Autore: Redazione CISE

Nina Liljeqvist and Kristian Voss

Finland

Populist and EU-critical Finns Party (PS) were expected to pose a serious challenge to the established parties in the Finnish election to the European Parliament last Sunday. Having achieved tremendous success in the national elections in 2011, and continuing to ride high on the Euroskeptic sentiments this spring, the PS aimed to increase their number of seats in the European Parliament from one to three, with polls having predicted that the party would receive as much as 21% of the votes. However, the Euroskeptic sensation never happened in Finland. This may be partly explained by the fact that the party did not have a prominent top-candidate, or rather, by the fact that this top-candidate was not charismatic party leader Timo Soini who has decided to focus on domestic politics instead. PS did increase their support compared with the 2009 election, scoring 12.9% and consequently gaining one seat, but this result is obviously far from what they were hoping for. Instead, the Finnish electorate favoured established parties in this year’s European election. The liberal conservative National Coalition Party (KOK), which is the party of current Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, kept its grip on the electorate with 22.6% of the votes, thereby securing the three seats it currently has in the parliament. One explanation for this success is the vote magnet Alexander Stubb, current minister for European affairs and foreign trade, who single-handedly got the party 8.6% of the vote share. While Finnish elections to the European Parliament do tend to become candidate centred due to the use of open party lists, Stubb’s achievement is nonetheless remarkable. As a former MEP with a PhD in international politics and a previous career as a EU civil servant, KOK top-candidate Stubb has added expertise and know-how to the campaign without making the party overly pro-European. Vis-à-vis European equivalents on the centre-right, the KOK is rather less pro-Europe, including preferring a freer internal market from bureaucratic red tape, and opposing debt sharing and the transformation of the EU into a military alliance.

The four coalition partners of KOK had less of a successful election. The biggest disappointment might be the Social Democrats (SDP), having failed terribly at mobilising its voters, despite taking a pragmatic position insisting on improvements to the EU, including the continuation of free and fair trade and opposing joint liability of cross-country debts, in addition to typical social democratic positions. Expecting to increase its share of votes thanks to a revamped party leadership, the SDP instead lost over five percentage points to garner only 12.3%. A disappointing result for a party that averaged 20% of the votes in the 1990s. In spite of this, the party managed to secure two seats in parliament. The other coalition party that self-reportedly sits on the centre of the political spectrum, the Green League, also lost several percentage points since 2009, and now enjoys only 9% of the vote share, thereby losing one of its two seats. The situation looks better for the liberal-centrist coalition partner the Swedish People’s Party, which is intensely pro-Europe. In spite of low polls this spring, the party managed to hold on to their one seat in the Parliament by securing just under 7% of the votes. The other coalition partner on the right, the Christian Democrats, suffered a bittersweet election as it lost its one seat in the parliament despite increasing its vote share by one percentage point to 5.2%.

The situation is not bleak for all parties of the political centre. Opposition party the Centre (KESK) had an impressive election as it received 19.7% of the votes, thereby easily surpassing both the PS and the SDP. Suffering from internal divisions on the issues of European integration, the party offers voters a homespun mix of pro- and anti-Europe policies. On the one hand, it favours a more practical and pragmatic cooperation with subsidiarity as an important principle, especially for the issue of agriculture. At the other hand, KESK advocates returning the EU to more of its supposed original role as promoting free trade and peace, which is also the rhetoric of many parties expressing elements of Euro-skepticism. With this combination of messages, KESK managed to keep up the positive wave the party has been riding lately, as it came fourth in the 2011 general election, third in the recent local election, and now emerges as the second largest Finnish party represented in the European Parliament. Also, the Left Alliance (V), which left the ‘six-pack’ cabinet in March, had a remarkable election as it won back votes lost in the 2009 election. With an increase by three percentage points, the party now enjoys over 9% of the vote share and one seat in the Parliament. While V leader Merja Kyllönen regrets that the success of the left has happened at the expense of the SDP, as was indeed the case in large parts of Europe, she is satisfied about the party’s comeback in the political arena in Finland, as in Europe at large.

