Nothing less than major geopolitics is on the agenda when the EU trade ministers meet in Brussels this morning. They want to discuss relations with the USA, relations with China and trade agreements with other countries such as Australia. Topics that will probably also occupy the heads of state and government at the EU summit at the end of June.
According to an EU diplomat the atmosphere in contacts with Washington has “improved a lot,” but there are still a number of things to discuss: The US government has still not granted European raw materials suppliers access to the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, and the conflict over US steel tariffs, which have only been suspended until the end of the year, is also awaiting a solution. The ministers are now expected to give the EU Commission negotiators clear signals for talks at next week’s meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC).
The Europeans’ more robust approach to China is creating a positive climate for talks with Washington. The EU diplomat notes that the member states are much more united in their dealings with Beijing than they were a few years ago. However, the Commission’s economic security strategy, scheduled for June 21 and also aimed at Beijing, is giving some governments a headache. The strategy is likely to include initiatives on screening certain direct investments in third countries and on EU-wide export controls. Supporters of the market economy are worried that this will create new trade barriers.
Have a mostly worry-free day!
Resistance against the Commission’s plans for a European reaction to the US investment package Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is forming in the EU Parliament. The responsible rapporteur of the European Parliament, Christian Ehler, demands far-reaching changes to the planned Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). The latter has a significant influence on the Parliament’s position in the legislative process.
The EU Commission’s legislative proposal was designed as a response to the US Inflation Reduction Act – but “that’s not what it is”, the EVP/CDU MEP said yesterday. Ehler will present his draft report today, Thursday; it was already available to Table.Media in advance.
These are the main changes to the Commission’s proposal:
The EU has created comprehensive climate protection regulation with the Fit for 55 legislation, said the EPP spokesperson in the Industry and Energy Committee (ITRE). However, “it is becoming increasingly obvious that we do not have a business case for industrial decarbonization in Europe“. The IRA would therefore represent a turning point. In a survey by the European Round Table for Industry published on Tuesday, almost 60 percent of company leaders indicated that they would relocate investments or sites from Europe to North America in the next two years.
Ehler demanded to set the focus on implementing the climate targets and the associated business case. He said that “you can’t do everything at the same time,” so other regulatory projects such as the EU supply chain law or the nature conservation package should be put on the back burner. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo made similar comments on Tuesday: “If we overwhelm people with rules and regulations, we risk losing public support for the green agenda.”
The Commission proposed to designate eight technology sectors as “strategic net-zero technologies,” including solar, wind, battery storage and heat pumps. Even more than other climate-friendly sectors, these are to benefit from preferential treatment, for example in the form of expedited approval procedures and priority treatment in judicial dispute resolution. Ehler, on the other hand, is now calling for abandoning the distinction between strategic and other net-zero technologies.
He wants to use the taxonomy to determine which technologies fall under the NZIA. Article 10 of the Taxonomy Regulation lists a number of criteria for activities that substantially contribute to climate action. This would include, for example, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or CO2 capture and storage (CCS).
Ehler, on the other hand, does not want to factor in natural gas and nuclear power, which are classified as transitional technologies in the taxonomy. However, this will likely lead to more heated discussions with nuclear advocates in the European Parliament and the Council. The treatment of the nuclear industry had already been the main point of contention in the Commission.
Ehler wants to add the concept of “Net-Zero Industry Valleys” to the draft law: It would give member states the option of designating regional cluster locations for individual net-zero technologies. As part of this, the authorities are to handle the environmental impact assessments in advance, thus relieving companies in these clusters of the burden.
The authorities’ plans for the subsidized regions should also specify which public infrastructure investments are planned and which subsidies for their operating costs investors can expect. In his report, Ehler cites contracts for difference for energy costs as an example.
Ehler considers this regional approach to be more realistic than “grinding down environmental law” at the national level. The Brandenburg deputy probably had the German Tesla plant in Gruenheide in mind for this approach.
