EP elections 2014 - Results Thread

[SPQR]

what plausible candidate is acceptable to the center-right, center-left, liberal, and green representatives in the European Parliament? it's not Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg

Letta?

[Diouf]

Whoever ends up commission president is going to be a massive compromise. Taking party seat numbers from euobserver.com:

EPP - 213
S&D - 191
ALDE - 64
Others - 64
Greens/EFA - 52
ECR - 46
GUE/NGL - 42
Non-Iscrits - 41
EFD - 38

There's no ready made coalition that can get up to 376 votes. Doesn't help that people with no party affiliation hold at the moment 105 seats. But even if EPP and S&D formed a grand coalition, that's only 404 votes and these are parties in the very loosest sense of the word, a few "backbencher" political parties can go against their party and vote against commission president.

Well, in the same way as backbenchers can vote against, backbenchers from other groups could vote for. I think it could work with an EPP-S&D coalition for the commission president vote. In 2009, when Barosso won his second term, the coalition that backed him was EPP-ALDE-ECR. They had 403 votes combined, and in the end Barosso received 382 votes. The same thing could happen here; some EPP or S&D might abstain or vote against, but then some liberals, greens and maybe even ECRs could vote for as well, especially if their parties are in a national government that supports Juncker in the Council. They could also try to win ALDE support to secure a yes, but I think it will be too cumbersome and probably unnecessary to get the Greens on board as well.

[Tender Branson]

Don't know if this has already been mentioned:

In the precinct of the retirement home where Silvio Berlusconi is serving his community sentence, the overwhelming majority of votes in the community election there were cast for the left-wing PD: Of 39 votes cast, 19 went to the PD - while nobody voted for Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

In the EP election, the PD got 24 votes and Forza Italia got 9 votes.

http://derstandard.at/2000001636935/Kommunalwahl-Berlusconis-Altersheim-waehlt-links

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh LOL! So they sent him in enemy territory!

[justfollowingtheelections]

Whoever ends up commission president is going to be a massive compromise. Taking party seat numbers from euobserver.com:

EPP - 213
S&D - 191
ALDE - 64
Others - 64
Greens/EFA - 52
ECR - 46
GUE/NGL - 42
Non-Iscrits - 41
EFD - 38

There's no ready made coalition that can get up to 376 votes. Doesn't help that people with no party affiliation hold at the moment 105 seats. But even if EPP and S&D formed a grand coalition, that's only 404 votes and these are parties in the very loosest sense of the word, a few "backbencher" political parties can go against their party and vote against commission president.

These numbers are not accurate since they don't include new parties.  Wikipedia seems to be more accurate:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2014#Group_reshuffling

If I had to guess I would say the new EU Commission President will be a current head of government that is an EPP member.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It'll be whoever Merkel wants.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It'll be whoever Merkel wants.

Oh come on, at least you know it's not that simple.

[You kip if you want to...]

Who else thinks that for all the bluster of 'getting the message', not all that much will change?

[Niemeyerite]

It'll be whoever Merkel wants.

Oh come on, at least you know it's not that simple.

Isn't it?

[ingemann]

Yepp.

Maybe the EAF gets the Sweden Democrats back on board somehow ...

Unlikely, some of the parties in there are a bit too controversial for them, I think.

I'm not really sure why UKIP are so negative towards SD. They're by no means more radical than the Danish People's Party, so if they can be accepted in EFD, and even ECR I'm not sure why Ferage has a problem with SD. Besides, if the Danes and Finns leave for ECR, won't EFD have to find new people to cooperate with in order to reach the 7 countries requirement?

Here the difference between DPP and SD, DPP was not founded by former Nazis like SD, in fact they are extremely hostile to Nazism, there are historical reasons for this. Denmark was occupied under WW2, but at the same the Nazis or Danish fascists didn't gain power. A important reason for this was that these organisations was small to non-existing and to large extent dominated (in case of the former) by the German minority. So the autocratic right extremism or antisemitism have never had any greater popularity in Denmark. In Sweden on the other hand these have historical been much more popular and they have never been delegitimised by occupation or connection to separatist minorities.

Second the many year which DPP have cooperated with the former centre left government have given them a legitimicy which SD lack. Also DPP are quite good at avoiding using racial terms when they object to immigration, something SD are doing better at, but they are still learning.

That's why the Tories are looking at DPP as a potential partner, while UKIP are still looking at SD as somewhat dirty.

[Gustaf]

The short version of what Ingemann said is that UKIP cares more about origins of a party than about current official policy (or at least such is my impression).

That's why they dislike parties like SD or FN but are ok with DPP or LN or the crazy Poles.

[Tender Branson]

So, what are the 2 most likely parties to join the far-right EAF group, besides FN/FPÖ/PVV/LN/VB ?

KNP (Poland) and ANEL (Greece) ?

[FredLindq]

ANELs MEP is as i have understood more or less liberal. If KNP joins they need on more country. Should not be a problem to make som person jump ship. This happens a lot in the EP.

[Diouf]

So, what are the 2 most likely parties to join the far-right EAF group, besides FN/FPÖ/PVV/LN/VB ?

KNP (Poland) and ANEL (Greece) ?

Harald Vilimsky, the leader of the FPÖ in the EP, said this about the KNP in the ZIB 2 programme yesterday evening: "Diese Partei ist angesichts ihrer Aussagen kein Partner. Wir wollen keine Gruppe von Obskuranten sein."
Whether he speaks on behalf of the whole group is hard to say, but that sounds like a rejection so far. They did look like one of the most straightforward possibilities.

