliance with Ataka were somehow overshadowed by the protesters storming the streets after the appointment of the shady Delyan Peevski (DPS) as the head of the State Agency for National Security. Protesters called for the resignation of Peevski and the government. Anti-government protesters complained about poverty, corruption and organized crime. In this context, the European elections appeared to be a test for the government from the very beginning. Moreover, the President of the Socialists declared that if the coalition government had received fewer votes than the opposition, then the government would resign and new elections would be held by the end of 2014. In the light of the May 2014 results, a weakened BSP seems to open the gate for a new period of political instability, although according to the latest statements of the socialists’ leader Sergey Stanishev, there is no intention to hold early elections[3].

In brief, as in 2007 and 2009, national issues shaped the themes covered by the electoral campaign (Bechev 2013) recalling Reif and Schmitt’s (1980) observations concerning simultaneous national elections held in each of the EU-member nations without institutionally binding consequences on government or opposition policies. More specifically, for Reif and Schmitt, EU elections have appeared to be second order elections from the very beginning where voters tend to cast their votes on the basis of the main political arena dynamics instead of in relation to the specific context of these elections (EU-related topics). The Bulgarian 2014 European election shares striking features with this assumption that are congruent with their lower level of participation, the brighter prospects for new political parties and alliances, as well as the penalization of the government parties. Through the lenses of this assumption, the outcome of the May 25^th elections was mainly crafted by a socio-economic cleavage concerning the pace of the economic management opposing the center-right (represented primarily by the former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s party – GERB) to the center-left (represented by the leading governmental party, the BSP). For the BPS, the May 2014 electoral competition was also a personal challenge for its leader – Sergey Stanishev – elected in 2012 for President of the PES. The BSP’s position in the head-to-head with the GERB was not only weakened by its position in government, but also by the challenge of a separate alternative left-wing ballot launched by the former Socialist President Georgi Parvanov, Alternative for Bulgarian Renaissance Movement (ABV) whose lists were led by MEP Ivaylo Kalfin, Bulgaria’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005 – 2009) and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist delegation in the European Parliament in 2009-2014. Note that Kalfio was known to be strongly critical of the BSP alliance with the radical nationalists of Ataka. Last but not least, circumstantial elements have to be taken into account such as the vote-buying scandal in the Bobov Dol mine (votes in exchange for investments and better working conditions)[4]. In the end, the BSP was a distant second to the GERB opposition party, while the ABV failed to pass the implicit electoral threshold. As such, the undisputed winner of the May 25th election was the GERB, who already came in first in the European elections of 2007 and was the ruling party from 2009 to 2013. In line with these results, in the statement issued after the publication of the first official results, Borisov saluted the victory and boasted about the outcome of a “heroic party” that not only had severely defeated its main domestic competitor, the BSP, but also its European counterpart, the PSE. Ironically, Borisov invoked God in order to maintain Stanishev as BSP’s leader for many more years in order to easily win in the next round of elections[5].

Although initially estimated as making up 8% of the vote, the reformist block (RB) registered a rather fragile success, weakened not only by the head-to-head race between the BPS and the GERB, but also by the choice to let Meglena Kuneva to top the coalition’s lists[6] This constellation of 5 small conservative political factions is supposed to join the EPP delegation as well (1 seat). Note that due to the electoral system, voters’ preferences replaced list leader Meglena Kuneva with the runner-up Svetoslav Malinov. Considering the electoral results, the project of a center-right alternative seems to have an unpromising future.

Confirming the permeability of the Bulgarian party system to newly created parties (Spirova and Rashkova 2012), there are several new faces promoted by these European elections including Bulgaria Without Censorship (BBT) – a party created by the television journalist, Nikolai Barekov, whose main political tribune was settled by the protests against the government’s policies after June 2013. He uses a populist rhetoric that combines a critique of the establishment and the fight against corruption in the name of a vaguely defined “capitalism and a market economy with a human face”[7]. The BBT took part in elections in alliance with other smaller parties. Under these conditions, the electoral market of the nationalist parties became particularly competitive and the biggest loser of the elections seems to be Volen Siderov’s Ataka with a Russophile and Europhobic discourse.

The Bulgarian delegation in the European parliament also includes the 4 representatives of the Turkish minority, whose success lies primarily in the characteristics of its constituencies, linked to the ethno-religious minority in Turkey.

Concluding remarks

After all that has been said, in an electoral campaign monopolized by the head-to-head race between the BSP and the GERB and, in particular, the clash between their leaders, the main conclusion stresses that the interest of the Bulgarian voters for EU elections remains relatively low. The domestic issues prevail over the EU ones. Plagued with political instability, polarization and incertitude (Rashkova 2013_b), Bulgarian politics seem to be a perfect breeding ground for new parties and sparkling political entrepreneurs like Nikolai Barekov, who succeeded in assembling a party and send it to Strasbourg in less then a year.

