European Parliament Election: May 23-26, 2019

[Former President tack50]

Thinking about the Greens, since they are in an alliance with the EFA regionalists, why has no one from EFA tried to run? I could see someone from there being a good candidate.

Then again since the UK (and thus, the SNP and Plaid) is leaving, the EFA will be limited to Spain's peripheral nationalists come to think about it.

Will it be disbanded? Or the parliamentary group simply renamed to just "the Greens"?

[Former President tack50]

Which group shall N-VA join. It does not feel natural ally of Lega.

The Lega are in ENF and the N-VA are in ECR, so they're currently not in the same group in the first place. I think it's not unlikely the N-VA will be leaving ECR after the Tories are gone and PiS will take over the place: the group will be dominated by right-wing populists of a different, more nativist and anti-establishment type than the N-VA. I guess N-VA could join the EPP or ALDE, with EPP being more likely (but CD&V or MR/Open VLD would have to be okay with it, which is why it didn't happen last time; perhaps it's different now that they have been in a coalition for four years). But they could stay in ECR too.

I'm placing my bets on Dutch Forum voor Democratie, who are likely to win 2-3 seats, joining ECR. Their youth movement, JFVD, are already in the process of being associated with the European Young Conservatives, ECR's youth movement. After the UK Tories are gone, it's probably a right fit for FVD. Associating themselves with somewhat less controversial RRWPs like Finnish PS, Swedish SD and Danish DF seems like a good move. Dutch CU-SGP are already in ECR but I don't think the SGP would mind sitting with FVD; the CU representative might be less happy, however, and I don't know if they could veto it. Though FVD arguably fit much better in ECR than CU and will probably bring more seats with them.

If Puigdemont gets on the list and N-VA joins EPP, than Puigdemont and members of PP would both be part of EPP. I believe it won't happen though and CD&V which is called the opposition party inside our government will probably veto it. I see N-VA having more chance to apply for ALDE as a conservative-liberal party just like VVD and PdeCAT. Though, it would still be weird in some sense, because I remember lots of N-VA politicians be critical of Europe in general, and some on the right and youth wings supporting Le Pen in that race vs Macron. But those EU fractions are inevitably a big tent.

Well, the thing is that PDECat might be expelled from ALDE anyways (probably because of Cs pressure). The ALDE gropup seems to be preparing for that at least. So expelling PDECat while including N-VA wouldn't make much sense honestly.  EPP probably wouldn't include them either. Especially if Puigdemont gets on the list (he seems to deny this though)

Apparently N-VA was a member of the EFA for a while. Maybe they can go back there?

[Former President tack50]

Politico seems to have a very interesting "Who should you vote for" test. A bit too early for such a test but still interesting! (and splits between EU and national results). Not sure how accurate it is but still

https://www.politico.eu/interactive/youvote-eu/

My results

EU

G/EFA: 68.63%
S&D: 66.01%
GUE/NGL: 61.44%
ALDE: 59.48%
EPP: 41.83%
EFDD: 28.76%
ECR: 28.10%
ENF: 25.53%

National (Spain) (excluding small parties and nominally independent regional branches)

Cs: 76.58%
PNV: 75.18%
Equo: 68.63%
ERC: 66.67%
PSOE: 66.01%
UPyD: 63.40%
Podemos: 63.27%
EH Bildu: 57.58%
IU: 57.52%
PP: 41.83%

By politicians the 3 MEPs closest to me seem to be Xavier Benito Zuloaga (GUE/NGL, Podemos), José Blanco López (S&D, PSOE) and Eva Kaili (S&D, PASOK)

Honestly surprised at the big difference between my regional results and my national results. For some reason PNV and Cs are way up there even though ALDE is quite lower! (in fact I'd have expected UPyD to be up there as well in that case but apparently not)

[Former President tack50]

Some friends and I are planning a tour of battlefields in northern France and Belgium next spring, right around the time of the European Parliament elections.  In fact, we're aiming to be in Brussels on Sat. May 25.