Cannibalism on the left flank aside, it may be said that the Finnish election contains few political sensations. Despite an absolute loss of votes, the five-party cabinet is performing surprisingly well in a context where the political elite has received a severe bashing from the public. In neighbouring EU-member states Sweden and Denmark, government parties performed much worse. And, while the left camp in Finland did not do as well as its Swedish colleagues, the real underperformer was the nationalist PS. It is underperforming as three major tendencies in Finnish politics theoretically should have worked in its favour. First of all, there is a strong Euroskeptic trend in Europe, as indeed in Finland. With six extra-parliamentary parties fighting for seats in the European Parliament on the basis of EU-critiques, several flavours of Euroskepticism were on the menu. Secondly, compared to PS’s previous election results in the national election in 2011 in which the party experienced a significant success, many expected the PS to maintain this momentum. With national elections usually focused on national issues and not the EU, it did not appear far-fetched to expect the PS to improve in this arena. Also, the PS campaign has been absent of any overt blunders. Thirdly, the presence of the Euro(crisis) should play in their hands. One might therefore think that it would be in Finland that the far-right will advance and not in the Nordic neighbours in the west. Instead, Finnish voters defied this trend and rewarded parties on the centre-right and far-left.

Denmark

This stands in particular stark contrast to the election results in Denmark, where the far-right Danish People’s Party (DF) undoubtedly secured an overwhelming victory to almost double it’s vote share. With 26.6% of the votes, and four of Denmark’s 13 seats, DF emerges as the largest Danish party in the European Parliament. Morten Messerschmidt, DF’s top-candidate and the Danish politician to receive the most personal votes in history, interpreted the victory as: “I see it as a clear indication that the Danes want the EU back on track… Around Europe we are some democratic, civilised but EU critical parties … who now try to steer back the EU to what it is all about.” For the DF, as for the Swedish Sweden Democrats, the EU is all about the inner market, which they both favour and wish to have full access to. But, the European project becomes uncomfortable when it starts regulating issues that they see as national. Hence, the anti-immigration and pro-law and order DF laments the decline of Danish sovereignty, or the increase in the power of the EU regarding foreign policy, social welfare, or immigration, and particularly views open borders as having led to a significant increase in crime committed by EU citizens from Central and Eastern Europe.

The second largest party is the Social democrats, party of prime minister Helle Thorning Schmidt, and comparably received 19.1% of the votes and three seats, which is a decrease by 2%. This is a disappointing result, but not as disappointing as that of the Liberals, the party of government from 2001 to 2011 that suffered a relatively humiliating decline to 16.7% of the votes and two seats, prompting a lot of soul searching. The Conservative People’s Party and Socialist People’s Party both presumably lost votes to the DF, respectively declining in support to 11% and 9.1% of the votes and one seat each. The only other successful parties included the left-of-centre and government party the Social Liberals and right-of-centre Liberal Alliance, as both increased their vote shares by over 2%. Yet this was only enough for the former to re-enter the European Parliament for the first time since the 2004 election. Finally, cross-political People’s Movement against the EU managed to maintain its support of over 8% and one seat, although this result pales in comparison to the great successes achieved in elections in the 1980s, as the far right has taken control of Euroskepticism.

In other words, while established parties are overrun by the far right in relatively well-off Denmark, we see a different picture in Euro-crisis stricken Finland. With a closer look at these cases, however, it is not very surprising. In Denmark, as in probably most European countries, the socio-economic left-right dimension is increasingly overshadowed by a different dimension, namely that of the international versus the national. Either you consider Europe as a possibility, or you consider it as a threat. Danish People’s Party masters the art of capitalizing on this development, whereas traditional parties do not. To this, there is a related evolution regarding how parties cater to voters’ Euroskeptic sentiments. There is considerable movement across the left-right spectrum here. In the 1970s, 80s, and even 90s, it was the left, or centre-left, in Denmark that provided voters with an EU critical alternative to the pro-European centre and centre-right. The first MEP of the Progress Party, which the Danish People’s Party split from in 1995, was Mogens Camre, who was a MP for the Social democrats in the early 1970s and voted against EC-membership along with several other social democrats. As the European project shifted, however, bringing about change that appealed to the left camp, the opposition against the EU shifted. And voters, and indeed partisans as Camre, followed it over there. With the decline of cross-party People’s Movement against the EU, which cooperates with any party on the left-right apart from the far-right, the DF is consequently the most easily perceived alternative for Euro-skeptics. But (and that is a big but), here Euroskepticism is nested in a far-right ideology.

