It was one of the more bizarre but revealing moments of the elections to the European Parliament. Late on Sunday night, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen excitedly announced that her European People’s Party (EPP) had “won” the elections, and that the “centre is holding” in European politics, she began her victory speech by declaring that, first and foremost, she wanted to “thank the voters.”
It was bizarre because, as The European Conservative’s live blog pointed out at the time, nobody had voted for von der Leyen. Not a single one of the millions of European voters who went to the polls had put their cross next to her name. That is hardly surprising, since ‘Europe’s President’ was not even standing for election.
Even though the European Commission is the powerful body that initiates all European Union legislation, its president has no democratic authority or accountability at all. President Ursula was appointed in 2019 by a qualified majority in the European Council—comprising member states’ heads of government—and then formally (but narrowly) endorsed by members of the European Parliament. If she succeeds in her campaign to be ‘re-elected’ President this time around, the peoples of Europe who she aspires to rule over will once again have no direct say in the matter at all.
Her bizarre speech was also revealing. Because it confirmed the widening reality gap between the world as seen from the Brussels ‘bubble,’ occupied by von der Leyen and the EU elites, and the outlook of millions of Europeans.
Within Brussels, President Ursula-Through-The-Looking-Glass might have been technically correct to say that the centre held in the 2024 EU elections. The EPP group, largely comprising centrist parties masquerading as conservatives, did indeed remain the largest group in the parliament. The EPP should probably still be able to cobble together a voting majority in the parliament alongside its left-wing and green allies—even though those groups were the biggest losers in these elections.
But outside the Brussels bubble, beyond the appearance of business-as-usual in the closed world of commissioners, Eurocrats and parliamentary committees in smoke-free rooms, and often behind the media headlines, the elections confirmed that a wind of change is blowing across Europe.
Sovereigntist and national conservative parties, opposed to the increasing centralisation of power in Brussels, were the biggest winners. There were triumphs for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, and Viktor Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, alongside successes for the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Partij voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands, and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, to name but a few.
Of course these EU elections, held in 27 member states over four days, had important national differences. But the common thread running through many of them was the popular rejection of the orthodoxies imposed by the EU elites, from the punitive farmer-slaughtering Green Deal to their disastrous, city-ruining mass migration policies.
In the run-up to the EU elections, discussing the welcome prospect of a populist revolt, I wrote here that
We are witnessing the public eruption of a deep-seated divide between Two Europes.
There is the one centred on the elitist citadels of Brussels, Luxembourg City or Frankfurt, where EU commissioners, judges and central bankers issue their rules and edicts. And then there is the real one, where millions of Europeans have to deal with the consequences for their way of life.
That ever-clearer divide ensures that populism is not going away anytime soon. There is nothing superficial or short-term about this people’s revolt. It has been coming for a long time.
The election results, and the reactions to them, have surely revealed the Two Europes in stark relief. This is a divide that goes to the heart of democracy, and its two elements, demos and kratos.
We can see the official Europe of kratos—power or control—where the smug Brussels bureaucrats celebrate that they have “won” another five years in the clover, and immediately forget about the electorate. Politics is reduced to the sordid spectacle of von der Leyen and other elitist technocrats scrambling behind closed doors to stitch up deals that will keep them in power, without any regard to what the people might have voted for.
Outside their bubble is the real Europe of the demos—the people—where millions of voters have shown their opposition to green austerity and mass migration, and their support for national sovereignty and democracy. They have had enough of a centralised system of control which dictates that ‘more Europe,’ and therefore less national democracy, is the answer to everything.
Little wonder that in places such as Germany, it was those farthest removed from the centre of EU power—the working classes and young people—who came out strongly to support the populist revolt.
Despite their complacent-sounding celebrations, the EU elites know they are still in a political civil war. See their shrill post-election rising attempts to brand the ‘far right’ as neo-fascists who must be cancelled, censored, banned. And their ever-shriller campaign to scapegoat Russia-backed ‘disinformation’ for their electoral setbacks. Translation: ‘Don’t blame the Brussels oligarchy, blame the stupid, childlike voters for being led astray by Putin’s populist pied pipers!’ Expect their attacks on democracy and free speech to get worse.
This is now a fundamental divide about the future of the continent. That is why, as our managing editor Ellen Kryger Fantini argued this week, there is no room for trying to compromise with the “mushy middle” in Brussels. To borrow from the famous words of American novelist John Dos Passos, describing the deeply divided United States a century ago: All right, we are two Europes.