Are there any big political rallies around the EU elections?  Are there lots of candidate signs, either in the cities and towns, or in the rural areas?  If any Belgian or French members wish to PM me, it would be much appreciated.  You may even get a free meal, where you can explain to us all about d'Hondt divisors.

There will almost certainly be big rallies and candidate signs indeed (though maybe over there it will be different?). There probably won't be any kind of European rallies though, the campaigns will be ran by the national parties.

Iirc Belgium also has its regional and national elections the same day, so you will find the biggest rallies there (of course they will be in French or Dutch though)

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, I can't see many places where S&D will do well honestly.

Portugal, Bulgaria and Malta seem the only places where it will make decent gains (though the latter only has 6 seats so a net of +1 would be the best scenario). Maybe in Latvia as well.

 And there might be chances (albeit not particularly great ones) of small +1 net gains in Sweden, Denmark or Spain. But it certainly won't be enough to counteract the 20 Labour MEPs leaving and the expected collapses of PD in Italy and PS in France

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, I can't see many places where S&D will do well honestly.

Portugal, Bulgaria and Malta seem the only places where it will make decent gains (though the latter only has 6 seats so a net of +1 would be the best scenario). Maybe in Latvia as well.

Wait, really? As divided as the Bulgarian Socialist Party currently is, they reasonably stand to gain 1 (one) seat in 2019. If the BSP has 222 very good days (from now until the election), they will gain their 6th MEP, and I suppose a 7th S&D Bulgarian MEP is conceivable if no parties other than GERB, BSP and DPS make the threshold (or, alternatively, ABV comes back from the dead or a new lefty party somehow catches fire and makes it). But a gain of one or two seats doesn't strike me as particularly decent on a pan-European level.

And it is very unlikely that there will be just 3 Bulgarian parties sending deputies to Brussels next year. It is not yet clear how the 'United Patriots' will split, but even if each party goes their own way, I suppose whatever formation coalesces around VMRO will have a more than even chance of returning their incumbent Dzhambazki (although I personally can't stand the man), which will only improve if one or two of the other nationalist parties is still in. The current Ataka turn to the ECR is laughable for any number of reasons - not the least how a party which literally started their last EU Parliament campaign in Moscow and whose partisan TV station was calling Kaczynski a fascist a few months ago is now in a PiS-lead alliance - but Ataka cannot be completely discounted even if they do run their proposed 'lol we are actually mafia so what' alliance with Nikolay Barekov (Bulgaria without Censorship) and a few other unsavoury characters. NFSB seem to want to run a coalition with a segment of the 'Old Right'/Reformist Bloc, while DSB and Yes Bulgaria have finally united. There is still enough time for a new entry - maybe one orbiting around the president Rumen Radev - so it is pretty certain that there will be ast least a couple MEPs outside GERB (EPP), BSP (S&D) and DPS (ALDE).

Fair enough, I was just looking at the swing from 2014 compared to current polling for a general election there (19% to around 33%). +2 seemed reasonable to me and I was basically counting anything that wasn't +1 as decent enough. (+3 does indeed seem unlikely).

I was also counting on only 4 parties entering there (GERB, BSD, DPS and the United Patriots), but I'm not sure if that would be accurate (maybe smaller parties do better in EU elections? That seems a common theme across the EU).

My guesses right now on the ones with gains would be:

PT: +2
BG: +2 (though only +1 is also possible)
MT: +1 (as badly as PN is doing there's no way for a 5-1 split)
LV: +1
SE: +1 (but this one is very dependent on how the government forms)
DK: +1 (+2 might be doable but I guess it's unlikely)
ES: +1 (though 0 or +2 might also happen, also depends on how the current government holds and if there are snap elections or not)

[Former President tack50]

^^

Fun fact: The other famous secessionist leader (Oriol Junqueras, ERC) is actually his party's number 1 candidate for the European parliament. If elected (and he almost surely will be elected) I wonder if he would be the first MEP elected from prison.

Carles Puigdemont considered doing the same, running for a Spanish party (PDECat) instead of in Belgium but in the end he decided against it as he is afraid of being arrested in the Spanish embassy in Brussels.

I still wonder if he will run at all, even if it's under N-VA. And where would he sit in that case.