Conclusion

The comparison of the Danish and Finnish cases tells us that the success of the far-right may be explained by economic factors, non-economic Euroskepticism, how well the far-right party campaigns, as well as the response of other parties to their presence. Essentially, how mainstream parties answer to the challenge of the far-right plays an important role. In Denmark, other parties have not effectively replied sufficiently to the Euroskeptic views of voters, neither by offering policy options nor by addressing the debate, so the DF remains as either the more genuine or the more distinct regarding Euroskepticism. In Finland, a quite different development has taken place over the last few years. Cognisant of the appeal of the PS and Euroskepticism, the Finnish government has hardened their stance on EU negotiations, such as demanding unanimity for decision-making of the European Stability Mechanism, and blocking the entry of Rumania and Bulgaria into the Schengen area. That is, as voters’ Euroskepticism became clear for any one to see due to the success of the PS in 2011 national election, the government parties have shifted their stance in national EU policies. It is too early to say if this marks the beginning of a fundamental change in Finnish integration policy, but at least it seems as if this shift towards the EU has absorbed some of the Euroskeptic sentiments, which only three years ago seemed so profuse. Again, this goes to show that the success of Euroskepticism and far-right parties is partially explained by the nature and degree to which the established parties on the centre-left and centre-right respond. Traditionally thought of as a very homogenous group of countries, this story also indicate how different the political landscapes are in the Nordic corner(s) of Europe actually are.

References

Green-Pedersen, C (2012) A Giant fast Asleep? : Party Incentives and Politicization of European Integration. Political Studies, Vol. 60, p. 115-130.

Raunio, T & Wiberg, M (2008) Too little, too late? : Comparing the Engagement of Nordic Parliaments in European Union Matters. In Barrett, G., ed. National Parliaments and the European Union: the Constitutional Challenge for the Oireachtas and Other Member State Legislatures. Dublin: Clarus Press.

Tom Verthé

In Belgium the elections for the European Parliament have in the past always been held together with the regional elections. Because of this particularity the European elections have long since been considered second-order elections in Belgium (Reif & Schmitt, 1980; Van Aelst & Lefevere, 2012). Because of the split in the party system since the 70s, the regional elections in Belgium are clearly a first-order election since, for the larger part, there is no difference in terms of voting population and party offer between the regional and federal elections (Russo & Deschouwer, 2014). Federal (and even European) elections in Belgium are – at least from an institutional and organizational perspective – almost entirely regional (see the additional note under Table 1 for a more detailed description of the electoral system utilized for the European election). Another reason for its first-order character is the absence of a link between the regional elections and the federal government formation (Schakel & Jeffery, 2013).

The campaign

All of this holds for the period up to 2014. On 25^th May, however, Belgium went to the polls for three elections instead of two. As a result of the 6^th state reform by the Di Rupo government, the federal, regional and European elections will from now on always be held on the same day. For this reason the federal elections will be held every five years, instead of every four, to match the European election cycle. In case the federal government is prematurely toppled new national elections can be held, but the resulting government can only stay on until the next European election and will then automatically have to resign.

Belgians thus not only voted for the European and regional parliaments, but also for the federal one. This is an extremely important difference knowing that the last federal elections took place when the government fell in 2010 and the resulting coalition negotiations took no less than 541 days, an absolute world record.

In the 2012 municipal elections the Flemish nationalists of the New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) scored big in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part) and the pre-election polls showed they would easily become the biggest party in Flanders this time around as well and even continue to grow bigger. The incredible rise of N-VA has raised serious concerns for the feasibility of the next federal coalition formation. It was feared that their continued success would test the limits of the Belgian federal construction. The entire campaign was thus dominated by the federal election and what would happen with the post-election coalition negotiations, overshadowing even the regional elections. The European one came third in line, and at quite a distance. Stating that the European election served as a third-rate election (Irwin, 1995) is not an exaggeration. Europe was almost completely absent from the run-up to the elections. Apart from the obligatory television debate, Europe was not an issue in the campaign.

