Should We Be Worried?

Some thoughts on the recent EU Parliament elections

Jun 15, 2024

I’ve taken a couple of days to sort through my thoughts - and read what others are saying - about the results of the recent EU Parliament elections. And, yes, while the significant support shown for right-wing parties like the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and the National Rally (RN) in France are concerning, I think it’s important to put the results into context.

As an American, the number and variety of political parties in Germany - and in Europe - can seem overwhelming. In the U.S., we are accustomed to what has become essentially a two-party electoral system, with some fringe parties or independent candidates claiming a legislative seat here and there.

Source: Map by Erinthecute - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

That’s not case here. There are parties that are far-right, moderate right, center-right, center-left, moderate left, and far left, etc. Elections result in the parties being assigned proportional representation in government. To get anything done, the parties form coalitions based on who gets the most votes in the different elections.

Also, it’s important to remember that this was not a national election. The leadership of Germany, nor any of its federal states, was not on the ballot - though they will be next fall. However, the German government has typically viewed the EU elections as a predictor of how their parties will fare in the next national contest.

What is the European Parliament?

The European Parliament is a legislative body of the European Union (EU) and one of its seven institutions.

Together with the Council of Ministers, it approves, vetoes or amends legislation that is proposed by the European Commission. Neither the Council nor the Parliament can initiate legislation. The Parliament is the only directly elected body of the EU.

Its member states have given the European Union exclusive authority to make laws governing the shared European economic market - managing the customs union, international trade agreements, regulating business competition, and in the countries that have adopted the euro - setting monetary policy.

The EU Parliament is composed of 705 (increasing to 720 after this election) directly elected members with elections held every five years. It is the second-largest legislative body in the world.

When they meet, the members of Parliament (MEPs) are organized by political group, not by country, and sit together with their group in the chamber. They are elected to represent the interests of Europe as a whole, and not to represent their individual nations.

Citizens of EU member countries vote where they are living at the time the elections are held. For example, a Spanish citizen living in Germany will vote for the German delegation and a German citizen living in Spain would vote for Spanish representation.

As the most populous EU country, Germany has the highest number of seats in the Parliament at 96.

“Seats are allocated to member states according to their population, since 2014 with no state having more than 96, but no fewer than 6, to maintain proportionality.”

Wikipedia. European Parliament. Accessed June 12, 2024.

According to EU law, the member countries may set their own procedures for electing their MEPs, as long as they ensure proportional representation.

In Germany, voters choose a political party, which has a set list of ranked candidates. The number of MEP seats is awarded based on the percentage of the overall vote a particular party claims, with the top candidate on the list being the first awarded a seat.

The 2024 elections

Reading the news headlines on Monday morning, one could be forgiven for thinking that there had been a far-right, nationalist takeover of the European Parliament.

“Why Europe is lurching to the right,” reads one from the online magazine, Vox.

“European Parliament at crossroads as far-right parties triumph in EU vote,” states Al Jazeera.

In fact, it was still the moderate parties across Europe that secured the most votes. And the parliament will continue to be led by politicians from the center-right European People’s Party, which has 184 seats out of the 720.

In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was the top vote-getter with 30 percent of the vote, securing 29 of the country’s 96 EU parliament seats.

However, far-right parties did see significant gains, winning several seats, while left and left-leaning parties lost seats. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) came in second to the CDU, taking home 15.9 percent of the vote. This has been seen as a rebuke of the current government’s environmental policies as well as the increase in immigration.

“The winners of the election were the centre-right Christian Democratic parties (CDU/CSU) who achieved around 30 per cent,” writes author and East German historian Katja Hoyer. “But gaining just over one percentage point from 2019, they were clearly also unable to inspire voters fed up with the status quo.

“Many disaffected Germans have taken their votes to the fringes of the political spectrum instead,” she continues. “A new left-wing party named after leader Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) gained just over 6 per cent and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) managed a record 16 per cent – the highest a far-right party has polled in a nationwide election since democracy was reintroduced in West Germany after the Second World War.”

These numbers don’t bode well for the current German administration, she states. “Collectively the message from German voters is clear: mainstream politicians don’t address their concerns. … A survey last week showed that over half of Germans think none of the political parties would be able to tackle the challenges facing the country.”

While public polls consistently show voters concerned about immigration, rising housing costs and the war in Ukraine, many of the center parties have not made these issues their priority.

In Germany, the AfD has for years run on an explicitly anti-immigration/anti-immigrant platform. In January, the investigative news outlet, Correctiv, exposed a secret meeting in Potsdam between some AfD politicians and Austrian and German activists, in which they discussed developing a ‘remigration’ plan that would deport non-Germans, including German citizens with foreign ancestry.

Disclosure of the meeting prompted huge public protests all across Germany.

Last month, the party announced that its leading candidate for an MEP seat, Maximiliam Krah, would be removed from the ballot and would leave his leadership position within the party, following the publication of statements he made minimizing the crimes of the Nazi SS, and the arrest of one of his top aides on suspicion of spying for China.