 

References

Bechev D. (2013) “The Travails of Europeanisation” in Baun M. & D. Marek (eds.), The New Member States and the European Union: Foreign Policy and Europeanization (Abingdon, New York: Routledge), 190-205.

Noutcheva, G. & D. Bechev (2008) “The Successful Laggards: Bulgaria and Romania’s Accession to the EU” East European Politics and Societies 22 (1): 114 -138.

Spirova, M. e Rashkova, E. (2012), “Party Regulation in Post-Communist Bulgaria”, Working Paper Series on the Legal Regulation of Political Parties, n. 21 (https://www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl/uploads/wp2112.pdf)

Rashkova, E. (2013_b) “In the midst of political crisis, Bulgarians are searching for accountability and justice from their government”, LSE EUROPP Blog (https://bit.ly/YzDDiB).

Rashkova, E. R. (2013_a) “Governing Without an Opposition: The Aftermath of the Early Parliamentary Election in Bulgaria”, Political Reflections, CESRAN, UK, 4 (3): 14-16 (https://issuu.com/cesran/docs/pr_vol_4_no_3/16)

Reif, K. & Schmitt, H. (1980) “Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results”, European Journal of Political Research, 8 (1): 3–44.

Trauner, F. (2009) “Post-accession compliance with EU law in Bulgaria and Romania: a comparative Perspective”, in F. Schimmelfennig and F. Trauner (eds), Post-accession compliance in the EU’s new member states, European Integration online Papers (EIoP), 13 (2), art. 21 (https://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2009-021a.htm)

 

Internet Resources

• “25% of Bulgarian Voters Cast Preferential Ballot in the EU Elections”, Sofia News Agency, May 27^th 2014 (https://www.novinite.com/articles/160881/25+of+Bulgarian+Voters+Cast+Preferential+Ballot+in+the+EU+Elections).
• “A controversial newcomer could be kingmaker”, The Economist, March 4^th 2014 (https://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/03/bulgaria).
• “Bulgaria’s GERB to Request EPP Deputy Chair Seat – Boyko Borisov May 26^th 2014”, (www.novinite.com/articles/160852/Bulgaria%27s+GERB+to+Request+EPP+Deputy+Chair+Seat+-+Boyko+Borisov).
• “Bulgaria’s Prosecution Launches Probe into Bobov Dol Vote Affair”, Sofia News Agency, May 21^st 2014 (https://www.novinite.com/articles/160710/Bulgaria%27s+Prosecution+Launches+Probe+into+Bobov+Dol+Vote+Affair).
• “Central Election Commission: Final results of Bulgaria’s May 2014 European Parliament elections”, May 28^th 2014 (https://sofiaglobe.com/2014/05/28/central-election-commission-final-results-of-bulgarias-may-2014-european-parliament-elections/)
• Bivol, A., “European elections 2014: Bulgarian socialists refuse to admit failure”, Sofia Globe, May 26^th 2014 (https://sofiaglobe.com/2014/05/26/european-elections-2014-bulgarian-socialists-refuse-to-admit-failure/)

 

 

---

di Marcello Carammia e Roderick Pace

Introduction

On Saturday 24 May the third European election since Malta joined the EU was held. Malta elected six Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), one more than in 2009. The electoral system is the same as the one used in national elections, the major difference being that the 13 electoral districts are merged into one. It is a proportional system based on the Single Transferable Vote (STV), that permits voters to enumerate as many preferences as the candidates listed on the ballot sheet (Katz 1984).[1] The small dimension of districts,[2] the fact that the ‘extra’ votes obtained by party candidates are not transferred to a national pool, and acute bipartisanism, have produced an almost perfect two-party system that, together with other features of the political system, make Malta a textbook case of majoritarian democracy (Lijphart 1999). No party apart from the two main ones – the Partit Laburista (PL) and the Partit Nazzjonalista (PN) – has ever obtained representation in the Maltese parliament since 1966, nor in the European Parliament (EP) since 2004, although the greens of Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) occasionally came close to the objective.

The election campaign

The EP election took place 14 months after the 2013 national elections, which confirmed alternation in government following a long period of Nationalist rule. The NP was in government since 1987, except for the short-lived Labour government of 1996-98. Preparations for the election campaign started in July 2013 with the opening of nominations for potential MEP candidates; the lists were closed on January 2014. Some controversial decisions taken became quite polemical during the campaign.[3] The most controversial one was probably the PL’s decision to present its former leader and one time Prime Minister, Dr Alfred Sant, as a candidate.