The rapporteur of the lead ITRE committee will present his draft today. The aim is to decide on the common position of the Parliament in plenary by the end of October at the latest and then start the trialogue with the member states, said Ehler. Whether the negotiations can be concluded before Christmas also depends on the Council. The Council has set itself the goal of wrapping up the Critical Raw Materials Act, which is being negotiated in parallel, by the end of the year. However, the discussions on the NZIA have not progressed as far in the Council as on the CRMA.
At COP28, the Global Stocktake will take stock of the Paris Agreement for the first time. Included is an updated inventory of global emissions reductions. It is already clear: Global efforts to reduce emissions are not sufficient. One of the major points of contention at the climate conference will thus be the phase-out of fossil fuels.
For Frans Timmermans, the challenge is predominantly to “be more precise in terms of mobilizing money.” At the same time, he said, we also need to be “more precise of efforts to reduce emissions.” The Green Deal chief refers specifically to the G20 countries, “especially China.”
Timmermans also wants to talk to a very specific group of companies to reduce emissions globally as quickly as possible: “We will not manage the transition without the fossil energy sector.” He says companies need to be “pushed,” but also given the opportunity to decarbonize themselves to make the transition “much faster” than it is today. This includes the financial sector, the EU Commission Vice President said, because the major players have a “very limited portfolio of investments in renewable energy.”
He also looks at the renewables industry in an interview with Table.Media: Their “success” in Europe and worldwide should be the reason to formulate a global target for the energy transition. On this point, the EU’s chief climate negotiator is not alone. At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, hosted by the German government in Berlin at the beginning of May, the principle of a global target for renewable energies was already given concrete form.
Now he is adding a target for energy efficiency. The EU has “a clear percentage target for renewable energy,” but one is also needed at the global level – and in combination with a “very clear target for reducing energy consumption,” i.e. for energy efficiency.
The EU Commissioner stresses that the various legislative texts of the Fit for 55 package will make it possible to exceed the original climate target. That called for cutting emissions 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. “We are currently calculating this,” he said. “Currently it’s about minus 57 percent, maybe 58 percent, by the COP, we will have a more precise figure.”
However, he said, it must be ensured that the member states can actually reach the target. His proposals on renaturation and the reduction of pesticides are intended to achieve this. However, the negotiations are proving extremely difficult: In the European Parliament, the committees for agriculture (AGRI) and fisheries (PECH) have already rejected the proposals (more on this in the news section).
Data protection is to blame if something is not working. This argument has been put forward regularly in recent years, not always with good reason. But data protection often gets in the way. This is precisely what was intended: In principle, everyone should be able to determine the conditions under which data about him or her is stored, processed and passed on.
The USA played a decisive role in the European approach to the GDPR. For years, they relied on a different concept: data, yes please. And if someone was messing with it, the infamous class action lawsuits would be filed. But the idea of collecting and analyzing private data was not limited to business. The state also helped itself. Especially with data from abroad, as the NSA revelations showed ten years ago when the GDPR was already being discussed. The NSA was the involuntary birthmother of the GDPR.
So Europe’s path has been a political defensive battle: Can the EU set rules the world has to comply with? That not potentially every data is processed by the NSA? The answer, then as now, is a junket: anyone wanting to make money in the EU and ship personal data abroad to do so must at least come close to meeting Europe’s values in return.
Maximilian Schrems stands for this fight like no other. The Austrian has led the European Court of Justice twice to find that the US does currently not offer comparable protection for personal data. “We are now at the beginning of a digitization situation that will last for another 100 years. And we will certainly have even better regulations.” The law is not perfect, but okay, Schrems says. But its application is not.
Schrems accuses many data protection authorities of not doing their job. When he and the organization he founded, NOYB (“None of your Business”), conducted proceedings or made submissions, they always found reasons to refrain from acting. The supervisory authorities are not too small but too slow and analog.
