EU elections: populists gained votes - but lost initiative - by Tomi Huhtanen

Populists and anti-European parties have gained a substantial number of seats in the European Parliament elections of 2019.

This result had been predicted for some months, and had been expected to confirm a major power shift in Europe.

However, this was not the ground-breaking populist revolution that some had predicted.

Read more at: EU elections: populists gained votes - but lost initiative

EU-Elections: Day one of voting is over as polls close in the Netherlands and Britain

Exit Polls show that in the Netherlands Dutch Labor Party is the big winner in the elections and Ultra-Right-wing populists of the Baudet and Wilders groupings did not do as well as expected

In Britain the two main parties, however - Labour and Conservative - seemed to be preparing for the worst, possibly facing a backlash over their handling of Brexit. 

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/23/britain-and-netherlands-kick-off-eu-elections-votes

EU Elections: The US (Trump and Steve Bannon supported), Russian, and European Ultra-Right Wing disinformation networks discovered in Europe

'Vast' far-right disinformation networks discovered in EU

Read more at:
https://p.dw.com/p/3IrBu

EU Elections: Opponents of nationalism rally before EU vote

Tens of thousands of people opposed to right-wing populism and nationalism have taken to the streets in European cities ahead of the European Parliament elections from May 23.

Demonstrations were held on Sunday in more than 50 cities in 13 countries, including Germany and France.

In Berlin, organizers say more than 20,000 people took part in the rally and marched on the streets for about two hours.

They oppose intolerance against refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. They are also against nationalists who prioritize their countries' interests and claim that they should restore sovereignty from the EU.

One demonstrator told NHK that Europe should not be governed by ultra-right political parties that could try to destroy democracy.

Another participant said European countries should be united to solve the problems they are facing.

Note EU-Digest: During this past Sunday's demonstrations throughout Europe against the extreme right-wing populist parties and their leaders, including Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands, Jorg Meuthen in Germany, Nigel Farage in England, etc., it might be good, again, to remind voters participating in the upcoming European elections, that all these populists are Donald Trump 's buddies, who spend a lot of time talking nonsense, like he does, but have never achieved anything concrete in heir lives. 

They are however masters in promising castles in the sky. Hopefully you the voter will not be seduced by these deceitful populists? Europe belongs to us all. Nationalism has never worked in Europe and has no place in the EU.
 
Read more at: Opponents of nationalism rally before EU vote - News - NHK WORLD - English

EU Elections: British nationals in the Netherlands can't vote in EU elections -

British nationals living in the Netherlands will not be able to vote in next May’s European parliamentary elections, a spokesman for the European parliament’s office in The Hague has confirmed to DutchNews.nl. ‘Brits living in, for example, the Netherlands before Brexit will have their residency rights protected,’ the spokesman said. ‘However they will not have the right to vote post-Brexit in the European elections 2019. They will enjoy the same voting rights as any non-EU residents in the Netherlands.’ The next EU elections take place on May 23 and non-Dutch EU citizens living in the Netherlands are allowed either here or in their home country. The Netherlands currently has 26 seats but this will go up to 29 in May. The total number of seats in the European parliament will be cut from 751 to 701 after the election, because of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

Read more at DutchNews.nl:

British nationals living in the Netherlands will not be able to vote in next May’s European parliamentary elections, a spokesman for the European parliament’s office in The Hague has confirmed to DutchNews.nl.

"Brits living in, for example, the Netherlands before Brexit will have their residency rights protected,’ the spokesman said. ‘However they will not have the right to vote post-Brexit in the European elections 2019. They will enjoy the same voting rights as any non-EU residents in the Netherlands.’

The next EU elections take place on May 23 and non-Dutch EU citizens living in the Netherlands are allowed either here or in their home country. The Netherlands currently has 26 seats but this will go up to 29 in May. The total number of seats in the European parliament will be cut from 751 to 701 after the election, because of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

British nationals in the Netherlands can't vote in EU elections - DutchNews.nl

EU Politics: EU summit may decide only on foreign policy chief - by Valentina Pop and Andrew Rettman

 Leaders meeting on Wednesday (16 July) are likely to pick only the new EU foreign policy chief, with a decision on the successor to Council head Herman Van Rompuy “possibly” delayed until autumn.

According to one EU source, "if a complete deal is feasible, we should go for it. Otherwise, it will be only the high representative."

A second source told this website that it is "certainly a possibility" that only the foreign affairs chief is picked.

Both the foreign policy head - Catherine Ashton - and the Council president - Herman Van Rompuy - have five months to go until their terms end.