Marcello Carammia is Senior lecturer at the Institute for European Studies of the University of Malta. He graduated at the University of Catania, and got his PhD at the University of Siena. He is co-director of the Italian Agendas Project and member of the European Union Agendas Project. His research interests include the comparative analysis of decision-making processes, political parties, the EU, and migration policy. Roderick Pace, Jean Monnet Professor, is the director of the Institute for European Studies of the University of Malta. His research interests include international and Euro-Mediterranean relations, the role of small states in world politics, and the politics of Malta.

Dr Sant led the Party when it won the 1996 election, but also when it lost those of 1998, 2003 and 2008. He had actively campaigned against Malta joining the EU and doggedly refused to recognize the result of the 2003 membership referendum. His candidature is illustrative of a certain ambiguity in the PL’s EU position. The advent of a new leadership in 2008 shifted the party toward more pro-EU positions, which was part of a broader change in the party political platform and a rapprochement with the EU which had started in 2004. Notwithstanding that many labour supporters are critical of Sant’s past European stance, he enjoys overwhelming support within the European Socialist family. Sant’s popularity among Labour supporters and opinion polls constantly showed that he was likely to be elected first from among all the candidates, which was confirmed by the election results.

The short time span which separated the European election from the national election meant that political campaigning went on unabated for almost 14 months, punctuated only by short truces. This was one of the reasons why European issues had only intermittent relevance. In summer, the government’s attempt to implement a pushback of migrants at sea was criticised by the Opposition. Following the harsh criticism of the European Commission, and the launch of Mare Nostrum by Italy, the pushback policy was eventually dropped. In a rather Orwellian fashion, the government claimed that it has threatened push back only to force the EU to “smell the coffee”.

On November 2013 the opposition mounted a campaign against a “citizenship scheme” launched by the government, which saw the sale of Maltese passports to affluent investors. The scheme was not stopped, but the polemics and, again, strong criticism by European institutions forced the government to introduce major amendments on at least four occasions. The scheme was the avant propos of the main European campaign – whose pace really started picking up in April 2014.

With the intensification of the campaign, and with the official opening two months before the elections, national issues regained full centrality. The PN openly and repeatedly appealed to voters to use their votes to show their disappointment with the way the Prime Minister was running the country. In turn, the PL responded with claims that it was keeping its electoral promises. The centre piece of its campaign was the reduction of energy prices for households. Energy prices were one of the main issues on which the LP had won the 2013 national election, and the price reduction was timed to occur in March 2014 just before the start of the last phase of the electoral campaign.

Another relevant issue was the Civil Unions Bill approved on April 2014. This Act permitted civil unions with same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as marriage, including the right of joint adoption and recognition of foreign same sex marriage. The enactment of the law had been promised by both parties in their respective 2013 national electoral programmes, but the NP abstained on the bill because it included the right of adoption by gay couples. The NP abstention was not greeted well, neither by the LGBT community nor by a sizeable majority of the public.

In sum, the election campaign in Malta followed the script of second-order elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980), with national issues dominating and European themes confined to the periphery.

The only ‘moments’ when ample space was afforded to European issues was when Martin Schultz and Jean Claude Junker addressed meetings during their visits to Malta to campaign as the presidential candidates of their respective political groups, although the saliency of these events in comparison with the rest of the campaign was rather circumscribed.

However, to conclude that the EU was entirely absent from the electoral campaign would be misleading. The contested path toward EU membership, sanctioned by the 2003 referendum, left a deep footprint in party competition, and the “usage of the EU” (Garcia 2014) occasionally recurred in this campaign. Notwithstanding the pro-EU turn of the new PL leadership, the EU retained some relevance in electoral competition, though declined in domestic terms.

The results

About 258,000 voters went to the polls, 74.8% of those entitled to vote. This is considered as a remarkable participation rate in the European context, but it is less so in the Maltese one which is used to “near-universal turnout” (Hirczy 1995). Turnout in the 2013 national elections was 93%, similar to that of 2008 but lower than the 96% of the 2003. This decline has raised some concern among several commentators. (coloredmanga.com) Even in comparison to the previous European elections, the four-point downturn was significant (for a discussion of past European elections see Pace 2005 and 2009).

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Malta
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
Labour Party (PL)	S&D	53.4	3		-1.4	-1
Nationalist Party (PN)	EPP	40.0	3		-0.5	+1
Democratic Alternative (AD)	G-EFA	3.0	0		+0.6	0
Europe Empire (IE)	—	2.7	0		+1.2	0
Others	—	1.0			0	0
Total		100.0	6		100.0	0
Turnout (%)		74.8			-4
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		35.975 voti
Note on the electoral system: the ‘quota’ for electing a candidate is based on the number of valid votes cast. The Droop Quota is used to establish the number of votes which candidates need to poll to secure a seat: Q=((Valid votes)/(Total number of seats + 1)) + 1
* In the 2009 European election Malta elected five MEPs, two PN e three PN. Following the entry into force of the protocol to the Lisbon treaty on December 2011, a sixth seat was added which was obtained by the PL. Since the sixth seat was attributed based on the results of the 2009 election, the table includes it in the comparison between the 2009 and the 2014 elections.
Abbreviations for EP groups: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

Once again the 2014 European election rewarded the PL. Running for the first time as the incumbent, it managed to gain 54.3% of ‘first preferences’. This was 1.5 percentage points less than what it obtained in the 2009 EP elections, and was similar to the result of the 2013 national elections.