Schrems criticizes this would not lead to “general prevention.” Nor does he want to accept the argument that the supervisory authorities would work particularly closely. “We see it in Ireland, for example. There, 100,000 pages thick files are produced. And that’s not necessarily accuracy, it’s often just shifting things around.”
The criticism of the European consumer protection umbrella organization BEUC is similar. Its Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl complains that the association had already objected to Google’s tracking in November 2018 – and that no decision has yet been made in Dublin.
The behavior of the Irish supervisory authority has often caused controversy. While the Spanish supervisory authority is notable for the large number of procedures it processes, the Irish are known for their extremely restrained interpretation of the GDPR. The decision on Facebook, for example, published just in time for Monday’s anniversary, would have been much weaker had the other European regulators not overruled the DPC. “This is now the time when the most complicated cases are being closed at the level of the supervisory authorities,” says Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the European Data Protection Supervisor.
“The GDPR has not delivered on its promise to ensure uniform, understandable and practicable data protection rules across Europe,” says Bitkom President Achim Berg. “Instead, the independent interpretation of the rules by each national and regional regulator is leading to legal uncertainty.”
But after the supervisory authorities follow the courts. In the end, only one can clarify what the letters of the law are supposed to mean: 50 proceedings on the GDPR alone are currently on the agenda at the European Court of Justice.
Many concern questions of interpretation that are quite complex. For example, the ECJ had to decide a few days ago on the requirements for damages. The question of what role other supervisory authorities such as antitrust offices have in the GDPR enforcement will also be decided soon. Above all, however, one question is still undecided: Can the EU help the GDPR achieve its global claim to validity in practice?
In EU politics, the data protection issue is now once again to blame for Europe not playing a leading role in digitization. The NSA discussions are forgotten. And data protection hardly plays a role in debates about China either. Although the question of what data goes to Beijing and what is done with it is obvious.
But without a new Snowden moment, complicated data protection, primarily intended to protect EU residents, no longer seems politically sexy. But abolishing it is not an option either.
With just over a year to go until the June 6-9, 2024 European elections, the tone between European parties is gradually getting harsher. At the beginning of May, Iratxe García Pérez, the Socialist group leader in the European Parliament, said that “cooperation is no longer possible” with the Christian Democratic EPP. Frans Timmermans, Commission Vice President and Socialist frontrunner in 2019, followed suit, warning of a “new political dynamic” in which the EPP “looks more to the right.”
EPP press spokesman Pedro López de Pablo rejected Timmerman’s statement and, conversely, accused the Social Democratic S&D Group of being close to the “extreme left.” Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister, EPP Vice-President and former EU Parliament President Antonio Tajani aggressively promoted increased cooperation between the EPP and the right-wing ECR group.
However, it is unlikely that the informal alliance of EPP and S&D, which has always been at the center of majority formation in the European Parliament, is really at an end. In fact, the S&D once proclaimed the “end of the grand coalition” back in 2016, without much of a change in practice. The EU is structurally based on consensus: Majorities in the European Parliament that exclude one of the major parties are selectively possible, but not sustainable in the long term. This is already evident in the top candidate procedure, in which the Parliament only has a chance against the European Council if it presents a united front.
However, such an announcement is a poor way to run an election campaign. A certain degree of polarization and conflict is necessary so that voters can recognize differences between parties. And so it is part of the ritual that the EPP and S&D publicly declare their mutual dislike before the European elections – only to quickly get back together to be able to act in Parliament.
In addition, the polls this year are also tighter than in many previous rounds of elections. If the European elections were held now, the EPP would have 162 seats in the base scenario of the seat projection, and the S&D would have 137 (both unchanged from the last projection at the end of March). In the dynamic scenario – which takes into account possible faction entries by national parties that could win seats for the first time in the European election – the EPP’s cushion is somewhat more comfortable (172 to 137 seats). But this election is far from decided.