[palandio]

It seems to me that in most cases it's the more center-oriented parties that don't want to ally with the far-right crazies. Funny that here the FPÖ takes the position of the more sane party and the KNP is regarded as "obscurants". In the US KNP would probably be regarded as some standard paleo-libertarian party, maybe even "moderate Republicans" like Ron Paul has been called. (In my eyes KNP and Svobodni are pseudo-libertarian far-right fringe parties that make the FPÖ look sane.)

[dadge]

Cheers to the Mr or Ms Anonymous who's put the results-by-LA maps on Wikipedia eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_Parliament_election_results,_2014_%28England_by_council_areas%29.svg

I know some of you have the capability to do the colour-graded maps that show depth of support, and it'd be great to see those too!

[justfollowingtheelections]

So, what are the 2 most likely parties to join the far-right EAF group, besides FN/FPÖ/PVV/LN/VB ?

KNP (Poland) and ANEL (Greece) ?

It won't be ANEL.  They are still counting the votes for the individual candidates in Greece and it's still not clear who ANEL will elect (they only won one seat).  It looks like it's between two candidates:
-Notis Marias who is a federalist university professor (he teaches classes on European integration), who at the same time initiated talks between ANEL and Cameron's ECR group.  He has also been pushing for closer cooperation with SYRIZA.  He's apparently all over the place but there's no way he would join Le Pen's group.
- Giorgos Romanias, a labor economist and clearly a leftist (ANEL has allied with several small leftist anti-austerity groups).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I know some of you have the capability to do the colour-graded maps that show depth of support, and it'd be great to see those too!

They tend to be much more interesting as lead party for Euro elections tends to give a very misleading picture. Anyway, I'll do a full set at some point.

[Tayya]

The Swedish postal votes have finally been added to the tally as the votes have been recounted, and 2 AM this morning with 1 precinct to go out of 6227 the Greens finally broke the magic 15.40 wall as the Social Democrats decreased to 22.20, getting them a 4th mandate and leaving the Social Democrats with 5. The 20th mandate will go to noted EU skeptic Max Andersson.

The final margin of votes was 453. Votes have consequences.

[Diouf]

Quite telling how different the discourse is regarding the whole spitzenkandidaten(front runner)-process for the Commission President job is in the English and German-languaged press respectively.

The English-languaged media try their best to make fun of the European Parliament and the whole process, and portrait it as a disaster if Juncker is appointed. One of their main arguments is that the EU needs a fresh, popular face with a new approach to EU governance, i.e. more power to national parliaments, after the increased votes for Eurosceptics in some countries. That sounds somewhat reasonable but I fail to see how it's likely that a much better candidate will suddenly emerge in the European Council  if they disregard the front runners. Barosso do not exactly epitomize the sort of Commission President the newspapers seem to be looking for.

The Financial Times today.  "Juncker represents everything that the protest voters distrust about the EU". Shouldn't he have been a Romanian criminal or a Polish plumber for that to be true?

And yesterday a comment the same place: "So there really is no need for the leaders of the 28 EU nations – who actually do have political profiles at home – to pander to Mr Juncker’s self-serving fantasy that he has “won” the European Parliamentary elections. It is time to spit out the Spitzenkandidaten – and make a serious choice."

While Bruno Waterfield from the Telegraph have described the process as "a virulent new form of Brussels solipsism".

In the German media there are several comments along the lines of these, which sharply attack Merkel for even considering not to appoint Juncker as the next Commission President after she supported him and ran the campaign with him as a front runner:

"Juncker muss Präsident werden" (Juncker must become president) http://www.bild.de/news/standards/mathias-doepfner/juncker-muss-praesident-werden-36187236.bild.html

"Merkels Spiel ist ungewöhnlich dumm. Cameron ist wichtig, die Wähler sind wichtiger" (Merkel's game is unusually stupid. Cameron is important, the voters are more important". http://www.tagesschau.de/europawahl/startseite/eu410.html



The Europeans had the free choice to pick their new Commission President, and I have the free choice to ignore that. That's how democracy works, Mr Putin.

[Middle-aged Europe]

German Green party MP Jürgen Trittin has accused Angela Merkel of practically committing electoral fraud if she prevents Juncker from becoming Commission president.

This morning I also read a joke that it was Merkel's plan all along to become President of the European Comission herself, at least this would finally explain why her face was on all the CDU election posters in Germany instead of Juncker or the CDU lead candidate David McAllister.

[SPQR]

Truth be told,Juncker is an horrible candidate.
He only got the chance to run because he lost elections in Luxembourg after a scandal...

Having said that,the problem is an EPP one,and why they chose him.

[Tender Branson]

Merkel now fully supports Juncker for CP:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/eu-kommissionspraesident-merkel-legt-sich-auf-juncker-fest-a-972535.html

[ingemann]

The short version of what Ingemann said is that UKIP cares more about origins of a party than about current official policy (or at least such is my impression).

That's why they dislike parties like SD or FN but are ok with DPP or LN or the crazy Poles.

To some extent, but it's also important for you as Swede to know, that the party Swedish media tell about have not much to do with how DPP are. There are a reason that DPP's MP rarely care to talk with Swedish reporters, while they're willing to talk to most other foreign reporters.

[swl]

Open Europe (http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.nl/) made a useful chart to represent the possible Eurosceptic groups.



Full article here: http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.nl/2014/05/who-will-win-race-for-most-anti-eu-meps.html