With 40% of first preferences, the NP replicated the performance of the 2009 EP elections – when, however, it was still in government. However, its 2014 result was 3.5 points below the 2013 national elections. The gap between the NP and the LP increased from 11.5 to 13.4 percentage points.

The vote essentially consolidates the realignment of the Maltese electorate, as shown by the PL’s progress in all the electoral districts, including the traditionally Nationalist ones. The PN’s defeat, however, was alleviated by the effect of transfer of voting preferences among the candidates, which turned a remarkable deficit in first count votes into a draw in terms of seats. Following the allocation of the first seats which happened relatively quickly, it appeared certain that Labour would elect three seats and the Nationalists two, while the sixth one could go to either party. The complex transfer of voters’ preferences completed four days after the election finally gave the seat to the NP with a meagre margin of 206 votes. For the first time the NP had managed to win 3 seats.

The share of votes gained by the two main parties remains very large, amounting to 93.4% of suffrages and all seats. However, this share is significantly less than that of last year’s national elections. The space left free by the PL and PN reserved some surprises. The greens of AD gained half-point on the last European election – and almost one point on the 2013 national elections. But with a total tally of 3% they confirmed their inability to achieve parliamentary representation at both the domestic and EU levels. Not surprisingly given the swing to the right in the whole of Europe, it was the growth of the neo-fascist extreme right Imperium Europa (IE), which almost doubled its votes in comparison to the 2009 European elections with a jump from 1.5 to 2.7%, a result which is very close to AD’s. In the context of Malta’s bipolarism consolidated around PN-PL duopoly, AD is no longer the only outsider or ‘third party’.

Conclusions

Apparently, the results of the European elections did not reserve any surprise. The six MEPs elected by Malta are equally divided by the two main parties, that once again gained the majority of votes and kept smaller parties away from parliamentary representation. However, traces of change loom behind the apparent stability.

The elections consolidate the realignment of voters along the main parties, deepening the Labour’s hold on the country and extending it to traditionally Nationalist areas. Abstention increased, with turnout 20 points down from the recent national elections, four points below the last EP elections and eight points down from those held in 2004.

Due to the STV electoral system, the two main parties send three members each to the EP despite the large gap in votes that separates them. This confirms once again the disproportional effects of the system, with hardly predictable consequences (Doron 1977). This time, the losers benefit.

A relevant change is the number of elected women, higher than men (4-2) despite the STV has traditionally been considered to penalise them (Lane 1995). Malta had not elected women to the EP until one year ago, when three women replaced the MEPs who resigned after being elected to the national parliament. The prevalence of women can be read against the context of the broader societal change of the last years, culminating in the 2011 divorce referendum and in the 2013 Civil Unions bill.

Even though the success of the extreme right Imperium Europa surprised observers, no explicitly Euro-sceptic party elected members to the EP. In this respect, the Maltese vote departs from the outcome of the elections in most EU member countries, notably from those of the other southern member states, compared to which, however, Malta was only marginally touched by the economic crisis.[4] However, to conclude from this that Euro-scepticism is not represented might be misleading. Dr Alfred Sant may have gathered the EU-critical vote which explains why he was the most voted candidate.

This outcome is indicative of the ability of the two main parties to represent a wide range of positions, thus neutralising the challenge of smaller parties. Yet the great success of the Euro-sceptical candidate Alfred Sant may indicate the persistence of a considerable share of Euro-sceptical voters, particularly among Labour supporters. So long as the EU leads to a clear positive sum game, it is highly probable that the main parties will manage to absorb and internalise opposition to the European project. But, an economic or political crisis could trigger latent tensions, and awaken the “sleeping giant” (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004).

References

Doron, Gideon, and Richard Kronick. 1977. ”Single Transferrable Vote: An Example of a Perverse Social Choice Function”. American Journal of Political Science 21(2): 303–11.

Garcia Lupato, Fabio. 2014. ”Talking Europe, Using Europe: The EU and Parliamentary Competition in Italy and Spain (1986–2006)”. The Journal of Legislative Studies 20(1): 29–45.

Hirczy, Wolfgang. 1995. ”Explaining near-universal turnout: the case of Malta”. European Journal of Political Research 27(2): 255–72.

