The Renew group is expected to lose up to 21 MEPs. The heirs of liberal-democratic values are suffering from the fall in their popularity at the national level. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, Renew is expected to lose most of its MEPs, according to Euronews polls.
According to Euronews’ Super Polls (which uses publicly available polls to predict the outcome of the June 9 vote in the European Parliament), the Liberals are expected to suffer a historic defeat and see their ranks shrink to 82 MEPs compared to the Parliament’s 102. current.
If this loss is confirmed by the final results of the European elections, it could lead to significant changes in the next EU legislature.
“Renew’s difficulties mirror many of the problems it has faced in national-level votes over the past year. With purchasing power, migration, energy and farmers’ protests among the issues priority for European voters, Renew member parties have largely failed to address the national issues favored by many voters in western Europe, where Renew was strongest in 2019,” comments Boyd Wagner, chief analyst at the Euronews Polling Center.
The Liberal Democrats’ policies have clashed with the growing sense of insecurity among Western European citizens.
“There is a general trend that liberal democracy is under threat, which could affect most liberal parties. But there are also specific reasons, and France is a very interesting case. In 2019, a large number of French liberals were elected to the European Parliament, following Emmanuel Macron’s electoral victory two years earlier, in the 2017 national elections“, explains Steven Van Hecke, professor of comparative and European politics at the Public Governance Institute at the University of Louvain.
France is the second largest country in the EU. There are 79 French MEPs out of the current 705 seats in the European Parliament (elected in 2019). 23 of these MEPs are members of the Renew Europe group out of the 102 “yellow” seats.
This question is all the more relevant as the next European Parliament is expected to have a total of 720 MEPs due to a new distribution of seats.
According to the Euronews polling center, MEPs from the French Renaissance party could only have 15 members in the European Parliament.
The next European Parliament could be the scene of many relocated political confrontations between liberal-democratic and liberal-socialist values and conservative principles.
In this neo-ideological “Squid Game”, France is called upon to play an important rolefor at least three reasons.
First of all, due to its objective importance within the EU and the Eurozone. Secondly, due to the role played by its president, Emmanuel Macron, to advance the values that designed the architecture of the Renew Europe group. And third, because the French radical right is on the verge of winning the European elections in Franceexceeding by almost double the votes of Renaissance.
President Macron’s popularity at home has been declining since at least 2019. The French have rejected economic reforms implemented by the presidential majority. Decarbonization policies, pension reforms, planned reductions in unemployment benefits and, according to the far right, an “ineffective anti-migration policy” have had a negative impact on the president’s popularity.
As usual, the population of Western Europe is taking advantage of the European elections to protest against the respective national governments.
The same goes for the Dutch liberal-conservatives of former Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The VVD, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, is the second force of the Renew group within the outgoing European Parliament. He could be expelled from the group after the government agreement reached with Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party.PVV), partner of the National Rally (RN) by Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen within the Identity and Democracy group.
In the Netherlands, migration policies are at the origin of popular discontent with the liberals.
The Dutch compromise between liberal-conservatives and the radical right is completely incompatible with the intense duel between President Macron and his ideological antagonist Marine Le Pen ahead of the 2027 French presidential elections.
President Macron’s electoral success in France in 2017 gave a boost to European liberals. In 2019, Macron was still quite popular in his country and his party won the European elections: “He exceptionally brought a large number of French liberals to the (EU) Parliament, which made it possible to found the liberal group. And now, in a way, the liberals will no longer receive French doping. And they return to the size of 2014. So it’s a kind of normalization”explains Steven Van Hecke.
Liberal principles are not the exclusive monopoly of Renew Europe, they are present in other groups: “We should not underestimate the fact that a certain number of more or less traditional liberal forces are attached to the EPP and even the ECR group. To cite just two examples: Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform in Poland might be called the Christian Democratic People’s Party, but it is also liberal-conservative and is now part of the EPP group, not the Liberals. Likewise, the Flemish nationalists of the NVA, for particular reasons, are not part of the Renew group. They are more in the ECR group”.
ADVERTISEMENTFrom a political realism perspective, current multi-party liberalism could give rise to other coalition options such as the Liberal-Conservative Coalition.
There is also an important issue concerning European liberals, namely the geographical divide between Western and Central Europe.
“Liberal parties are traditionally strong in Western Europe. And it is especially in Western Europe that we are witnessing a fragmentation of the political landscape. They are therefore becoming smaller, at the national level, and therefore also at the European level, without power compensate for this loss in the so-called new member states of Central and Eastern Europe”, concludes Steven Van Hecke.