Vote highlights a still-divided Germany

To find out what other people - Germans and immigrants to Germany - thought about the election results, I read through a number of discussion threads on Reddit.

Note: the subReddits r/germany and r/berlin are written predominantly in English, while r/de is exclusively in German.

There, most commenters remarked on the voting differences between the former West Germany and the former East, with the former DDR states voting for AfD and the west states voting more moderate or center.

Berlin and some other large cities were unique in that they went heavily for the Green Party or other left-leaning parties. However, even the east side of Berlin showed a rise in support for the AfD.*

The general consensus seemed to be that the voters were frustrated by the continuing gap in prosperity between the states in the former east and and those in the west, and the vote for AfD was more of a protest against the status quo.

Onr, u/emmmmmmja wrote on the thread, “Why is East Germany so obsessed with the AfD?”

Most people, be that AfD voters or AfD haters, don’t have in-depth knowledge of what the party actually stands for. It boils down to two main messages: “Germans first/less immigration” and “anti-establishment/governing parties are the devil”.
That’s enough to get people who are frustrated with how things are to vote for them. If people had a closer look at the election programme, they’d also see that they’d be economically, sorry, f*cked, if the AfD won.

Other commenters noted that this election was the first in which the voting age was lowered to 16, with younger voters leaning toward the AfD, as well.

“I can 100% see how the AfD did so well in the 16-24 y/o cohort,” wrote u/Asyx. “Like, I already felt like nobody gives a shit about me when I was that age (I was born in 92). But now you have people in that cohort that went through school, university, vocational training during covid with absolutely nobody giving a shit about them. … And what did that get them? Now people talk about bringing back military service and how gen [sic] z is lazy and doesn't want to work anymore. ..

And on top of all that, gen z is looking at a situation where they just can't afford rent. I can't afford a house. It feels like from the day I started working, prices just ran away from my raises. But for gen z, it's rent.”

Immigrants feeling on edge

For the many non-EU immigrants living in Germany, the vote was unsettling, to say the least. Many, including some who have lived in Germany for decades, are openly wondering whether they should start looking for somewhere else to settle.

“With the results of the recent EU elections, I start hearing more and more from my high-skilled colleagues and people in general with an immigrant background speaking out about wanting to leave Germany in the next few years,” u/Christian369369 wrote on a thread titled, “Leave Germany, but where? “People who do consider leaving / have friends who work here and consider leaving - where are you going to move?”

Some also rejected the idea that the far-right vote was a protest vote against the existing system.

“I'm tired of this fairy tale about protest voters," Aiman Mazyek, secretary-general of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, told Deutsche Welle. “These are people, who veil themselves ideologically, but know full well that this is a right-wing extremist party [they are supporting].”

In recent weeks, two videos have also surfaced of young people singing racist slogans - accompanied by Nazi hand gestures - to the tune of an Italian pop song. One was taken in a bar on the vacation island of Sylt on the Baltic Sea, the other in in Bavaria at a festival in Erlangen.

The increasing public displays and the strong showing at the polls for a far-right party mean that ideologies that were once condemned are becoming more mainstream, writes The Local’s Imogene Goodman.

“With all of Germany's major parties refusing to govern alongside the AfD, it's highly unlikely that the party will ever get a chance to enact their own policies,” she writes. “But their growing influence in Germany means that others may well deliver them on their behalf.”

For example, other parties are already moving to take a tougher stance on migration and support for asylum-seekers, as well as weakening plans to address climate change and shift the economy away from fossil-fuel dependence - both key targets of the AfD.

Is history repeating itself?

As Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it frequently rhymes.”

In wealthy countries all over the world, immigrants are alternately exploited for their labor, then used as scapegoats for societal problems. This is and has been true in the United States, and it’s been true in Germany, throughout its history - not just in the National Socialist era.

As a white American immigrant, I know I enjoy a privileged position compared to people who are refugees from war, economic hardship, or hostile regimes in their home countries.

But I also know that the real danger in the current political climate is not that the government will suddenly start deporting people.

It’s that the extreme rhetoric is encouraging Germans to view “immigrants” as the cause of all of their problems. And then people will start interpreting this as support for their own biases, and offering their own ‘solutions.’ This is already leading to some very frightening incidents.

However, I also try to keep in mind that the votes for the AfD - even in the east German states - were not the majority, just the largest plurality in some of them. The non-AfD votes were split among other several other parties. (Conversely, there were significant AfD votes in places where the other parties got the highest percentage, like in Berlin.)

At this point, I would stay that we are keeping an eye on the situation - rethinking some travel plans, making some long-term backup plans - but not in a panic, either.

*If you zoom into the map on this page showing the voting results by district in Berlin, you can see that the districts that were formerly East Berlin had higher vote totals for the AfD, where the center districts (which have more population) went Green and the west were more for the CDU. “Just like a mini Germany,” wrote one Redditor.