Katz, Richard (1984). “The single transferable vote and proportional representation”. In Arend Lijphart and Bernard Grofman (eds.) Choosing an electoral system: issues and alternatives. New York: Praeger.

Lane, John C. 1995. ”The election of women under proportional representation: The case of Malta”. Democratization 2(2): 140–57.

Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries. Yale University Press.

Pace, Roderick. ”The Maltese Electorate Turns a New Leaf? The First European Parliament Election in Malta”, in South European Society & Politics, 10(1): 121-136.

Pace, Roderick. 2009. “The European Parliament Election in Malta, June 6, 2009”, EPERN – European Parties Elections and Referendums Network, Working Paper 27.

Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. ”Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe”. In Gary Marks and Marco R. Steenbergen (eds.) European Integration and Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 32–50.

Laura Sudulich

On Thursday the 22^nd of May citizens in the Netherlands and the UK voted to elect national delegates to the next European Parliament. Irish citizens voted on the following day, Friday the 23^rd. In the UK the electoral system in use is a closed list system with regional districts. In the Netherlands the system is ordered (belonging to the group of open list systems) and there is one constituency for the whole country to choose the 26 MEPs (one more than in 2009). Irish voters elected their 11 MEPs (one less than in 2009) through PR-STV,[1] a proportional system that allows voters to give ordered preferences to each and every candidate in the list. PRSTV is also used Northern Ireland, where 3 of the 73 UK representatives are elected. The possibility of given preferences to every candidate and, the consequent transfer of votes results in a slow tally process that lasts for days after the polls close.

In the Netherlands turnout was 37% and in the UK 36%, while Ireland was among the few member states where turnout was above 50% (51.6%). Turnout figures are important to a fuller understanding of the elections’ results. The Netherlands and the UK are two key arenas to sense the strength of Eurosceptic right wing parties. In the former the PVV of the Europhobic Geert Wilders gained popularity, and votes, over the past few years. Wilders calls for a limit on the number of immigrants and the defence of national culture against the alleged threats of multiculturalism. In the UK, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) voices a similar position, but Farage’s discourse focuses on the economic implications of immigration far more than on the cultural ones. Many observers see these two parties as a signal of a growing anti-EU movement that comprises also the French Front National. However, such a movement crucially lacks a transnational dimension and appears deeply fragmented. Moreover the electoral fortunes of the UKIP and the PVV were very different last week.

Laura Sudulich is a Research Fellow at the Centre d’étude de la vie politique (Cevipol) Université Libre de Bruxelles. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and as Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Her research interests include new media and electoral campaigns, public opinion, voting behavior and comparative politics.

Netherlands

We begin analyzing the results of the 2014 elections by looking at what happened in the Netherlands. The PVV lost 3.5 percentage points from the EP elections of 2009 [-2 points when compared to the 2012 general elections] but managed to secure 4 MEPs, as many as in 2009.

With regard to government parties – a coalition formed by Labourists (PvDA) and Liberals (VVD) – both the PvDA and the VVD maintain the same number of MEPs, 3 each, than in the past European Parliament. The Christian Democrats lose 5 percentage points but keep their 5 seats, while the centrist D66 gains 1 MEPs sending to Strasbourg 4 representatives. On the left side of the political spectrum, the Green Party and the Socialist Party win 2 seats each; while the former loses 2 percentage points the latter gains 2.5 points. The remaining 3 seats go to the Animals Party (1) and the Christian Union (2). Table 1 below shows very little change from 2009 and that the most remarkable element of this election remains the low level of turnout. Dutch commentators point at a low intensity campaign as one of the key determinants of such low turnout.

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Netherlands.
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA)	EPP	15.0	5		– 4.8	+0
Democrats 66 (D66)	ALDE	15.4	4		+4,0	+1
Partito per la Libertà (PVV)		13.3	4		-3.5	+0
Labour Party (PvdA)	S&D	9.4	3		-2.6	+0
People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)	ALDE	12	3		+0.6	+0
Green Left (GL)	G-EFA	6.9	2		-1.9	-1
Socialist Party (SP)	GUE-NGL	9.6	2		+2.5	+0
Christian Union–Reformed Political Party (CU-SGP)	ECR/EFD?	6.8	2		+0.9	+0
Party for the Animals (PvdD)		4.2	1		+0.6	+1
Total		100	26			+1
Turnout (%)		37.0			+0,3
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		none
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

United Kingdom

Voters’ apathy has also characterized the election in the EU. However, unlike in the Dutch case, quite a lot has changed in the UK when we look at the electoral results (Table 2). The government coalition – Conservatives and Liberal Democrats – lost 17 seats (-10 for the Liberal Democrats and -7 for the Conservatives). Liberal Democrats suffer a dramatic loss in terms of vote share, losing half of the votes when we compare to the outcomes of the 2009 election. The Labour party gains 10 percentage points and registers a +7 in terms of elected representatives. All in all, the UKIP emerges as the clear winner of the election and Farage, commenting the results, claimed that his party’s performance represents an earthquake in British politics. The UKIP wins 4 million votes, 27% of vote share and sends 24 Eurosceptic MEPs to the new European Parliament. Clearly, UKIP emerges from the election as a key domestic and European actor.

