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A rogues’ gallery of the EU’s top 13 eurosceptic parties

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skepticismAs voters in 28 European countries prepare to head to the polls, beginning on May 22 and running through May 25, no one knows whether Europe’s center-left or center-right will win more seats, and no one knows who will ultimately become the next president of the European Commission.European_Union

But the one thing upon which almost everyone agrees is that Europe’s various eurosceptic parties are set for a huge victory — not enough seats to determine the outcomes of EU legislation and policymaker, perhaps, but enough to form a strong, if disunited, bloc of relatively anti-federalist voices. Voters, chiefly in the United Kingdom, France and Italy, are set to cast strong protest votes that could elect more than 100 eurosceptic MEPs.

In some countries, such as Spain, euroscepticism is still a limited force — the center-left opposition Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) is tied for the lead with the governing center-right Partido Popular (the PP, or the People’s Party) of prime minister Mariano Rajoy. But Spain is quickly becoming an outlier as eurosceptic parties are springing up in places where unionist sentiment once ran strong.

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RELATED: In Depth: European parliamentary elections
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Of course, not all eurosceptics are created equally. Some anti-Europe parties have been around for decades, while others weren’t even in existence at the time of the last elections in 2009. Some are virulently xenophobic, far-right or even neo-Nazi in their outlooks, while others are cognizably on the more mainstream conservative / leftist ideological spectrum. Some seek nothing short of their country’s withdrawal from the European Union altogether, while others seek greater controls on immigration. Some are even pro-Europe in the abstract, but oppose eurozone membership. That’s one of the reasons why eurosceptics have had so much trouble uniting across national lines — the mildest eurosceptic parties abhor the xenophobes, for example.

If everyone acknowledges that eurosceptic parties will do well when the votes are all counted on Sunday, no one knows whether that represents a peak of anti-Europe support, given the still tepid economy and high unemployment across the eurozone, or whether it’s part of a trend that will continue to grow in 2019 and 2024.

With 100 seats or so in the European Parliament, eurosceptics can’t cause very many problems. They can make noise, and they stage protests, but they won’t hold up the EU parliamentary agenda. With 200 or even 250 seats, though, they could cause real damage. There’s no rule that says that eurosceptics can’t one day win the largest block of EP seats, especially so long as most European voters ignore Europe-wide elections or treat them as an opportunity to protest unpopular national government.

For now, though, they’re all bound to cause plenty of trouble for their more mainstream rivals at the national level, and in at least five countries, they could wind up with the largest share of the vote. So it’s still worth paying attention to them.

Without further ado, here are the top 13 eurosceptic parties to keep an eye on as the results are announced on Sunday:

Continue reading A rogues’ gallery of the EU’s top 13 eurosceptic parties →

Belgium, Flanders, Wallonia

Is Belgium destined for breakup after another inconclusive vote?

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You’d be forgiven if you forgot that, on the same day as Europeans elect the European Parliament and Ukrainians elect a president, Belgium, too, will elect a new national government — and the northern, Dutch/Flemish-speaking Flanders and the southern, French-speaking Wallonia will both elect regional governments. Belgium Flag

It’s the first parliamentary elections in Belgium since June 2010, which were so fractured and inconclusive that it took 541 days for a coalition government to form under the premiership of Walloon socialist Elio di Rupo (pictured above).

Polls this time around show that most Belgian parties will win roughly the same amount of support in 2014 as they did in 2010, which means that Belgium could be in for another wrenching year or more of coalition negotiations. Due to the linguistic and regional differences between Flemish and Walloon voters, two completely different sets of parties compete for Flemish and Walloon votes, respectively.

Even though the Scottish and Catalan independence votes later this autumn have attracted wider attention, there’s an equally strong chance that Belgium could cease to exist in everything but name if two consecutive elections fail to give the country a stable government. 