As a democracy-loving Brexiteer from England, working in Brussels and watching the demand to ‘take back control’ spread across the EU, I know which Europe I stand with. Time to take sides, and go on the offensive. No surrender.
All Right, We Are Two Europes
Photo: John THYS / AFP
It was one of the more bizarre but revealing moments of the elections to the European Parliament. Late on Sunday night, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen excitedly announced that her European People’s Party (EPP) had “won” the elections, and that the “centre is holding” in European politics, she began her victory speech by declaring that, first and foremost, she wanted to “thank the voters.”
It was bizarre because, as The European Conservative’s live blog pointed out at the time, nobody had voted for von der Leyen. Not a single one of the millions of European voters who went to the polls had put their cross next to her name. That is hardly surprising, since ‘Europe’s President’ was not even standing for election.
Even though the European Commission is the powerful body that initiates all European Union legislation, its president has no democratic authority or accountability at all. President Ursula was appointed in 2019 by a qualified majority in the European Council—comprising member states’ heads of government—and then formally (but narrowly) endorsed by members of the European Parliament. If she succeeds in her campaign to be ‘re-elected’ President this time around, the peoples of Europe who she aspires to rule over will once again have no direct say in the matter at all.
Her bizarre speech was also revealing. Because it confirmed the widening reality gap between the world as seen from the Brussels ‘bubble,’ occupied by von der Leyen and the EU elites, and the outlook of millions of Europeans.
Within Brussels, President Ursula-Through-The-Looking-Glass might have been technically correct to say that the centre held in the 2024 EU elections. The EPP group, largely comprising centrist parties masquerading as conservatives, did indeed remain the largest group in the parliament. The EPP should probably still be able to cobble together a voting majority in the parliament alongside its left-wing and green allies—even though those groups were the biggest losers in these elections.
But outside the Brussels bubble, beyond the appearance of business-as-usual in the closed world of commissioners, Eurocrats and parliamentary committees in smoke-free rooms, and often behind the media headlines, the elections confirmed that a wind of change is blowing across Europe.
Sovereigntist and national conservative parties, opposed to the increasing centralisation of power in Brussels, were the biggest winners. There were triumphs for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, and Viktor Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, alongside successes for the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Partij voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands, and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, to name but a few.
Of course these EU elections, held in 27 member states over four days, had important national differences. But the common thread running through many of them was the popular rejection of the orthodoxies imposed by the EU elites, from the punitive farmer-slaughtering Green Deal to their disastrous, city-ruining mass migration policies.
In the run-up to the EU elections, discussing the welcome prospect of a populist revolt, I wrote here that
The election results, and the reactions to them, have surely revealed the Two Europes in stark relief. This is a divide that goes to the heart of democracy, and its two elements, demos and kratos.
We can see the official Europe of kratos—power or control—where the smug Brussels bureaucrats celebrate that they have “won” another five years in the clover, and immediately forget about the electorate. Politics is reduced to the sordid spectacle of von der Leyen and other elitist technocrats scrambling behind closed doors to stitch up deals that will keep them in power, without any regard to what the people might have voted for.
Outside their bubble is the real Europe of the demos—the people—where millions of voters have shown their opposition to green austerity and mass migration, and their support for national sovereignty and democracy. They have had enough of a centralised system of control which dictates that ‘more Europe,’ and therefore less national democracy, is the answer to everything.
Little wonder that in places such as Germany, it was those farthest removed from the centre of EU power—the working classes and young people—who came out strongly to support the populist revolt.
Despite their complacent-sounding celebrations, the EU elites know they are still in a political civil war. See their shrill post-election rising attempts to brand the ‘far right’ as neo-fascists who must be cancelled, censored, banned. And their ever-shriller campaign to scapegoat Russia-backed ‘disinformation’ for their electoral setbacks. Translation: ‘Don’t blame the Brussels oligarchy, blame the stupid, childlike voters for being led astray by Putin’s populist pied pipers!’ Expect their attacks on democracy and free speech to get worse.
This is now a fundamental divide about the future of the continent. That is why, as our managing editor Ellen Kryger Fantini argued this week, there is no room for trying to compromise with the “mushy middle” in Brussels. To borrow from the famous words of American novelist John Dos Passos, describing the deeply divided United States a century ago: All right, we are two Europes.
As a democracy-loving Brexiteer from England, working in Brussels and watching the demand to ‘take back control’ spread across the EU, I know which Europe I stand with. Time to take sides, and go on the offensive. No surrender.
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