Importantly, the notorious British Euroscepticism seems to be stronger than ever. Over 50% of voters gave their preferences to parties that want ‘less Europe’ and promise to British voters an in/out referendum. Farage pushes for a referendum to be held before the 2015 general election and the conservative Prime Minister David Cameron promised to hold a referendum in 2017[2] – given that his party gets to lead a government after the 2015 election, which at the moment seems unlikely.

 

Table 2 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – United Kingdom.
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
UK Independence Party (UKIP)	EFD	27.4	24		+11,0	+11
Labour Party	S&D	25.4	20		+9,7	+7
Conservative Party	ECR	23.9	19		-3,8	-7
Green Party of England and Wales	G-EFA	7.8	3		-0,8	+1
Scottish National Party (SNP)	G-EFA	2.4	2		+0,3	+0
Liberal Democrats	ALDE	6.8	1		-6,9	-10
The Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru)	G-EFA	0.7	1		-0,1	+0
British National Party (BNP)		1.1	0		-5,1	-2
Total		100	25
Turnout (%)		36.0			+1,7
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		none
Note: The results of Northern Ireland are not included.
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

Ireland

With regard to Ireland, where voters on May 23^rd also casted a vote for local elections, results led quickly to the resignation as party leader of the labourist Eamon Gilmore, who is also deputy Prime Minister (Tánaiste). The Labour Party is in government with Fine Gael since March 2011. Both parties performed poorly: Fine Gael, the party of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny lost 7 percentage points while the Labour party lost 9 points and, notably, did not secure any MEP. Gerry Adams’s Sinn Féin makes a large gain (+8 percentage points) and secures 3 seats. Adams – a key player in designing the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, that brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades of violence – has been at the centre of media attention in the past few weeks. The Northern Ireland police recently questioned him – and then released him with no charges – for several days, in relation to an execution perpetrated by the IRA over 40 years ago. Despite such a controversial event, Sinn Féin’s campaign succeeded in attracting a large number of votes and gaining a strong position in the Irish political system. The other key element of this election regards the electoral performance of Fianna Fáil,[3] the most successful party in the history of the Republic of Ireland. Fianna Fáil led coalition governments between 1997 and 2011, when suffered a major electoral defeat (-24 percentage points) at the February 2011 general election.[4] The management of the economic crisis by Fianna Fáil’s ministers and Taoiseach was both questionable and unpopular, but the party seems to have now remerged as a key actors. At the local election of May 23^rd Fianna Fáil won the largest share of vote despite losing two MEPs.

Finally, we note the presence, and success, of a large number of independent candidates. This defining trait of Irish politics[5] appears even more prominent at the 2014 EP election, where out of 11 newly elected MEPs three of them do not belong to any party.

 

Table 3 – Results of the 2014 European Parliament elections – Ireland.
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
Family of the Irish (Fine Gael)	EPP	22.3	4		-6.8	0
Soldiers of destiny – The Republican Party (Fianna Fáil)	ALDE	22.3	1		-1.8	-2
Labour Party	S&D	5.3	0		-8.6	-3
We ourselves – Independence Party (Sinn Féin)	GUE-NGL	19.5	3		+8.3	+3
Independent candidates	Others		3			+2
Total		100	11
Turnout (%)		51.6			-7.0
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

In conclusion

In summary, the electoral results of the Netherlands, the UK and Ireland tell three different stories: in the Netherlands the parties in government did not suffer any significant loss with respect to the 2009 European elections, on the contrary the sitting governments of Ireland and the UK were severely punished by voters. Geert Wilders did not manage to secure large support, while in the UK Nigel Farage succeeded in bringing anti-EU concerns at the top of the political agenda. Turnout was low, in line with the 2009 elections, in both the UK and the Netherlands; on the contrary, turnout in the Republic of Ireland was 8 percentage points higher than the European average, while lower than in 2009 (-7 points). These three different stories confirm the second order nature of EP elections,[6] with domestic considerations outweighing European ones.

 

References

Farrell, D. (2011), Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Gallagher, M. and Michael, M. (eds.) (2011), How Ireland Voted 2011: The Full Story of Ireland’s Earthquake Election, Dublin, Palgrave McMilland.

Weeks, L. (2009), We Don’t Like (to) Party. A Typology of Independents in Irish Political Life, 1922–2007, in “Irish Political Studies”, vol. 24(1), pp. 1-27.