However, it is already becoming clear that an alliance of the EPP and S&D alone will not be sufficient. In the 2019 European elections, the grand coalition lost its majority in the European Parliament for the first time and has since been dependent on cooperation with the liberal Renew Europe (RE) group or the Greens. This is unlikely to change in the future.
In the current projection, the Liberals lose slightly and have 92 seats (-2 compared with March, dynamic scenario: 99 seats). Formally, they would still be the third-strongest parliamentary group. However, their key position in the center of the European party system means their actual influence is significantly greater, as not only the grand coalition but also almost any possible center-left or center-right alliance requires their support.
The Greens, on the other hand, are in a lot of trouble in their stronghold of Germany. In many other EU member states, however, they have made gains in recent weeks, so that they now climb to 50 seats in the projection (+8, dynamic: 54). This is their best figure in two years. The European Left has also made recent gains following poll losses in the spring and now has 49 seats (+5, dynamic: 50). This is roughly in line with its long-term average in this election period.
On the right of the political spectrum, the traditionally pro-NATO right-wing EKR continues to outpace the traditionally pro-Russia ID: EKR comes to 79 seats (+1), ID to 67 (-1). In the dynamic scenario, which takes into account the possible accession of the currently non-factional Hungarian ruling party Fidesz to the ID, the latter is still just ahead of the EKR (83 to 82 seats). The number of non-factional deputies falls to 33 (-5), in the dynamic scenario even to 28.
Since there are no pan-European election polls, the seat projection is based on aggregated national polls and election results from all member states. In the baseline scenario, all national parties are each assigned to their current parliamentary group (or to the parliamentary group of their European umbrella party); parties without a clear European assignment are shown as “other”. The dynamic scenario assigns all “other” parties in each case to a parliamentary group that they could plausibly join and also includes other possible changes in the parliamentary groups.
More details on the data basis and methodology of the projection as well as a breakdown of the results by individual national parties can be found on the blog “The (European) Federalist.”
Manuel Müller is Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki and runs the blog “The (European) Federalist”. He publishes his projection on the European election on his blog and at Table.Media.
Nothing less than major geopolitics is on the agenda when the EU trade ministers meet in Brussels this morning. They want to discuss relations with the USA, relations with China and trade agreements with other countries such as Australia. Topics that will probably also occupy the heads of state and government at the EU summit at the end of June.
According to an EU diplomat the atmosphere in contacts with Washington has “improved a lot,” but there are still a number of things to discuss: The US government has still not granted European raw materials suppliers access to the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, and the conflict over US steel tariffs, which have only been suspended until the end of the year, is also awaiting a solution. The ministers are now expected to give the EU Commission negotiators clear signals for talks at next week’s meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC).
The Europeans’ more robust approach to China is creating a positive climate for talks with Washington. The EU diplomat notes that the member states are much more united in their dealings with Beijing than they were a few years ago. However, the Commission’s economic security strategy, scheduled for June 21 and also aimed at Beijing, is giving some governments a headache. The strategy is likely to include initiatives on screening certain direct investments in third countries and on EU-wide export controls. Supporters of the market economy are worried that this will create new trade barriers.
Have a mostly worry-free day!
Resistance against the Commission’s plans for a European reaction to the US investment package Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is forming in the EU Parliament. The responsible rapporteur of the European Parliament, Christian Ehler, demands far-reaching changes to the planned Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). The latter has a significant influence on the Parliament’s position in the legislative process.
The EU Commission’s legislative proposal was designed as a response to the US Inflation Reduction Act – but “that’s not what it is”, the EVP/CDU MEP said yesterday. Ehler will present his draft report today, Thursday; it was already available to Table.Media in advance.
These are the main changes to the Commission’s proposal:
The EU has created comprehensive climate protection regulation with the Fit for 55 legislation, said the EPP spokesperson in the Industry and Energy Committee (ITRE). However, “it is becoming increasingly obvious that we do not have a business case for industrial decarbonization in Europe“. The IRA would therefore represent a turning point. In a survey by the European Round Table for Industry published on Tuesday, almost 60 percent of company leaders indicated that they would relocate investments or sites from Europe to North America in the next two years.