This might sound strange for a country that was a founding member of the EU and is the host of the Commission and the European Parliament (for three quarters of the time at least). Belgium also provides the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and unlike the vast majority of the EU member states it also had one of the official candidates for the Commission presidency: former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

Yet, despite all that, Europe never surfaced as a full-fledged campaign item. Media mostly focused on the national issues and when they did turn their eyes to the EU it was mostly to assess the chances of Guy Verhofstadt becoming President of the Commission.

An additional reason for the absence of the EU in the electoral campaign can be found in the lack of anti-European parties. The only anti-European party that cleared the threshold is the extreme-right Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang). They want to get rid of the EU because it infringes upon the right of individual countries to regulate (i. (https://loscoches.com/) e. restrict) immigration and uphold their borders. They promote the idea of a confederation of nation-states as an alternative for the EU, rather than moulding the EU into a more federal framework. In 2009 there was another Belgian Eurosceptic party that got into the EP, List Dedecker (LDD). The party was only popular for a short while and the polls showed they would have great difficulty conquering a single seat in the federal or Flemish parliament this time around. The party president thus decided to stand in just one province for the federal election, which was regarded as the best strategic choice. Its EP seat was thus vacated before the elections even took place. None of the other parties could profit from this though, since Belgium (and more specifically the Dutch-speaking electoral college) lost one seat by default in the reshuffling due to the EU-expansion and the new cap on the number of MEPs.

The results

As you can see from the results there was one very clear winner. The New-Flemish Alliance gained almost 17 percentage points and conquered one third of the seats in the Dutch-speaking electoral college. This is completely thanks to its success at the federal and regional level. N-VA’s views on Europe are quite blurry. On the one hand they question whether the EU should keep all of the competences it currently owns, but on the other hand they claim that Flemish independence – their core issue – will only be possible within the context of a stronger EU. The EU thus only served (marginally) as a support for its nationalist agenda and not as a separate campaign item. It suffices to say that rallying voters around a European theme does not drive their current success. During the campaign they also made it clear they want to leave the Greens – European Free Alliance party group, but refused to say which other party group they would be joining after the election.

The traditional parties that made up the outgoing federal government – social democrats, Christian democrats and liberals – largely managed to stand their ground, which is quite remarkable in the current political climate. Apart from a small loss for the Flemish Christian democrats (CD&V), it seems it was mostly the extreme-right Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang) that paid for the victory of N-VA. On election night it was even unclear for a while whether they would still be represented in the EP at all. In the end it turns out they will, but it was a close call.

Another remarkable decline is that of the French-speaking ecologists (ECOLO), especially when compared to the fact that their Dutch-speaking sister party gained almost 3 percentage points (even though this did not result in an extra seat). These results also mimic the federal and regional ones. Some have stated that a green party that scored over 22% in the 2009 EP elections had no way to go but down. A probable explanation could also be found in the fact that they – at least in part – paid for the rise of the communist left (PTB-GO!) in Wallonia and Brussels. These allegations will have to be verified by other means, but it is quite clear that the answers should not be sought at the European level.

The single EP seat in the German-speaking electoral college (with a population of roughly 77.000) has been held by the Christian Social Party (CSP) since 1994 and remains quite firmly in their possession.

Conclusion

There have been quite some shifts at the last European elections in Belgium. The traditional parties making up the outgoing federal government managed to hold more or less steady. The bigger shifts can be found a bit more left and right on the ideological spectrum. Unlike for other European countries it would, however, be a mistake to interpret this in the light of some anti- or pro-European sentiments. In Belgium the elections for the European parliament were never part of parties’ campaigns, nor were they a hot topic during any of the debates in any of the media. The most important cause of this is probably the coincidence of federal, regional and European elections. The federal and regional elections took precedence over the European one, which comes at no surprise given the recent Belgian political history. The question as to what caused these vote fluctuations obviously needs to be further investigated on the basis of election data, voter surveys, etc. and it is possible that some part of the population did indeed cast its vote for the EP with European motives in mind. But most of the answers will for sure not have to be sought at the European level. And if from now on the regional, federal and European elections will be held on the same day – as has been agreed upon – chances are the European parliament election will have a very hard time moving up from its third-rate status in Belgium.