But in the case of the foreign affairs job, the successor also has to undergo hearings in the European Parliament and to be voted together with the rest of the new EU commissioners in October.At the core of the delay is a disagreement in the Socialist leaders' camp.

France's Francois Hollande is reluctant to endorse Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt for the Van Rompuy job. Thorning-Schmidt is a centre-left politician, but close enough to the centre-right to be acceptable to the likes of Germany’s Angela Merkel or the UK’s David Cameron.

The political colour of one top job will determine the other, as the centre-right and the centre left are dividing the posts evenly.

Read more: EUobserver / EU summit may decide only on foreign policy chief

EU Presidency: Herman Van Rompuy: ‘A huge majority want to stay in the union and the eurozone’

United We Stand Divided We Fall

The eurosceptic backlash in the recent European elections was a major shock to the EU establishment.

Large numbers of people voted for anti-European parties across the bloc. In France Marine Le Pen’s Front National won 25 percent of the ballot, while in Britain the UK Independence Party (UKIP) bettered that still, with 27 percent of the poll.

Against that backdrop euronews’ Isabelle Kumar spoke to Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council . In addition to discussing the political ramifications of the EU election result and what it means for Europe, Rompuy also spoke about the crisis between the EU, Ukraine and Russia, his future plans, and his love for Haiku poetry.

Play the video ( click on link below)  to watch the full interview

Read more: Herman Van Rompuy: ‘A huge majority want to stay in the union and the eurozone’ | euronews, the global conversation

European Elections: The European Union: Europe goes to the polls

After five gruelling years, many of Europe’s citizens must wish they could dispatch the entire political class to hellfire and torment. As it happens, the ballot for elections to the European Parliament from May 22nd to 25th does not include that option, so a record number will probably not bother to turn out. Many of those who do will back populists and extremists. Broadly anti-European parties may take well over a quarter of the seats.

The French National Front, the Dutch Party of Freedom and the UK Independence Party are likely to win their highest vote ever. This will cause domestic political ructions, but it is also an indictment of the European Union, a project that millions of voters have come to associate with hardship and failure.

Europe’s political leaders will be tempted to pay little heed. Economies are improving. After a grinding recession and years of battling the euro crisis, growth is returning and bond yields are sharply down. The danger that financial markets might blow up the euro (and the EU) has disappeared, at least for now.

A new Pew Research poll this week even suggests that trust in the EU may be reviving a little. If the politicians can just hang on, won’t a slow but steady recovery win back all those disgruntled citizens?

This is an issue of democracy, not of economics. Voters are not impressed when they toss out an incumbent government only to be told by the EU that its replacement must stick to the same fiscal rules and economic policies. Since the transfer of powers to the centre has come about as a result of economic failure, and not of broader political debate or of resounding success, the chances of its being meekly accepted are slim.

Read more: The European Union: Europe goes to the polls | The Economist

European Elections: Upstart Portuguese party wants more Europe

Rui Tavares sits at a small podium as he faces the audience in the crowded library in Lisbon. He tells them about "Ulysses". But the thin man with the round glasses is no literary critic, and he's not here to talk about Homer or James Joyce. He's talking about the future of Europe.

"Ulysses" is the name the 41-year-old has given to an ambitious economic policy project with which aims to redefine the roles of southern European countries like Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain in the EU.

"Above all, we want to achieve one thing. We no longer want the countries in the south of Europe to be called PIGS."

Tavares says solving the sovereign debt crisis must no longer be a national task. Instead, the crisis has to be solved by Europe as a whole.

He wants the EU to set up its own,independent financial institution similar to the International Monetary Fund and controlled by the European Parliament. The problems in the south of Europe could be solved with an economic stimulus package, like the Marshall plan set up after World War Two, Tavares says.

He's not short of bigideas for Europe. Tavares has been an independent member of the European Parliament since 2009. Almost three years ago, he decided to join the group of the Greens/EFA.. Tavares is again contesting a seat in the upcoming European elections in late May, with the party he has founded in Portugal
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"The LIVRE party is based on four pillars: freedom, being leftist in the classic sense - that means equality and social justice - environmental protection and Europe," the party founder explains.

Read more Upstart Portuguese party wants more Europe | Europe | DW.DE | 24.04.2014

Dutch EU elections: 'Are you for or against Europe?' - for say a large majority

On a recent Saturday afternoon in January, volunteers in the Dutch city of Utrecht were handing out soup and hot chocolate on behalf of the ruling coalition’s centre-left Labour Party. There was an open air event, with speeches and music, to mark the beginning of its electoral campaign.

