In June 2024, Europeans will have the chance to vote in the most-important-ever elections to the European Parliament (EP). It is your chance to have a say in the way that the European Union is run.
There’s a reason that EP elections have a historically low turnout. Many people don’t bother voting because EU politics seem a distant affair. They think that what happens inside the Brussels ‘bubble’ has no real impact on our everyday lives.
The truth is, however, that today EU policies are shaping everything around us and Brussels is turning into Europe’s primary political battlefield. That’s why these elections matter.
The increasing centralization of power in the EU means that member states and their elected governments have less and less say in shaping their own destiny. Brussels has sought to undermine border controls and to dictate how many migrants member states must take; to impose a Green Deal and the shift to renewable energy, even at the expense of our industries and farmers; to dictate what member states teach their children; to curtail our freedom of speech in online spaces; and to determine how we Europeans defend ourselves from external threats.
On all these issues and many more, national interests must now often be subordinated to the will of the Brussels bureaucracy, or the majority within EU institutions. In response, there is a populist rebellion brewing across Europe, against the centralized power of Brussels and in defense of national sovereignty—a democratic revolt that could start to change the face of the EU through the 2024 elections.
So, who and what are we voting for in June? And what difference could it make?
The European Parliament
Of the three main EU institutions, only the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected directly by voters in each member state. This means that, while you have limited power to influence who’s making decisions on your behalf in the European Commission and the Council, you have a direct say in who’s sitting in the EU Parliament.
As a body, the Parliament is a co-legislator. Unlike national parliaments, it cannot directly put forward and pass its own laws. But it has the power to approve or reject the Commission’s proposals, to modify each law, and to propose its own to the Commission.
Alongside the Council the Parliament also decides how the EU spends the money it gets from taxpayers.
This means that MEPs have a say in every decision coming from Brussels that affects your life: from taxation, migration, and the green transition to Europe’s common defense policy.
The European Parliament can also exercise oversight over other, unelected EU institutions. The MEPs we elect have to endorse the president of the European Commission and approve the appointment of the European Commission as a whole (see below).
This year, we’re electing 720 MEPs to the Parliament, with each country delegating a fixed number of deputies, proportional to its population size. Germany (96), France (81), and Italy (76) have the most MEPs, while Malta, Cyprus, and Luxembourg have the fewest, electing six MEPs each.
EU elections are held every five years on the same weekend in all 27 member states. The 2024 EU elections will be held between June 6th and 9th.
What are the parties in the EU Parliament?
During EU elections, citizens in member states are casting their votes for national parties, who once elected then join larger alliances in the European Parliament, called parliamentary groups.
Currently, there are seven groups in the European Parliament. These include three groups on the right: the center-right EPP, the national-sovereigntist ECR, and the populist ID. There are four groups on the left: the liberal Renew, the social- democratic S&D, the environmentalist Greens, and the radical The Left. See pages 20-25 for an outline of the groups and their election manifestos.
These groups do not form a government as in national parliaments, but if a combination of groups manages to win a majority of seats in the European Parliament and are willing to work together, they are considered an informal ‘coalition.’ For the past five years, the Parliament has had a center-left leaning coalition between the EPP, S&D, and Renew—which may be faced with losing its majority, given the predicted growth of the conservative bloc in June.
Voters in each member state ought to check which EP group their preferred domestic parties belong to, because a vote for one member is an indirect vote for every other party within its group. For example, the German center- right CDU’s voters might never wish to support the social-democrat SPD; but their corresponding groups of MEPs (the EPP and S&D) generally work together in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Challenging unelected power in EU institutions
The EU decision-making process usually starts with the Commission—a largely unelected and unaccountable body of officials—proposing a law which is then adjusted or amended and approved by the Parliament, and finalized by the European Council.
The Council is made up of the heads of state or government of the 27 member states. Its meetings aim to determine the EU’s broad strategies and policies and its decisions carry a lot of weight in guiding EU affairs, particularly in areas requiring unanimous agreement among member states, such as foreign policy and security matters. Though each member state’s government is elected by its national voters, the powerful Council is not directly accountable to European voters.
The votes of each national government nominally carry equal weight within the Council. But many decisions require only a qualified majority—two-thirds of member states representing 65% of the EU population—to be approved, a system that ensures that the larger member states have a clear advantage.
Crucially, there are now moves afoot to abolish the veto in the Council. This means that elected national governments would effectively be bound by majority decisions on many important issues— whatever their electorate at home might think. This would further undermine democracy in EU affairs. It makes voting for parties that will defend national sovereignty even more important in June. These proposals are discussed in detail elsewhere in this election guide.
The European Commission is often seen as the most powerful of the EU institutions. It is made up of 27 commissioners, each dealing with specific policy areas. Each member state delegates one commissioner. Although it is not directly elected, and is not accountable to the electorates of Europe, the Commission alone has the right to propose EU legislation. This power places those 27 largely unknown commissioners at the forefront of initiating laws on behalf of the EU as a whole—a stark illustration of a lack of democratic accountability at the heart of Brussels.
The Commission also has the power to ensure that member states comply with EU laws and ‘values,’ and to take legal action against national governments it accuses of breaching those standards. In recent years this has led to the Commission overstepping its authority and initiating ‘rule-of-law’ disputes with elected governments in Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere, withholding billions of euros in EU funds because Brussels disapproves of their conservative policies. In its use of ‘lawfare’ against dissident member states, the Commission can generally count on the support of the EU’s top judges in the increasingly politicized Court of Justice of the European Union.
Make Your Vote Count
How can European voters try to hold the powerful Commission to account? Members of the European Commission, including its president, have to be nominated by a qualified majority in the Council, meaning that you—through your government—have a limited say in who’s leading Europe’s most powerful body for the next five years.
Furthermore, the treaties suggest that EU member states’ choice for Commission president should take into consideration the outcome of the EU elections through the ‘lead candidate’ or Spitzenkandidat system—the candidate of the largest party should be the member states’ first choice for Commission president. Although the Spitzenkandidat system is not legally binding, keep in mind that by voting for a party, you are also voting for the lead candidate of that party’s group as your choice for the de facto president of the European Union. The EPP is projected to remain the largest group, and its Spitzenkandidat is the current Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. We discuss the complete failure of the Spitzenkandidat system and the backroom ‘horse trading’ that led to her 2019 nomination as president on page 20.
Most importantly, let us remember that the commissioners and the president of the European Commission also need to be confirmed by the Parliament with a simple majority of MEPs. Here’s where your vote can indirectly count in choosing the EU executive. The MEPs we elect have the potential power to decide who does and does not run the Commission.
Additionally, the European Parliament can pass a motion of censure, compelling the Commission to resign. However, to date, none of the eight motions of censure proposed in the Parliament has ever been passed. Will our MEPs be more prepared to hold the Commission to account if the European Parliament shifts to the right in June, as most polls predict?
The European Parliament, the EU’s only directly-elected body, has grown in influence and importance in recent years. Now is the time to make that influence count in defense of democracy and national sovereignty in Europe.