Ehler demanded to set the focus on implementing the climate targets and the associated business case. He said that “you can’t do everything at the same time,” so other regulatory projects such as the EU supply chain law or the nature conservation package should be put on the back burner. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo made similar comments on Tuesday: “If we overwhelm people with rules and regulations, we risk losing public support for the green agenda.”
The Commission proposed to designate eight technology sectors as “strategic net-zero technologies,” including solar, wind, battery storage and heat pumps. Even more than other climate-friendly sectors, these are to benefit from preferential treatment, for example in the form of expedited approval procedures and priority treatment in judicial dispute resolution. Ehler, on the other hand, is now calling for abandoning the distinction between strategic and other net-zero technologies.
He wants to use the taxonomy to determine which technologies fall under the NZIA. Article 10 of the Taxonomy Regulation lists a number of criteria for activities that substantially contribute to climate action. This would include, for example, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or CO2 capture and storage (CCS).
Ehler, on the other hand, does not want to factor in natural gas and nuclear power, which are classified as transitional technologies in the taxonomy. However, this will likely lead to more heated discussions with nuclear advocates in the European Parliament and the Council. The treatment of the nuclear industry had already been the main point of contention in the Commission.
Ehler wants to add the concept of “Net-Zero Industry Valleys” to the draft law: It would give member states the option of designating regional cluster locations for individual net-zero technologies. As part of this, the authorities are to handle the environmental impact assessments in advance, thus relieving companies in these clusters of the burden.
The authorities’ plans for the subsidized regions should also specify which public infrastructure investments are planned and which subsidies for their operating costs investors can expect. In his report, Ehler cites contracts for difference for energy costs as an example.
Ehler considers this regional approach to be more realistic than “grinding down environmental law” at the national level. The Brandenburg deputy probably had the German Tesla plant in Gruenheide in mind for this approach.
The rapporteur of the lead ITRE committee will present his draft today. The aim is to decide on the common position of the Parliament in plenary by the end of October at the latest and then start the trialogue with the member states, said Ehler. Whether the negotiations can be concluded before Christmas also depends on the Council. The Council has set itself the goal of wrapping up the Critical Raw Materials Act, which is being negotiated in parallel, by the end of the year. However, the discussions on the NZIA have not progressed as far in the Council as on the CRMA.
At COP28, the Global Stocktake will take stock of the Paris Agreement for the first time. Included is an updated inventory of global emissions reductions. It is already clear: Global efforts to reduce emissions are not sufficient. One of the major points of contention at the climate conference will thus be the phase-out of fossil fuels.
For Frans Timmermans, the challenge is predominantly to “be more precise in terms of mobilizing money.” At the same time, he said, we also need to be “more precise of efforts to reduce emissions.” The Green Deal chief refers specifically to the G20 countries, “especially China.”
Timmermans also wants to talk to a very specific group of companies to reduce emissions globally as quickly as possible: “We will not manage the transition without the fossil energy sector.” He says companies need to be “pushed,” but also given the opportunity to decarbonize themselves to make the transition “much faster” than it is today. This includes the financial sector, the EU Commission Vice President said, because the major players have a “very limited portfolio of investments in renewable energy.”
He also looks at the renewables industry in an interview with Table.Media: Their “success” in Europe and worldwide should be the reason to formulate a global target for the energy transition. On this point, the EU’s chief climate negotiator is not alone. At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, hosted by the German government in Berlin at the beginning of May, the principle of a global target for renewable energies was already given concrete form.
Now he is adding a target for energy efficiency. The EU has “a clear percentage target for renewable energy,” but one is also needed at the global level – and in combination with a “very clear target for reducing energy consumption,” i.e. for energy efficiency.