This does not mean that Dutch voters are already thinking about the May elections to the European Parliament, however.

Labour held the Utrecht event because there are local elections on 19 March: The EU elections are barely on the public's radar.

While over half of respondents to a recent poll knew there will be another election this year, only a quarter knew that it will be for the EU parliament. Just three percent were able to pinpoint the date: 22 May.Interior minister Ronald Plasterk, a Labour member, expects the campaigns for the two elections to be “very distinct” from each other.

“The campaign for the European elections will be about the question 'are you for or against Europe’,” he told this website, referring to the prevailing issue on people's minds.

He added that the question "doesn't make sense."

But at the same time, the “are you in or are you out” of the EU framework, which British Prime Minister David Cameron has put on the agenda in Britain, is popular in the Netherlands too.

Three days after the Labour event, a group of eurosceptics gathered in the Dutch parliament in The Hague.

Some 63,000 people signed a citizens’ initiative to “stop the creeping transfer of powers to the EU” and to demand a referendum if more powers are transferred to Brussels. The spokesperson for the initiative was invited to speak to parliament on the issue.

A majority of MPs (112 to 38) voted No to a proposed referendum for the next potential transfer of powers, however. 

A Cameron-style referendum on leaving the EU altogether received even less support. Only the Socialist Party (15 seats), the Party for Freedom (14 seats), and an MP who recently left the Freedom party, voted in favour. 

Note EU-Digest: "the  eurosceptics are living in a dream world and need to do a reality check - only a United Europe makes any sense in today's world if Europe wants to benefit economically by having a voice in the Global Power structure ", said a Dutch Parliamentarian.

Read more: EUobserver / Dutch EU elections: 'Are you for or against Europe?'

French leftist coalition blows up ahead of EU, local elections

As the EU elections approach, European political parties from all sides are gearing up to nominate their candidates for the European Commission’s top job.

Things initially got off to a good start for the Party of the European Left. In mid-December, the national member parties of the European Left officially agreed at their Madrid Congress to nominate Greek politician Alexis Tsipras as their candidate for the EU's most coveted position.

The French Left Party (Parti de Gauche), a member of the European Left, warmly backed the Greek nominee.

“We welcome Alexis Tsipras’s candidacy as a symbol of the peoples’ struggle against austerity policies,” Martine Billard, co-president of the French Left Party, said on 15 December.

In her view, the European Left party bears a “responsibility to chart a political alternative and bring back hope to the people, while two-thirds of the European Union’s governments are from the right".

Read more:French leftist coalition blows up ahead of EU, local elections | EurActiv

A Europeaqn Tea-Party? 'A warning for Europe and Germany'

Far-right politicians want to form an anti-EU alliance in the European parliament. But similar populism is rife among more centrist conservative politicians, says EU parliamentarian Jan Philipp Albrecht. 

The National Front of France, under leader Marine Le Pen, has anti-Semitic and far-right roots, though it distances itself from fascist parties, like Greece's Golden Dawn, or Hungary's Jobbik. The Dutch Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, is openly Islamophobic, but pro-Israeli. Wilders has already held talks with Filip Dewinter, parliamentary head of the Belgian party Vlaams Belang, as well as Hans-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom Party of Austria, as well as representatives from similar parties in Sweden. Their common denominator is their opposition to the European Union. Isn't it a contradiction for them to want to work together to change Europe, when they also want to scrap the euro and leave the European Union?

Jan Philipp Albrecht: "In the past it took a long time for far-right, or radical anti-globalists, to create pan-European networks. Both Le Pen's National Front and Wilders' Party for Freedom have opposed working together with other states. At the same time they want to generate sympathies in other countries for their anti-EU policies. Now, they have started to work together in practical partnerships. They know they barely have a chance of exerting any influence on decisions in Brussels or Strasbourg."

The representatives of far-right parties currently sit in the EU parliament as independents. In order to form a parliamentary faction, they must have at least 25 representatives from seven EU countries. They haven't managed this yet. Do you think that Wilders and Le Pen can clear this hurdle in the future?

"I think that the politically-experienced Wilders and Le Pen now practice politics much more strategically than earlier European alliances did. The first attempt at a far-right faction in the EU Parliament in 2007, under the leadership of Alexandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the dictator, failed because she baited her own representatives from Romania and Bulgaria. These parties won't make that kind of mistake again. That's why it will be even more important to make clear what they believe. That's what our brochure "Europe on the Far Right" is hoping to do. With quotations and actions, it unmasks some politicians."

Read more: 'A warning for Europe and Germany' | Europe | DW.DE | 14.11.2013