Who were the biggest winners and biggest losers of the European Parliament elections?
Top of the winners’ list are surely Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Merkel’s Christian Democrats destroyed her Social Democrat coalition partners at the polls, and Sarkozy’s UMP party brushed aside the opposition French socialists. Merkel and Sarkozy will feel vindicated in their approach to the global economic crisis, particularly as regards the need to introduce tougher financial regulation (and to lecture central banks from time to time).
Third place on the winners’ list goes to Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a moderate centre-right leader who cruised to an easy victory on the back of a resilient economy and practical pro-European policies. Tusk’s common sense clearly appeals to the Polish electorate more than the cavalry-charging on the world stage of the previous conservative government.
Fourth place goes to Viktor Orban, leader of Hungary’s opposition centre-right Fidesz party, which annihilated the ruling socialists in an election dominated by the national economic debacle.
At the top of the losers’ list is Gordon Brown, the UK’s Labour premier, whose party finished third behind the Conservatives and the anti-EU UK Independence Party. The disintegration of the Labour government and its seemingly inevitable replacement by a rampantly eurosceptic Tory government is now staring the rest of Europe full in the face. It’s no exaggeration to say they are horrified.
Second place goes to Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s SPD foreign minister. He led his party to a catastrophic defeat and must now be wondering why he agreed to stand for chancellor against the eternally popular Merkel. Steinmeier looks more than ever like a man who was just not cut out for electoral politics in the first place.
In third place is Brian Cowen, Ireland’s prime minister, whose Fianna Fáil party has held power for 20 of the past 23 years but received an absolute drubbing at the polls because of the banking system disasters and economic collapse of the past 12 months.
The last big loser is the European Parliament itself. In the 30 years since direct elections to the legislature were introduced, the assembly had never made a more vigorous effort to lift voter turnout. It didn’t work. Turnout touched a record low of 43.1 per cent. And it wasn’t just because of “ungrateful” new member-states such as Slovakia, which has joined the eurozone but could only manage a turnout of 19.6 per cent. There were record low turnouts everywhere from France, Greece and Italy to new member-states such as Cyprus and Lithuania.
As Martin Schulz, a prominent German socialist, pointed out, it just can’t carry on like this or the parliament’s legitimacy will one day be called into question.
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