Initially, in the decades after Belgian independence in 1830, the French-speaking Walloon region was traditionally wealthier. After World War II, however, Flanders increasingly dominated Belgian economic output, and Flemish leaders have correspondingly demanded greater policymaking autonomy from Belgium’s national government.

Beginning in the 1960, chiefly at Flemish initiative, increasing amount of power have already been devolved to regional government, where regional parliaments were formed in 1981 and their members have been directly elected since 1995.

With a national population of around 10.75 million, there are just over 6 million people in Flanders and just over 4 million people in Wallonia. Within Belgium, each of Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels now have a regional parliament, and there’s now a parliament for German-speaking Belgians. Moreover, the country is split into three regions for administration purposes: Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels, the country’s capital, which is located just within Flanders but which has a French-speaking majority.

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Though just a small minority of Flemish voters want independence, many leading Flemish parties have successfully pushed for greater regional autonomy. Another inconclusive election could lead to reforms that give the two regions almost complete autonomy in a confederal arrangement that would leave a shell of a national government that administers foreign policy and controls little domestic policy. 

But who will emerge in the regional governments after Sunday’s elections? After all, even under the current state of Belgian federalism, the Flemish and Walloon governments matter just as much, if not more, than the national government.

Flemish regional electionsflanders flag

In Flanders, the contest is largely between the Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V, Christian Democratic and Flemish), the traditional Flemish center-right party, which favors greater autonomy for Flanders as a way of avoiding Belgian separation, and the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New Flemish Alliance), a pro-secession party that hopes to win increasing autonomy for Flanders for the express purpose of hastening independence. Continue reading Is Belgium destined for breakup after another inconclusive vote? →

14 in 14, Belgium

14 in 2014: Belgium parliamentary elections

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8. Belgium parliamentary election, May 25.Belgium Flag

Pity Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo — despite the fact that Belgians last voted in June 2010, the ensuing coalition talks meant that Di Rupo (pictured above) only became prime minister in December 2011.  Just two years later, Belgium is already looking ahead to elections in May, and coalition talks could once again stretch in terms of years, not days or months.

While the agreement that installed the Di Rupo government enacted to a set of political reforms that ended direct elections for the upper house of the Belgian parliament, Belgians will determine all 150 members of the Chamber of Deputies (Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers in Flemish, Chambre des Représentants in French).  With 88 seats up for grabs in the Dutch/Flemish-speaking northern region of Flanders and 62 seats in the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia, the linguistic and regional divide virtually guarantees that no single party can come close to winning an outright majority.

Polls show that the parties have roughly the same amount of support as in 2010.

That means that Di Rupo’s leftist Parti Socialiste (PS, Socialist Party) is likely to emerge as the largest Francophone party.  But it’s followed closely by the liberal Mouvement Réformateur (RF, Reformist Movement).  The Christian democratic Centre démocrate humaniste (cdH, Christian Humanist Center) and Ecolo, Belgium’s Francophone green party, should also win a significant number of seats.

But on the Flemish side, Antwerp mayor Bart de Wever’s Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New Flemish Alliance), which has called for the gradual secession of Flanders from Belgium, seems set to improve on its 2010 total.  The N-VA emerged as the party with the largest number of seats after 2010 (with 27 to 26 for Di Rupo’s Socialists), and it could emerge as the largest party by an even wider margin in 2014.  Its chief competition is the more conventional Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V Christian Democratic and Flemish), which leads the regional Flanders government.  Other parties include the social democratic Socialistische Partij Anders (sp.a, Socialist Party Different), the liberal Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Open VLD, Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats), the far-right, pro-independence Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest, VB) and the Groen, the Flemish Greens.

The current government brings together the top three Francophone parties (socialist, liberal and Christian democratic), the Flemish Christian Democrats and the Open VLD, leaving the most pro-independence Flemish parties and the two green parties in opposition.  With the federal election scheduled for the same day as elections to the European Parliament, it could maximize turnout among the euroskeptic and the Flemish secessionist electorate, which could leave de Wever and the N-VA in a much stronger position over the next five years.

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