References

Irwin, G. (1995) Second-order or third-rate? Issues in the campaign for the elections for the European parliament 1994. Electoral Studies 14 (2): 183-199

Reif, K., and H. Schmitt (1980) Nine 2nd-Order National Elections – a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results. European Journal of Political Research 8 (1): 3-44.

Russo, L. and K. Deschouwer (2014) Electoral nationalization in a denationalized party system: the case(s) of Belgium. Paper presented at the 3rd European Conference on Comparative Electoral Research.

Schakel, A. H. and C. Jeffery (2013) Are regional elections really ‘second-order’ elections? Regional Studies 47 (3): 323-341

Van Aelst, P. and J. Lefevere (2012) Has Europe got anything to do with the European elections? A study on split-ticket voting in the Belgian regional and European elections of 2009. European Union Politics 13 (1): 3-25

Konstantinos Athanasiadis

Abstention ruled supreme in the European elections held on the divided island of Cyprus (divided between the Republic of Cyprus and the so called “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” recognised only by Turkey). According to the Ministry of the Interior more than the half of the electorate (56%) (Ministry of the Interior 2014) opted for abstention from the electoral process as a token of growing discomfort against the political system and the austerity measures put forward since last year. Paradoxically though, the high abstention rate provided a crucial lifeline to the political system of Cyprus as it enhanced the rather meagre results of almost all political formations on the island.

The results

Specifically, the governing centre-right party of the Democratic Rally (DISY) managed to hold its ground despite the unpopular reform package implemented as part of the rescue plan between Cyprus and the EU. Thus, the party of the currently serving President of the Republic of Cyprus (Cyprus has a presidential system), Nicos Anastasiades gained 37.8% of the votes increasing by 1.8% its share in comparison to the last European elections of 2009. Interestingly, this figure reflects the highest score achieved in the European elections for the party of the Cypriot centre-right.

Yet it should be noted that DISY was joined in this campaign by the European Party (EVROKO), which in the last 2009 elections received 4.2% of the Cypriot vote. Interestingly, EVROKO has actually ‘repatriated’ since it seceded from DISY in 2004, due to the latter’s support for the island’s reunification plan sponsored by the then serving UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (2004).

The former Communists of the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL) came at the second place attaining 27% of the votes, which represented a 8% diminution of its political influence since 2009. Both DISY and AKEL won 2 seats out of 6 that Cyprus is allotted in the European Parliament. Moreover, the centre-left leaning Democratic Party (DIKO) also saw its forces growing diminishing in comparison to the 2009 elections for the European Parliament (-1.5%) as in the meantime it struggled to overcome internal frictions that reflected differences of opinion related to its participation in a coalition government with DISY (it won one seat). The social democratic party of EDEK secured the last seat, whilst losing 3.8% of its 2009 share (Table 1). Finally, Symmachia Politon (Citizens’ Alliance) led by Giorgos Lillikas -former Foreign Minister and candidate in the last presidential elections (2013)- failed to elect any representative gaining 6.8% of the votes.

Ironically, the face-saving value of abstention is mirrored clearly if the electoral results are translated into absolute terms (number of votes gained in 2009 elections). The conservative ruling-party of DISY loses 14% of the popular vote, AKEL 35.5%, DIKO 25% and EDEK43% (Persianis 2014).

The campaign

Public discussions in the period that preceded the elections were dominated by the so called ‘national issue’ –that is the renewed effort towards reunification-, and the struggle to overcome the effects of the financial crisis. Related to attempts of economic recovery is the endeavour by the government of Cyprus to turn the country into a transit point of energy networks that bind together the Middle East and the EU in consistence with the latter’s policy of energy diversification. Hence, public discourse was captured to a great extent by the endeavour to extract natural gas from the Cypriot continental shelf that aims exactly at underlining the island’s geostrategic value for the EU. The official visit paid by the US Vice President John Biden in Cyprus just a few days before the European elections, and the results ensuing from it did contribute further to ‘displace’ discourse on the EU elections to the fringes of public dialogue.