Reif, K. and Schmitt, H. (1980), Nine Second Order National Elections: a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results, in “European Journal of Political Research”, vol. 8(1), pp. 3–44.

 

Carolina Plescia and Sylvia Kritzinger

Introduction

Austria went to the polls on Sunday, May 25th to elect 18 members of the European Parliament, one less than in 2009 due to the EU membership of Croatia. The electoral system used for the European elections is the same as for the national elections but instead of 39 constituencies there is only a single national constituency. The electoral system is a proportional system with a threshold of 4% and the possibility for the voters to express a preference vote for a single candidate, a possibility that has been rarely used by Austrians (Müller et al. 2001). Finally, Austria is still the only country in Europe where citizens can vote at the age of 16 in nationwide elections.

The election campaign

Beside the two main parties that have dominated Austrian politics over the last decades, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), both currently forming a grand coalition, voters found three other well-known parties on the electoral ballot: two EU-skeptic parties, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the Alliance of the Future of Austria (BZÖ) and the pro-European party, The Greens (Grüne). Alongside these parties, four new parties contested the European elections for the first time: the pro-European The New Austria (NEOS) and three EU-skeptic parties, Another Europe (Europe-Anders), The Reform Conservatives (REKOS) and the EU-Stop. The big winner of the European elections in 2004 and 2009, the EU-critical List Hans-Peter Martin (List HPM), decided not to run in this election, and in fact disappeared from the Austrian political scene. Another notable absent is the Team Stronach, which ran for the first time in the national elections in September 2013 gaining 5.7% of the vote share.

Carolina Plescia is Assistant Professor at the Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna. She obtained a PhD in Political Science and Quantitative Methods from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland in 2013. Her main research interests include comparative electoral behavior, coalition governments, and research methodologies. Sylvia Kritzinger is Professor and Head of the Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna. She holds a PhD in Political Science and is one of the principal investigators of the Austrian National Election Study. Her research focuses on electoral behavior, public opinion formation, democratic representation, and empirical methods.

While it was quite clear before the election that only the parties currently represented in the Austrian Parliament (SPÖ, ÖVP, FPÖ, Grüne, NEOS) would get enough votes to send their representatives to Strasbourg, a series of political scandals that hit the two government parties, SPÖ and ÖVP, made the exact election outcome less predictable. The electoral campaign was in general characterized by a pervasive sense of disappointment with how the European Union has addressed the financial and economic crisis without taking into account the social repercussions of its austerity policies, furthermore, it focused on the increases of prices attributed to the euro, the alleged excessive bureaucratization of the apparatus in Brussels and immigration. The anti-European campaign of the FPÖ focused exactly on this sense of disappointment with the EU. Meanwhile, the other parties focused their campaigns more on policies they will pursue in the European Parliament, if elected.

The results

Out of nearly 6.5 million voters, less than half turned out to vote: approximately 45.4% against 46.0% in 2009; this is a rather low percentage when considering that the turnout in national elections in Austria is generally very high (75% in 2013), although, it has been decreasing in recent years.

Pre-electoral expectations about the electoral results have been all confirmed: only parties represented in the Austrian Parliament today have managed to overcome the 4% threshold. Also, the two ruling parties were able again to retain the majority of the votes, though narrowly.

 

Table 1 – Results of the 2014 European elections – Austria
Party	EP Group	Votes (%)	Seats		Votes (change from 2009)	Seats (change from 2009)
Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP)	EPP	27.0	5		-3.0	-1
Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)	S&D	24.1	5		+0.4	+0
Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)	NI	19.7	4		+7.0	+2
The Greens (Grüne)	G-EFA	14.5	3		+4.6	+1
Alliance of the Future of Austria (BZÖ)	NI	0.5	0		-4.1	-1
The New Austria (NEOS)	ALDE	8.1	1		–	–
The Reform Conservatives (REKOS)	NI	1.2	0		–	–
Another Europe (ANDERS)	NI	2.1	0		–	–
EU-STOP		2.8	0		–	–
Others		0.0	0		–	–
Total		100	18
Turnout (%)		45.4			-0.6
Legal threshold for obtaining MEPs (%)		4%
Source: https://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/BMI_wahlen/europawahl/2014/Wahlkarten.asx
EP group abbreviations: EPP=European People’s Party; S&D=Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ALDE=Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; G-EFA=The Greens–European Free Alliance; ECR=European Conservatives and Reformists; GUE-NGL=European United Left–Nordic Green Left; EFD=Europe of Freedom and Democracy; NI=Non-Inscrits.

 

The ÖVP defends its electoral record confirming itself as the first party in the European elections with 27% of the vote; however, the party loses 3 percentage points and one seat compared to the previous European elections. Despite this, the ÖVP claims victory, having actually gained 3 percentage points compared to the national elections in September 2013. The SPÖ gets 24.1% of the vote, improving its performance slightly compared to the last European elections when it obtained 23.7% of the votes.