The EU Commissioner stresses that the various legislative texts of the Fit for 55 package will make it possible to exceed the original climate target. That called for cutting emissions 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. “We are currently calculating this,” he said. “Currently it’s about minus 57 percent, maybe 58 percent, by the COP, we will have a more precise figure.”
However, he said, it must be ensured that the member states can actually reach the target. His proposals on renaturation and the reduction of pesticides are intended to achieve this. However, the negotiations are proving extremely difficult: In the European Parliament, the committees for agriculture (AGRI) and fisheries (PECH) have already rejected the proposals (more on this in the news section).
Data protection is to blame if something is not working. This argument has been put forward regularly in recent years, not always with good reason. But data protection often gets in the way. This is precisely what was intended: In principle, everyone should be able to determine the conditions under which data about him or her is stored, processed and passed on.
The USA played a decisive role in the European approach to the GDPR. For years, they relied on a different concept: data, yes please. And if someone was messing with it, the infamous class action lawsuits would be filed. But the idea of collecting and analyzing private data was not limited to business. The state also helped itself. Especially with data from abroad, as the NSA revelations showed ten years ago when the GDPR was already being discussed. The NSA was the involuntary birthmother of the GDPR.
So Europe’s path has been a political defensive battle: Can the EU set rules the world has to comply with? That not potentially every data is processed by the NSA? The answer, then as now, is a junket: anyone wanting to make money in the EU and ship personal data abroad to do so must at least come close to meeting Europe’s values in return.
Maximilian Schrems stands for this fight like no other. The Austrian has led the European Court of Justice twice to find that the US does currently not offer comparable protection for personal data. “We are now at the beginning of a digitization situation that will last for another 100 years. And we will certainly have even better regulations.” The law is not perfect, but okay, Schrems says. But its application is not.
Schrems accuses many data protection authorities of not doing their job. When he and the organization he founded, NOYB (“None of your Business”), conducted proceedings or made submissions, they always found reasons to refrain from acting. The supervisory authorities are not too small but too slow and analog.
Schrems criticizes this would not lead to “general prevention.” Nor does he want to accept the argument that the supervisory authorities would work particularly closely. “We see it in Ireland, for example. There, 100,000 pages thick files are produced. And that’s not necessarily accuracy, it’s often just shifting things around.”
The criticism of the European consumer protection umbrella organization BEUC is similar. Its Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl complains that the association had already objected to Google’s tracking in November 2018 – and that no decision has yet been made in Dublin.
The behavior of the Irish supervisory authority has often caused controversy. While the Spanish supervisory authority is notable for the large number of procedures it processes, the Irish are known for their extremely restrained interpretation of the GDPR. The decision on Facebook, for example, published just in time for Monday’s anniversary, would have been much weaker had the other European regulators not overruled the DPC. “This is now the time when the most complicated cases are being closed at the level of the supervisory authorities,” says Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the European Data Protection Supervisor.
“The GDPR has not delivered on its promise to ensure uniform, understandable and practicable data protection rules across Europe,” says Bitkom President Achim Berg. “Instead, the independent interpretation of the rules by each national and regional regulator is leading to legal uncertainty.”
But after the supervisory authorities follow the courts. In the end, only one can clarify what the letters of the law are supposed to mean: 50 proceedings on the GDPR alone are currently on the agenda at the European Court of Justice.
Many concern questions of interpretation that are quite complex. For example, the ECJ had to decide a few days ago on the requirements for damages. The question of what role other supervisory authorities such as antitrust offices have in the GDPR enforcement will also be decided soon. Above all, however, one question is still undecided: Can the EU help the GDPR achieve its global claim to validity in practice?
In EU politics, the data protection issue is now once again to blame for Europe not playing a leading role in digitization. The NSA discussions are forgotten. And data protection hardly plays a role in debates about China either. Although the question of what data goes to Beijing and what is done with it is obvious.
But without a new Snowden moment, complicated data protection, primarily intended to protect EU residents, no longer seems politically sexy. But abolishing it is not an option either.