Equally preponderant to the discussions on energy security is the impact of the financial crisis that badly hit the island’s thriving services’ sector. Cyprus has signed in March 2013 a bailout agreement with the Eurogroup, the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF that entailed an €10 billion funding package in exchange for significant reforms in the banking sector, increased scrutiny over money-laundering and privatisations that endangered the country’s status as tax haven. Therefore, the debate on the role of the EU was framed also in connection to the ramifications of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the consequences associated to it such as the rising unemployment, the deconstruction of the welfare state and reduced salaries.

It is against this background that the low turnout should be interpreted. Cypriots chose to demonstrate their disapprobation to the political system by turning their backs to the elections for the European Parliament. Low turnout should also be evaluated as a sense of dissatisfaction and injustice committed against the citizens of Cyprus as reflected in the painful bailout plan.

It is noteworthy, that according to the latest Eurobarometer, Cypriots show an immense distrust to their political parties (91%) thus revealing a raging latent institutional crisis. Pessimism regarding the prospects of the national economy is also pervasive since Cypriots evaluate as ‘bad’ the state of the national economy (97%) coming second after the Greeks. Regarding the EU, Cypriots feel that it is responsible for the austerity (77%), whilst the vast majority (86%) expresses its reluctance whether Brussels takes into serious consideration its preoccupations (Phileleftheros 2014).

An interpretation

In conclusion, the conservative Democratic Rally shines as one of the few examples of ruling parties that managed to increase their share in the European elections. Although its share in absolute numbers followed the general decreasing trend as mentioned above, its gains in proportional terms must be appraised as an indication of support for reforms and recovery by a significant segment of the electorate. Besides, the opposition leftist AKEL is undergoing a process of re-organisation that followed its defeat in the 2013 presidential elections, which is to be attributed partially to the controversial management of the national economy by the then serving leftist President of the Republic, Demetris Christofias.

Therefore, the results of the European elections in Cyprus do not imply an earthquake of the magnitude observed elsewhere. Yet abstention confirms that Cypriots feel disillusioned with the EU, and ultimately with their political system. Moreover, abstention rings the bell of a looming social crisis, which for the time being remains latent as the Republic of Cyprus tries to tackle the challenges of reunification, economic recovery and energy security.

References

Kathimerini. “Apochorei to DIKO apo Kyvernisi Anastasiade” (DIKO withdraws from Anastasiade’s Government). Kathimerini, 22 February, 2014. https://www.kathimerini.gr/755169/article/epikairothta/kosmos/apoxwrei-to-dhko-apo-kyvernhsh-anastasiadh

Kathimerini Cyprus. “56,03% ton Politon Epeleksan na Apechoun Apo tis Kalpes.” (56,03% Opted for Abstention). Kathimerini Cyprus, 26 May, 2014. https://www.kathimerini.com.cy/index.php?pageaction=kat&modid=1&artid=172584

Kyproekloges.com. “European Elections 2014.” https://www.kyproekloges.com/index.php/ipopsifioi-eurovouleftes-kypros-2014

Ministry of the Interior. “European Elections 2014.” https://live.elections.moi.gov.cy/English/EUROPEAN_ELECTIONS_2014/Islandwide

Persianis, Michalis. “Pos I Apochi Volepse ta Kommata.” (How Absention Benefited Political Parties). Kathimerini Cyprus, 26 May, 2014. https://www.kathimerini.com.cy/index.php?pageaction=kat&modid=1&artid=172567

Phileleftheros. “Evrovarometro: Oi Kyprioi den Empistevontai Thesmous. (Eurobarometer: Cypriots do not Trust Institutions).” Phileleftheros, 26 February 2014. https://www.philenews.com/el-gr/eidiseis-politiki/39/187447/evrovarometro-oi-kyprioi-den-empisteyontai-thesmous

Patrick Dumont and Raphaël Kies

The context

For the first time since 1979, European elections were held separately from national elections in Luxembourg. The simultaneity of elections decided on before the first direct European elections (as Luxembourgish MPs were already elected for a five-year mandate and that the next scheduled election was to be held in 1979 anyway) and government stability made all seven previous national and European elections fall on the same day, with a number of consequences ensuing. For instance, as European elections are fought on a unique, nationwide constituency until 2009 all party heavyweights used to be present on both lists to ensure a good result for their European list (in Luxembourg voters can cast a vote for a party, one or several candidates on the same or on different lists, what is termed inter-party panachage). As their leaders were elected on both accounts, they would subsequently decide on which mandate they would choose according to the expected results of the national government formation. In 2009 it was decided among the main parties that there would be no more double candidacies (the smaller parties kept on practicing it however). A second consequence was that the European election campaign was continuously eclipsed by the concurrent national one, making the election even more of a second-order type.

