The outcome of the weekend’s European Union elections threatened a fresh period of instability in the bloc, with some countries set for early elections and coalition governments in Italy and Germany facing deeper strains.
As final results trickled in Monday, there was relief in Brussels that the vote didn’t yield a broad anti-EU nationalist surge. The Greens performed particularly strongly and pro-European lawmakers are set to form a clear majority in the new European Parliament.
Still, the EU faces continued political volatility and the results in many countries—including the departing Britain—suggested voters remain disillusioned and divided.
“The electorate is crying out for change and is therefore volatile—preferring to back new insurgents rather than the status quo parties that have been around for decades,” said Mark Leonard, founding director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party was firmly defeated in the EU vote, called snap elections before summer. Austria was already headed for the polls after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on May 18 dissolved his coalition. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Kurz was toppled by a no-confidence vote in parliament.
Belgium, which held national elections on Sunday, looks set for another protracted period of coalition building, with ethnic nationalist parties surging in Dutch-speaking Flanders, while the left performed strongly in French-speaking Wallonia.
In Germany, the election was a blistering indictment of the two ruling parties. Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and her left-leaning coalition partner Social Democratic Party both suffered large drops in votes compared with the last European elections in 2014 and the general election of 2017.
The main winner from this erosion wasn’t the stridently nationalist Alternative for Germany—whose share of the vote fell almost 2 percentage points below that of 2017—but the centrist Greens.
The SPD’s dire showing poses the biggest risk to the stability of Ms. Merkel’s government. The party’s relentless shrinkage puts chairwoman Andrea Nahles under growing pressure from grass-roots activists who want her to leave Ms. Merkel’s coalition and reposition the party in opposition.
The absence of a leader-in-waiting with sufficiently broad support, however, could postpone a reckoning for Ms. Nahles—and for the coalition—until after regional elections in Germany’s east in September and October.
In Italy, the elections handed a resounding victory to the nationalist League that reversed a balance of power from last year’s national elections with its coalition partner, the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement.
During campaigning, League leader Matteo Salvini, who is Italy’s interior minister, and members of his party clashed frequently with their 5 Star allies.
Mr. Salvini on Monday discounted, for now, speculation that his strong showing could tempt him to trigger a government crisis leading to fresh national elections.
“We won’t use this [electoral] support to settle accounts internally,” he said. “Our government allies are friends with whom from tomorrow we go back to work serenely.”
Observers say the results will likely help Mr. Salvini dominate the government.
“It will be Salvini who will dictate even more the agenda of the government at national and European level,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, managing partner of Turin-based political consulting firm Quorum.
In France, the results produced another punishing outcome for the country’s traditional center-left and center-right parties. They suggested that pro-EU centrist President Emmanuel Macron continues to face a formidable political challenge from his top 2017 presidential opponent, Marine Le Pen, whose anti-migrant, euroskeptic National Rally eked out first place on Sunday. France’s Greens surged into third place.
With more political turbulence likely ahead, analysts say the EU will struggle to tackle its biggest challenges, including Brexit, economic sluggishness, trade tensions with the U.S. and growing concerns about China’s plans in the bloc.
“You see [political] fragmentation in many countries which means governing becomes more difficult and cabinets often don’t last their full term,” said Hylke Dijkstra, director of European Studies at Maastricht University. “The reality is the rest of the world is moving…and Europe is faced with an increasingly complex political system that might not be able to deliver.”
European national leaders now face weeks or months of debate in choosing new heads for the EU’s main institutions. Mainstream parties are likely also to argue over who should lead the EU’s executive, the European Commission.
At a summit on Tuesday, EU leaders must start to narrow options for the bloc’s other top jobs, including replacements for European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and European Council President Donald Tusk.
—Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Nektaria Stamouli in Athens contributed to this article.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Giovanni Legorano at giovanni.legorano@wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-elections-deepen-divisions-in-national-capitals-11558960543
2019-05-27 15:42:00Z
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