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Migration: The Defining Issue for Europe
The Editors
May 21, 2024
In our guide to the 2024 European elections, we scrutinize the institutions in Brussels and beyond—how they work, and why they’re not working. National sovereignty, agriculture, migration, technology, the Green Deal and more: read what is at stake, as a broad group of analysts and MEPs weigh in on the key debates. The elections will be crucial for deciding what kind of future Europe we want. The European Conservative’s election guide, The Stakes, can help to shape this vision.
This June, Europeans will have the chance to vote in the most important-ever elections to the European Parliament (EP).
There’s a reason that EP elections have a historically low turnout. EU politics often seem distant with 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 dictate how many migrants member states must take; to impose a Green Deal and shift to renewable energy, even at the expense of our industries and farmers; to curtail our freedom of speech in online spaces, and to determine how we defend Europe from external threats.
On all of these issues and many more, national interests now often have to 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 that could start to change the face of the EU through the June elections.
Of the three main EU institutions, only the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected directly in each EU 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 propose 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. This means that MEPs have a say in every decision coming from Brussels that affects your life, from migration and the green transition to Europe’s common defense policy.
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, while Malta, Cyprus, and Luxembourg have the least, 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.
The colors indicate the placement of national parties leading the polls on a ‘Eurofederalist-Sovereigntist’ spectrum. This was based on voting patterns of their MEPs concerning various treaty change proposals that include scrapping countries’ veto rights in certain policy areas, analyzed by EU Matrix in 2023. The lower the score, the more a party supports deeper EU integration (‘Eurofederalists’); the higher the score, the more the party opposes giving more power to Brussels (‘Sovereigntists’).
The Dutch PVV, for which no data was available, was given an approximate score of 90.
Von der Leyen warned X and Meta that the EU will enforce its disinformation rules, regardless of who’s the CEO or what Washington says.
Israel insists that if European politicians want to visit the country, they must do so without the backing of terrorist-supporting organisations.