With just over a year to go until the June 6-9, 2024 European elections, the tone between European parties is gradually getting harsher. At the beginning of May, Iratxe García Pérez, the Socialist group leader in the European Parliament, said that “cooperation is no longer possible” with the Christian Democratic EPP. Frans Timmermans, Commission Vice President and Socialist frontrunner in 2019, followed suit, warning of a “new political dynamic” in which the EPP “looks more to the right.”
EPP press spokesman Pedro López de Pablo rejected Timmerman’s statement and, conversely, accused the Social Democratic S&D Group of being close to the “extreme left.” Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister, EPP Vice-President and former EU Parliament President Antonio Tajani aggressively promoted increased cooperation between the EPP and the right-wing ECR group.
However, it is unlikely that the informal alliance of EPP and S&D, which has always been at the center of majority formation in the European Parliament, is really at an end. In fact, the S&D once proclaimed the “end of the grand coalition” back in 2016, without much of a change in practice. The EU is structurally based on consensus: Majorities in the European Parliament that exclude one of the major parties are selectively possible, but not sustainable in the long term. This is already evident in the top candidate procedure, in which the Parliament only has a chance against the European Council if it presents a united front.
However, such an announcement is a poor way to run an election campaign. A certain degree of polarization and conflict is necessary so that voters can recognize differences between parties. And so it is part of the ritual that the EPP and S&D publicly declare their mutual dislike before the European elections – only to quickly get back together to be able to act in Parliament.
In addition, the polls this year are also tighter than in many previous rounds of elections. If the European elections were held now, the EPP would have 162 seats in the base scenario of the seat projection, and the S&D would have 137 (both unchanged from the last projection at the end of March). In the dynamic scenario – which takes into account possible faction entries by national parties that could win seats for the first time in the European election – the EPP’s cushion is somewhat more comfortable (172 to 137 seats). But this election is far from decided.
However, it is already becoming clear that an alliance of the EPP and S&D alone will not be sufficient. In the 2019 European elections, the grand coalition lost its majority in the European Parliament for the first time and has since been dependent on cooperation with the liberal Renew Europe (RE) group or the Greens. This is unlikely to change in the future.
In the current projection, the Liberals lose slightly and have 92 seats (-2 compared with March, dynamic scenario: 99 seats). Formally, they would still be the third-strongest parliamentary group. However, their key position in the center of the European party system means their actual influence is significantly greater, as not only the grand coalition but also almost any possible center-left or center-right alliance requires their support.
The Greens, on the other hand, are in a lot of trouble in their stronghold of Germany. In many other EU member states, however, they have made gains in recent weeks, so that they now climb to 50 seats in the projection (+8, dynamic: 54). This is their best figure in two years. The European Left has also made recent gains following poll losses in the spring and now has 49 seats (+5, dynamic: 50). This is roughly in line with its long-term average in this election period.
On the right of the political spectrum, the traditionally pro-NATO right-wing EKR continues to outpace the traditionally pro-Russia ID: EKR comes to 79 seats (+1), ID to 67 (-1). In the dynamic scenario, which takes into account the possible accession of the currently non-factional Hungarian ruling party Fidesz to the ID, the latter is still just ahead of the EKR (83 to 82 seats). The number of non-factional deputies falls to 33 (-5), in the dynamic scenario even to 28.
Since there are no pan-European election polls, the seat projection is based on aggregated national polls and election results from all member states. In the baseline scenario, all national parties are each assigned to their current parliamentary group (or to the parliamentary group of their European umbrella party); parties without a clear European assignment are shown as “other”. The dynamic scenario assigns all “other” parties in each case to a parliamentary group that they could plausibly join and also includes other possible changes in the parliamentary groups.
More details on the data basis and methodology of the projection as well as a breakdown of the results by individual national parties can be found on the blog “The (European) Federalist.”
Manuel Müller is Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki and runs the blog “The (European) Federalist”. He publishes his projection on the European election on his blog and at Table.Media.
