EU Elections: Centre Holds, Populists Dent Franco-German Engine

By Antonia-Laura Pup. Originally published on 18 June 2024 by Young Professionals in Foreign Policy’s Charged Affairs blog. Photo Credit: iStock

Citizens across the European Union (EU)’s 27 member states elected their representatives to the European Parliament last week.

According to the election results, center parties will still be able to form a majority to lead the Parliament, with Ursula von Der Leyen likely to stay on as the chief of the European Commission.

The much-heralded wave of far-right extremists turned out to be only a small increase in popularity for such groups: 4% for the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and 9% for the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, both right-wing populist party alliances. United, these two groups could represent the second largest force in the European Parliament after von Der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP) group. Internal fragmentation and the lack of a shared political vision among the far and populist right, however, favors centrists who are likely to continue governing the EU for the next five years.

Nonetheless, the rise of the far-right leaders has weakened what is known as the “Franco-German engine” of the European Union–a collaborative effort by France and Germany going back to the 1970s to push for greater integration within the multinational bloc through institutions and a common currency under its auspices.

The results of the 2024 elections were a humbling moment for France and Germany’s pro-European Union elite, likely to hinder the countries’ EU agendas and pressure them to shift positions on policies that stoke domestic discontent.

In Germany, all three parties in the ruling coalition performed poorly in the elections, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party coming in third. The biggest gains were made by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) despite a recent scandal involving links between AFD party members and Russian and Chinese spies.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won twice as many votes as the pro-European coalition led by French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal-centrist Renaissance party. The humiliating defeat prompted Macron, a proponent of the vision for a united, strong, and competitive Europe, to dissolve the French parliament; he called snap elections in just three weeks, risking a handover of the country’s national government to right-wing extremists.

Macron’s controversial decision to hold these elections has implications for EU foreign and security policy. Leaders with a history of sympathy for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could throw into question continued EU military assistance to Ukraine.

Paris, under Macron, has become a key supporter of military aid to Kyiv, with France proposing the deployment of military instructors from allied countries to Ukraine in a mission that would see the Ukrainian Armed Forces trained and given direct technical support.

A government controlled from the shadows by Le Pen will take up, step by step, the idea of a Frexit, in which France not only progressively disengages from the idea of a new European security architecture that it had once touted, but also exits completely from the European Union.

With right-wing extremists in power and a weakened Franco-German couple, projects such as more strategically autonomous EU with future enlargements that incorporate Ukraine and Moldova are at risk.

Even though the European Parliament’s powers in the field of security and defense are limited, it is this body that votes on the EU budget, implements laws and approves the composition of the European Commission.

With more populists in Brussels, the geopolitical future of the European Union is increasingly fragile, and its long-term support for Ukraine is in jeopardy. With less political legitimacy for the Franco-German engine and the United States increasingly disengaged from Europe, the onus is on Eastern Europe to assume a more proactive role in building a common security architecture on the continent, transcending the region’s reputation as a security recipient to become a security supplier.

Antonia-Laura Pup is an International Security Master’s student at Sciences Po Paris. She is a young leader of the Global Baku Forum and Riga Security Conference and presently works with the OECD Development Communicators Network Secretariat. Pup has previously worked as a policy advisor in Romania’s Chamber of Deputies.