This context changed for the coming 2014 elections, as the Christian democrat-Socialist (CSV) government led by PM Juncker (who had been PM since 1995) collapsed in July 2013 – for a series of affairs concerning, among others, the lack of governmental control of the national intelligence – leading to the first anticipated elections since the late 1950s. Not only this made the elections bound to be distinct, opening for the possibility of a genuinely ‘European’ campaign for the May 2014 elections, but these anticipated elections held in October 2013 led to the formation of a coalition excluding the largest party of the country that had only been out of government for five years (1974-1979) in the post-war era. The CSV electoral losses (from 26 to 23 seats out of 60) allowed for the formation of an alternative coalition made of the Liberals (13 seats), the Socialists who had triggered the government crisis by not supporting the Christian democrat PM (13 seats) and the Greens (6 seats), leaving Juncker the experienced and European-wide known leader (often cited as potential President of the European Commission and chairmain of the Euro group for eight years) in the opposition (Dumont, Kies: forthcoming).

The 2009 national elections had been a high for the CSV who also kept its three seats out of six at the European parliament, for only one for the LSAP (Socialists), the DP (Liberals), and the Greens despite losing about 6% at the EP election compared to their 2004 score (in 2004 PM Juncker headed the CSV list for EP election as well as the list of his party for the national election in the South constituency; in 2009 he was only candidate for the national election). In a country where there has never been a real cleavage amongst parties and voters on European issues, the main stakes of this first separate European election are 1) again the fate of ex-PM Juncker chosen by the European People’s Party as lead figure and potential President of the European Commission despite not being candidate for the EP election and 2) the electoral fate of the new coalition parties and whether or not one the largest of these three (the DP or the LSAP) will manage to gain a second seat to the detriment of the CSV. The few opinion polls published since the national elections are not quite informative regarding the likely distribution of seats after the 25 May election. They however show that despite this campaign being the first ‘Europe-only’ one,[1] and that their previous PM is candidate for the presidency of the Commission (more than 80% support this candidacy and his party is still, by far, considered to be the most credible to represent the interests of Luxembourg in the EU) about a third of respondents are not interested in it.

Campaign strategies

Altogether no less than nine parties compete for the six Luxembourgish MEP seats, most of which without any hope of getting any of these but with the only ambition of displaying their continuous presence on the political scene after national elections where all of these small parties fared relatively well. This is the case for the PID (Party for Integral Democracy) that wants to reach the 2% it almost got at the October 2013 election, the Pirate Party that had managed to reach almost 3% then, and the KPL (Communist Party, 1.5% at the national election). The Left (on the rise in 2013) and the sovereignist ADR (which always fared worse at European elections than in national ones and is continuously losing votes since 1999) cannot expect to score the double-digit result that would allow them to dream about being allowed to express their less Euro-enthusiastic stances in Brussels and Strasbourg. These five parties, that altogether make for 5 out of 60 seats in the national parliament, are indeed the less Euro-enthusiastic: for instance The Left competes under the slogan ‘Basta! Rebuild Europe’ (a critique of the neoliberal conduct of the current Europe), ADR under ‘Less Europe, more Luxembourg’ (with a Europe of sovereign nation states, stricter immigration policies) and the PID would want the Euro to be abandoned and national currencies re-introduced. Surprisingly for a Luxembourgish party (as it would lead to a move of the general secretariat from Luxembourg to Brussels) the Pirate Party campaigns for a single site of the EP, Brussels, and for the abolishment of any form of veto rights in the Council. The four larger parties see in a stronger Europe the possibility of a stronger Luxembourg. The CSV campaigns along these lines and on its image of competence outside of the borders of the Grand Duchy, acquired in part by its quasi permanence at the helm of the national government and capacity for seeking consensus in European spheres under the slogan ‘For Europe, for Luxembourg’. Together with the Socialists the Christian democrats want a more social and solidary Europe (a message brought by Juncker as well in his campaign for the presidence of the EU Commission, that fits with his home party message but may fit less with the rest of the EPP) and highlight the Community method. The DP and the Greens largely share the latter stance but also campaign for a more democratic and transparent Europe. The first would like a convention followed by a European-wide referendum held on the same day to revise the treaties and to give the EP a real right of legislative initiative. The Greens also want to keep on enlarging EP powers but also support more recourse to popular initiatives. Finally, a number of parties (Greens, The Left, PID, Pirate Party and KPL) oppose TAFTA and would cancel its negociation (Esch-sur-Alzette, the second largest city of the Grand Duchy, even adopted a motion supporting this goal). The other parties consider that we are only at an early stage of the negociations and await for further information, while declaring that they will devote a great attention to its scrutiny. Viviane Reding outgoing Commissioner and currently on leave for the electoral campaign declared she would suggest a pause of TAFTA negotiations to inform citizens and stakeholders.

