EU Elections: Rising to the Democratic Moment?

Next week will see the last European Parliament plenary session before the start of the election campaign for a new European Parliament, with voting taking place in early June. After the elections, the EU juggernaut will move on to selecting a new European Commission and European Council president and agreeing a forward-looking five year strategic plan.

But is the EU rising to the democratic moment? Not exactly. With fears that the far right will do well (and better than in 2019) in the European Parliament elections, and with Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, focused on her campaign to get a second term in post, there’s a lot of short-term thinking around that is driving a tactical and damaging move to the right.

The EU, of course, is not the only place where election tactics may drive out good policy-making and serious political arguments. In the UK, Rishi Sunak is busy still banging his Rwanda drum alongside hints he would take the UK out of the ECHR. Nor is probable next UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, faring much better, with policy flip flops, retreats on serious green funding, and with fiscal and migration policies plus Brexit red lines that would sit comfortably with most Tories. In Scotland, Humza Yousaf has veered around too over the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas companies, and is now having to deal with a row over woodburners.

Each election has its own political context, and the European Parliament elections reflect the politics of each of the 27 member states and not just the politics of EU institutions in Brussels. But pandering to the right is one element that has looked worryingly consistent in recent months.

Political and Legal Scramble

There is always a scramble as the European Parliament comes to the end of its term to get new laws and directives through, and not lose all the work across Commission, Council and Parliament, that may have gone into a new piece of legislation in the weeks, months and years before the election. The new Parliament can pick up pieces of work again but this is far from automatic.

So, in recent weeks and months, there has been agreement on new EU fiscal rules, a new AI directive and, just last week, a set of ten votes in the European Parliament which meant the EU’s fairly regressive migration and asylum pact had made it through before the deadline.

The European Commission has also been making other moves on the migration front too. Last month, Ursula von der Leyen was in Egypt to sign an aid deal aimed, in part, at stronger border controls. A similar deal was done in the autumn with Tunisia. These deals have been strongly, and rightly, criticised for not respecting EU human right standards and – along too with support to the Libyan coastguard – for putting political aims ahead of migrant and refugee rights and a decent migration policy, tarnishing the EU in the process.

This approach to migration is clearly aimed at potential far-right voters and also at centre-right ones too. Yet, it is not clear that voters return to the centre just because its politicians choose to mimic far right policies and concerns – some argue there is evidence to suggest the opposite is the case. It can validate voting for the far-right.

But election concerns, both for the parliament and for her own position, seem to have strongly driven Ursula von der Leyen’s rapidly changing political priorities and positions in recent months. Having impressed many with driving through much of the flagship European Green Deal in her term in office, von der Leyen has backtracked strongly in recent weeks. In the face of protesting farmers on the streets in many EU member states, and with her political grouping, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), becoming increasingly climate-sceptic, the Commission President has shifted.

The result is that, while the EU has made substantial – but still not enough – progress on industry and energy emissions targets, the Commission has now retreated on crucial green agricultural and related measures. In February, Ursula von der Leyen announced her plan to withdraw the ‘farm to fork’ green measure that aimed to cut pesticide use in half by 2030. A wider analysis by Euronews found that 2/3 of ‘farm to fork’ measures were unlikely to have been implemented by the time the new Commission takes office in November.

The Commission then went further in recent weeks backtracking on several Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) measures aimed at creating a greener agriculture that supports biodiversity. The European Parliament is expected to vote next week to agree many of these measures that will undermine a green CAP despite the protest letter sent by 52 environmental NGOs just last week. These revisions will remove environmental compliance checks for small farms, weaken or make voluntary space for biodiversity measures and other green farming practices, and give member states more flexibility. Nor have the measures gone through normal consultation procedures. In Brussels now, politics, urgency and elections is all.

The EU may look better on international measures. Its carbon border adjustment mechanism is up and running as a trial (before full implementation in 2026). But last month, EU forest protection measures to block imports of products grown on areas of deforestation were delayed, with no countries yet to be designated as ‘high risk’.

This climate backlash is not only coming from the European Commission and Parliament. The crucial nature restoration directive that had finally gone through the European Parliament, despite opposition from the EPP, has got stuck in what should have been a final, formal stage in the Council of Ministers. But Hungary switched sides and for now there is no qualified majority to finally pass the measure through. The EU has one of the lowest biodiversity intactness scores globally. But its scaled-back nature restoration measure looks like it may fall at the last hurdle.

The EU’s Next Five Years

This five year key moment of new Parliament and Commission, new European Council President and a new EU strategic plan should be a moment of energy and hope. Yet, as reported by Politico,  an early draft of the next EU five year plan, led by Council President Charles Michel, in discussion with member states, has put security, foreign policy and migration up front and minimised environmental issues with the word ‘green’ apparently not used at all, and no mention of the European Green Deal.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza, are certainly key challenges for the EU – and on Gaza it has ineffectively split.

But climate and biodiversity crises will not wait for politicians short-term electioneering nor for geopolitics to calm down. And the EU’s politicians need to take the climate and green arguments into the election and beyond. As the UN climate secretary, Simon Steil, said last week, the next two years are crucial – climate actions have to happen now, there is no more time to lose.