[Former President tack50]

Wow, why? I personally think Stubb would be a lot better. I assume CDU has a lot of control over the EPP though, as the largest party within it by a decent margin and with Merkel seen as their face.

Since he is still in EPP, I wonder who Orban will endorse (if he endorses at all).

Also, apparently someone published a poll about a hypothetical brexit referendum in all 28 EU member states. Remain wins in all of them, with Italy being the closest one



The average country would vote 66-17 for remain. The most remain friendly country is Luxembourg and the closest one is Italy.

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, according to Europe Elects, Stubb is toast and Weber will almost certainly become the EPP candidate (and barring a major upset, EU Comission president)

[Former President tack50]

So it's official now, Puigdemont's party PDECat has been expelled from the ALDE party

https://www.politico.eu/article/alde-group-expels-catalan-separatist-party-carles-puigdemont-pdecat/

The question is now whether he'll get to remain in the ALDE parliamentary group (which isn't the same as the party) or not, and if they'll try to join the EDP euro party alongside the Basque PNV.

Euro parties have almost no relevance though, the important thing is the parliamentary group.

If after 2019 PDECat isn't allowed into ALDE, I imagine they'll try to join G-EFA, with a small chance of being rejected and having to join ECR (alongside N-VA) instead.

[Former President tack50]

EPP delegate vote:

621 votes, 2 invalid.

492 votes for Weber so must be 127 for Stubb

Do we have any breakup by country/party?

[Former President tack50]

Pablo Bustinduy will top the Unidos Podemos list in thr EP elections. Bustinduy is a young oolical scientist (aged 35) with a quite impressive academic curriculum alligned with the Errejon faction. He is member of the Congress of Deputies for Madrid and the UP spokesman in the Foreign Affairs Committee. Podemis leader Pablo Iglesias was candidate in 2014 (Podemos got 8% starting ftom scratch, while the IU list got 10%).

PSOE  hired French-Algerian political scientist, philosopher and sociologist Sami Nair, who is a renowned migration expert. He was a French PS MEP between 1999 and 2004. Sami Nair was one if the experts hired by Pedro Sánchez to draft the PSOE platform for the 2015 elections. He will be in an electable position in the PSOE list. Possible top candidates, according to El Mundo, are ministers Josep Borrell (Foreign Affairs) or Nadia Calviño (Economy).

Wait so Miguel Urban (from the far left anticapitalist branch of the party) is retiring?

Also, for PSOE I don't ser Borrell as a candidate, (again, remember he was already PSOE EU leader in 2004). Maybe Calviño will, but what about Iratxe García, their current EU leader?

[Former President tack50]

Here's an interesting article about how the Euro has affected several european countries, whether positively or negatively

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-euro-at-20/

An interesting fact is that the euro is popular in all countries using it, but among future candidates is only above water in Romania and Hungary and in both cases only barely

[Former President tack50]

Well, apparently Europe Elects has quite a bit of useful information about the election. First, here are some platforms from all the groups based on EU parliament votes:



They are also tracking the "spitzenkandidaten" nominated:

https://europeelects.eu/2019spitzenkandidaten/

Seems like only EPP, S&D, ECR (surprisingly) and the green half of G/EFA has nominated a candidate. Of those, the EPP candidate will almost certainly be elected as president of the European Commission.

Of the rest:

ALDE has already refused to run a candidate.

EFDD will be lucky if they even hold a group, I don't think they will run a candidate. The site says nothing though.

ENF may run Matteo Salvini (Lega-Italy) as a candidate, but I honestly think that's unlikely.

GUE/NGL may or may not run a candidate. If they do, likely candidates include Gregor Gysi (Linke-Germany) as well as Jean Luc Melenchon (FI-France) and Pablo Iglesias (UP-Spain)

Finally, the EFA half of G/EFA may run its own candidate, most likely Oriol Junqueras (ERC-Spain), who would be running from prison! Though at this point the EFA group is pretty much just Spanish peripheral nationalists

[Former President tack50]

GUE/NGL may or may not run a candidate. If they do, likely candidates include Gregor Gysi (Linke-Germany) as well as Jean Luc Melenchon (FI-France)

Isn't Melenchon party almost not a member of GUE-NGL? As far as I know currently they are ignoring GUE events and planing to start their own group without Linke and Syriza.