Results

The CSV is by far the winner of the 2014 European elections with over 37.6% of votes, 6.3% more than the 2009 elections and even beating its record established at the 2004 election when PM Juncker was pulling the EP list. For the first time it was the plurality winner in all municipalities of the country. This exceptional and largely unforeseen score, is due to the participation of Juncker for the presidency of the European Commission (also defined as the seventh candidate of the list), to the good personal score of their chief candidate and incumbent European commissioner Viviane Reding and probably as well to the frustration of some voters that the CSV had been excluded from the outgoing national government despite remaining by fact the first party of the country at the unscheduled 2013 national election.

Another surprise was the score of the LSAP, which fell to 11.75%, losing 7.75% over 2009, a score that corresponds to exactly half of its average result in the preceding seven direct EP elections (it had already lost 3.5% in 2009 compared to 2004, making its worst score at EP elections by crossing for the first time the 20% thresholds). With this score, the Luxembourg Socialists became only the fourth political force in the European elections, behind the Greens and the DP, while in they had been the second force from 1984 to 2009. This important drop can be explained not only as a reaction of some voters to the coalition change after the anticipated national election but also, and probably more essentially, by the good score of the Left party (5.8%; +2.4%) and the absence of strong candidates on the LSAP list. Their six candidates competing for the election were all indeed newcomers in the European arena and their leading candidate, Mady Delvaux-Stehres, a well-known figure in the country, had lost in terms of popular appeal by undertaking a controversial reform of the national educational while minister in the government that collapsed in 2013.

The elections were finally characterized by the fact the Green party, despite also losing votes, became this time the second largest party with only 15%, bypassing the LSAP but also the Liberals, party of the new PM, who lost about 4%. This change in rankings of the parties was made possible by the good personal result of their leading candidate and incumbent MEP Claude Turmes, and conversely the disappointing personal score of the liberal head of list and also MEP candidate Charles Goerens.

Overall then, the parties of the new coalition lost no less than 13% compared to the previous EP election, a result as explained above that must be read as a reaction against the composition and first months of the new government as well as due to the usual better result of the CSV at the EP election when its leader is either candidate on the list or as this time competing to become President of the European Commission. The CSV gains do not however correspond to the losses of the coalition parties (and the CSV result is only half a percent higher than the one obtained in 2004 and was its record until 2014). The other winners are the smaller parties who competed for the EP election. With their much less Euro-enthusiatic stances, and without much hope of reaping one seat, these all (except the Communist KPL) gained in votes in 2014: the sovereignist ADR reached 7.53% (+0.1%, still far for its 8.99% of 1999), Déi Lénk progressed to 5.75% (+2.4%) and the Pirate Party made a successful first appearance with 4,3%.

Despite these changes in the score of the parties, the distribution of MEPs’ seats remained the same. CSV kept its 3 seats, while DP and Déi Gréng, and LSAP managed to keep their seat.

References

Dumont, P., Kies R. (forthcoming), “Luxembourg”, EJPR.