How did political parties address today’s complex challenges in their European Parliament election programmes and electoral campaigns – and how do they differ in doing so? Which topics dominated the debates? How did the results affect the balance of power in the European Parliament and other EU institutions? What will the policy implications be? This report answers these questions by focusing on a number of key member states in a comparative perspective and – in the wake of the surge of the far right and anti-transformation tendencies – discusses strategies to increase the importance of the EU elections and strengthen the democratic, unifying and forward-facing foundation of the EU itself.
This Final Report of the European Parliament Election Project “More diverse than united? A comparative analysis of the EU elections 2024” – co-lead by the European Policy Centre (EPC) and Das Progressive Zentrum (DPZ) and funded by the Open Society Foundations – dedicates itself to this complex political situation and its implications. Together with several European think tanks and research organisations we monitored, compared, and analysed on the basis of a common methodological approach the election campaigns and results in four major member states – France, Germany, Italy, and Poland. We also discussed the aggregated results from an EU-level perspective.
Key takeaways
- The European election is, in practice, an amalgam of 27 national elections happening simultaneously. The analysis carried out within this research project reveals hugely different interpretations of the outcome.
- The EP election campaigns were significantly different from one country to the other; the results, in turn, led to widely different political developments.
- The EP election 2024 clearly showed that European elections continue to be second-order votes.
- Across all countries, there was a low visibility for genuinely European topics.
- Despite the mostly negative narratives around EU policy-making, no parties explicitly proposed leaving the EU or exiting the Euro. Even the most eurosceptic and anti-European parties, mostly on the far-right, toned down their stance.
- National political figures dominated the debates. Especially in France and Italy, the campaigns were strongly personalised.
- The functioning of the EU institutions was almost always interpreted through a national lens.
- The election campaigns lacked substance in all four countries, the party programmes were little discussed, and even topics with European dimensions were reduced to national level debates.
- The programmes of the Europarties had no connection to national party manifestos, except for the Greens. These Euro party manifestos reflected the EU’s main priorities, such as security and competitiveness.
- The EU was mostly discussed along the lines of the Eurosceptic or pro-European positions at the national level.
- Compared to previous EP elections, the 2024 European elections were mired in political violence, both physical and verbal – a violence fuelled by the far-right, which is increasingly normalised.
- The resentment, anger, and disillusionment with the politics of growing groups of voters was reflected in the political choices that led to the success of far-right parties.
- Despite the clear win for far-right parties across France, Germany, Poland and Italy, the European elections also showed interesting developments on the centre-left and the left, with different results across the four countries under study.
- There were, however, two developments in the 2024 European elections which can be interpreted as positive steps for the EU: The lead candidate (Spitzenkandidat system was upheld; and there was a high electoral turnout with 51% – the highest since 1994, when it reached 56%. This can be read as a sign of a more politicised Europe, although not necessarily a more Europeanised one, considering the surge of anti-European voices within the EU.
Read the full report