The FPÖ earns many votes compared to 2009 (19.7% of the vote, + 7 percentage points), doubling its seats (2 to 4 seats). Notwithstanding this, the FPÖ fails to match, albeit slightly, the result of the last national elections when this party got 20.5% of the vote share.

The Greens party confirms itself fourth party in Austria increasing its vote share by 4.6 percentage points from the previous European elections. The very good performance of the Greens is surprising in light of the fact that pre-election polls gave the Greens only a tiny advantage over the NEOS. Instead, the Greens surpass the NEOS by 6 percentage points. Meanwhile, the NEOS party, that has contested the European elections for the first time, obtains a good 8% of the vote and an important seat in the European Parliament. This result helps the NEOS to establish itself as a strong and viable party.

No other party is able to obtain seats. It should be noted in this regard that the BZÖ is almost disappearing from the Austrian political scene; the party loses 3 percentage points when compared to the last national election and 4.1 percentage points since the last European elections in 2009. The replacement of the well-known leading candidate – the daughter of the famous Jörg Haider, Ulrike Haider-Quercia – with a little-known candidate during the election campaign certainly did not help the BZÖ. Also, the other EU-skeptic parties were not able to pass the 4% electoral threshold. Despite this, the performance of the EU-Stop party deserves to be mentioned: the party, in fact, obtains a significant 2.8% of the vote share. It called for a referendum to leave the EU, a return to the Austrian former currency, the Schilling, and the introduction of a Swiss-style direct democracy.

Discussion of the results

Two considerations deserve attention. First, the pro-European parties have won the 2014 European elections in Austria. These parties have in fact obtained almost 75% of the total vote share. Second, in spite of the fact that all parties consider themselves winners of these European elections, their performances appear less impressive if one takes into account that 18% of the votes of the List HPM were ‘freely available’ on the electoral market.

The two mainstream parties were able to stop, to a certain extent, the electoral losses they continuously experienced over the last years. However, the result of the SPÖ hides that the party leaders have chosen the wrong leading candidate: Eugen Freund is a famous TV journalist but with no experience in politics and moreover, not a party member of the SPÖ. This choice had repercussions on the electoral campaign at the local level with party members not canvassing as strongly as necessary for their party. The party leadership was also more concerned with national issues, such as the budget for the next two years, rather than the electoral campaign. Concerning the ÖVP, its leading candidate Otmar Karas was probably the reason why the party did not lose more votes and remained the strongest party in the European elections. Karas’ long experience and competence at the EU level surely paid off at the polls, with the national party contributing very little to his success.

The Eurosceptic party FPÖ rightly claims victory, but its alleged success is below expectations if one considers that some pre-election polls predicted that the FPÖ would become the first party in Austria, surpassing both the SPÖ and the ÖVP, which it however failed to do. In addition, considering that the EU-critical List HPM did not run for the 2014 elections, the success of the FPÖ is even much less obvious. It appears as if the FPÖ failed to mobilize EU-skeptical voters in general and the Euro-critical HPM-voters in particular.

Thus, in the end, only the success of the Greens and NEOS can be labelled as clear electoral victories: these two parties were particularly successful amongst the young, urban and well-educated voters with a strong pro-European attitude. These two parties focused their electoral campaign on European issues that appear to be increasingly important to Austrian citizens, at least to those who turned out to vote.

Finally, with regard to the Austrian experience with the European elections considering the level of turnout, the country surely follows the model of the second-order national elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980): the participation rate is always much lower than the national average. Still, the performances of the two government parties, the ÖVP and the SPÖ, and the opposition parties do not follow unambiguously the second-order elections model. In detail, while the SPÖ is often punished by voters in the European elections (except in the 2014 election), the ÖVP almost always performs better during the European elections. Opposition parties have never gained vote shares when compared to national elections, but the 2014 European elections indicate that this trend might be reversing.

Conclusions

Broadly speaking, one of the central issues of these European elections in Austria has been whether and to what extent the two mainstream parties would have been able to gain yet again an absolute majority of the votes. In fact, many wanted to see if there would have been a massive shift of the votes towards the FPÖ. The two ruling parties have been able to hold, and these European elections send a strong message to all pro-EU parties. Despite this, considering that many Euro-skeptic voters seem to have remained at home this time, only the next election will determine whether Europe is considered by Austrians the future or a threat.

 

References

Müller, W. C., Jenny, M., Steininger, B., Dolezal, M., Philipp, W., Preisl-Westphal, S. (2001), Die österreichischen Abgeordneten, Schriftreihe des Instituts für angewandte Politikforschung, vol. 23. Wien, Facultas.

Reif, K. and Schmitt, H. (1980), Nine Second Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results, in “European Journal of Political Research”, vol. 8, pp. 3-44.