I guess the site hasn't been updated in a while?

In any case, if Melenchon is splitting from GUE/NGL I imagine the most likely candidate (if they run someone that is, remember that isn't a given) will probably be Gregor Gysi

I don't think Pablo Iglesias will be willing to run.

[Former President tack50]

We have our first poll (of sorts) for the EU parliamentary election!

It's from the worst pollster in all of Spain (CIS) and it's unweighted, with a bad sample, so take it with a huge grain of salt. It should have in theory an extreme pro-PSOE bias, and probably underrates Vox as well.

PP 14,3%
PSOE 19,7%
Unidos Podemos&allies 9,6% (includes Compromís, who may or may not run alone)
Ciudadanos 10,6%
PACMA 1,2%
VOX 2,1%
Los Verdes 0,5%!

ERC 3,1%
PDeCAT 0,6%!
EAJ-PNV 1,2%
EH Bildu 0,7%

Other party 0,5%
Blank 1,7%
Spoilt ballot 0,9%
Wouldn't vote 12,0%
Undecided 19,7%
Refused to answer 1,6%

The poll also gave us autonomous community crosstabs, which allow me to draw a map of the EU election. Keep in mind we are talking very small samples here, so this is just for fun



Biggest surprise IMO is the fact that they polled "Los Verdes" a green party which I think doesn't even exist since the late 2000s!

I wouldn't read anything into it, I'm just posting it because it's the first "real poll" we have, even if it's absolute garbage.

[Former President tack50]

In terms of Spanish regionalist coalitions, today we got another one confirmed, which seems to be the successor to 2014's European Spring. The 2019 coalition will be formed by:

Compromís (left wing Valencian nationalists)
Més (left wing Balearic Islands nationalists)
New Canaries (centre-left Canarian nationalists)
Aragonese Chunta (centre-left Aragon nationalists)

Looking at the composition, it seems like a strong platform with high chances of getting a seat. Compromís alone should easily get around 1%, with everyone else pushing it to 1.6-1.7%; enough for 1 seat.

https://twitter.com/PrensaNC/status/1084111664088301568

So as of now the confirmed coalitions are:

ERC-Bildu-BNG (probably 3 seats with a chance at 2)
Compromís-Més-NCa-ChA (probably 1 seat, chance of 0)
PNV-CC (probably 1 seat, chance of 0)

The first 2 will almost certainly join the G/EFA group, in the EFA subgroup (which will now be limited to Spanish peripheral nationalists after Brexit). The last one will join ALDE if allowed. If Cs blocks them somehow then who knows what they'll join.

The big question here is what will PDECat do. They probably have 4 options:

1: Try to join the ERC coalition. ERC has already refused to run with them though, and they are a bad fit for that coalition

2: Try to get PNV to break up their coalition and join them. Depends on what image PNV wants to show, but they are trying to play moderates now so going with CC is a better option. However CC doesn't guarantee a seat for PNV while PDECat probably is better.

3: Join the current PNV-CC coalition. This would guarantee seats for both PDECat and PNV, however CC has a lot of differences with PDECat on independence (they even suppported article 155)

4: Run alone. A last resort option. This probably means that they get 0 seats unless they have a very good election night.

In terms of leaders, it seems ERC's coalition will run Oriol Junqueras (former deputy premier of Catalonia, now in jail). Compromis' coalition will probably run whoever was their MEP until now. And the PNV coalition will run their current MEP Izaskun Bilbao.

No idea who PDECat plans on running

[Former President tack50]

And just in time, we finally get our first proper poll by a proper pollster (not the CIS stuff)

PSOE-S&D: 22.1% (14)
PP-EPP: 18.5% (11)
Cs-ALDE: 18.2% (11)
UP-GUE/NGL: 15.6% (10)
Vox-NI: 13% (

ERC-Bildu-BNG: 5.2% (3)
PDECat-Crida-PNV-CC: 3% (1)
European Spring (Compromís-ChA-NC-Més): 2.2% (1)

Others: 1.7%
Blank: 1.2%

http://electomania.es/sociometrica-el-psoe-ganaria-las-europeas-vox-conseguiria-8-eurodiputados/

[Former President tack50]

That seems like quite a poor number for C's though?

