In honour of European elections being held today in some 20 odd EU states I wanted to write about EU democracy and why the outcome is important. This is hardly an original idea, plenty of people have given plenty of reasons why one should care and vote in European elections but I figured I’d give my thoughts too, and seeing as turnout is generally low it’s worth reminding folks why European elections are a big deal. European elections can seem uninteresting and confusing, you’re voting for a domestic party which is part of a larger looser umbrella party which, if you’re from a small country, might not actually vote the way your domestic party said they would in the campaign. Also it’s quite unclear who is going to be the next president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, which is the only part of the EU which is allowed to initiate voting on new proposals. In this blog post I will attempt to explain why European election results matter and what I suspect will be the results.
As EU legislation is important it by extension makes those who vote on such legislation important too, even non-EU citizens were no doubt impacted when the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which has made pop-ups informing about the usage of cookies near ubiquitous. Furthermore, I’d wager most who spend much time on social media have heard of article 13 which was said to kill memes and forever change the internet fundamentally. The EU makes laws on much more than the internet but it functions as a useful illustration of the power and influence the European Parliament can have. Still, the European Parliament is far from a national parliament in the sense that individual member states can challenge the EU as Hungary and Poland have done quite successfully. Perhaps the most important change the election brings is a new president of the Commission which is the executive branch of the EU essentially.
As for my predictions for outcomes I think Eurosceptic part groups will do well, especially in Eurozone countries due to the lopsided gains and costs from both adopting the Euro and from the European Central Banks’ monetary policy. I’ve written before about how the Euro causes problems for smaller economies and how modern monetary policy creates more wealth inequality, two factors which I hypothesise are conducive to growing Euroscepticism. I wrote my dissertation on the subject of ECB monetary policy and Euroscepticism, and while I was unable to find a correlation strong enough for academia I firmly believe that the ECB’s QE programme has at least contributed to increasing Euroscepticism.
What do you think? Is the European Parliament irrelevant? Share your thoughts on Twitter and consider joining Ipoleco’s email list to stay up to date on new blog posts, and if you’re interested in European Elections here’s my last post on the subject. Check back in a week for the next post!
Written by Karl Johansson, founder of Ipoleco
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Cover Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com from Pexels
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