Actually, it seems to be around their polling average. Then again this particular pollster (Sociométrica) generally gives Cs good numbers so probably not the best of news.

Vox-NI: 13% (

is exactly my mood when I see this. Definitely think they're heading to ENF rather than NI though.

To be fair is pretty much the opposite thing to my mood seeing them

I do think they are probably more likely to join ECR than ENF though. It seems like a better fit for them imo.

[Former President tack50]

"Yellow vest" party would be really dumb imo. Not only is the movement totally ideologically incoherent; but, unlike M5S it is supposed to be all over the place. Also, a "Yellow vest" party implies "Yellow vest leaders" which is also totally counter to what the movement was about, as you can see in the response to all of the alleged spokesmen who got media profiles.

Yeah, reminds me of how sometimes people here speculated in 2011 whether the 15M movement would evolve into something.

Then again it did eventually lead to the formation of Podemos though. But the Yellow Vest protests seem a lot less ideological than the 15M ones (or stuff like Occupy Wall Street)

In any case if the Yellow Vests do evolve into something else they definitely won't make it in 2019. 2022 Presidential election at best. I imagine they would look a lot like M5S in Italy though.

[Former President tack50]

In Finland the EP situation is quite open, due the national elections only one month before.

I have a feeling that this will lead to a very low turnout in the EP election ("But I just voted last month!"), but we'll see...

I imagine the EU election will be used as leverage on government negotiations and/or as a "2nd round of the election" if the result is close or uncertain enough right?

Also, can't Finland simply delay the election and have it the same day as the EU election or is the parliamentary term over?

[Former President tack50]

Does Germany have the 5% hurdle back or is it gone for now? I thought the EU wanted to bring it back? (big mistake imo)

[Former President tack50]

Eum, why?





I don't think I can vote for them, even if i wanted too?

Are they going to try and run in all of Europe with their own party?

Which parties have adhered to this?

[Former President tack50]

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More information. They have at least my signature, but i'm undecided whether to support them or GUE-NGL (PVDA). Most likely, they won't get on the ballot here. Otherwise, i might support them. They have good proposals & ideas.

I could vote for them, since they have an associated 'party' in Spain called Actúa.  Anyway I think casting a ballot for the Varoufakis artifact is a waste and the Actúa project doesn't raise my enthusiasm. On the other hand, I don't think there is a great difference between the 'European Spring'* platform and those of GUE-NGL or Greens-EFA and the two latter incorporate electorally viable parties across Europe.

*There was a Spanish list called Primavera Europea ("European Spring") running in the 2014 EP elections. The list incorporated Equo (a small green party operating throughout Spain), Compromis (a left wing coalition operating in the Valencia region) and a bunch of tiny regional and local parties. Primavera Europea won a seat and I voted for that list.

Worth noting that this time Primavera Europea only includes regional parties (Compromis-NCa-Mes-ChA).

So this time a vote for them is pretty much a vote for Compromis (the other 3 aren't getting seats)

[Former President tack50]

PSOE has announced that they will be running the current foreign affairs minister, former speaker of the European Parliament (2004-2007) and briefly PSOE leader (1998-1999), Josep Borrell, as their number 1 candidate

https://guardian.ng/news/world/spains-foreign-minister-to-stand-for-european-elections/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josep_Borrell



It is said that he will probably try to get a high ranking job in the European Commission, probably Commission Vice President.

I personally don't like this because:

1: He has done an amazing job as foreign affairs minister, and I'd rather have him stay on his post than go (back) to the EU

2: In a way this feels like a concession to the Catalan secessionists, who hate Borrell with a passion as he shows a very different kind of unionist; he is a clearly left wing unionist. In a way he is one of the politicians most hated by the secessionists. I am open to concessions to the secessionists, but Borrell should stay.

Either way he will also do a great job in the EU.