The most confusing elections of all time?

European Union

20 Jun

The far-right surged but the centre held; somehow the two are true at once. Nearly 100 members of the new European Parliament have yet to tell us which political family they’ll be joining. And as for who’s actually going to be running the EU’s institutions for the next five years – right now, it’s anyone’s guess. How can we make sense of these European elections? Alberto Alemmano joins us to help decipher a momentous, and very confusing, moment in Europe’s democracy.

Alberto is a professor of EU law at HEC in Paris and the College of Europe. You can follow him on Twitter here.

We’ve got a new look! Check out our beautiful new website, designed by the wonderful RTiiiKA, at europeanspodcast.com.

This special episode was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Culture of Solidarity Fund, powered by the European Cultural Foundation in collaboration with Allianz Foundation and the Evens Foundation. You can check out the #CulturalDealEU campaign here.

Inspiration Station recommendations:

‘Untold: Power for Sale’
‘Under Paris’
You can check out ‘Mixed Signals’, the new podcast from Semafor, here

Producers

Katy Lee

EDITORIAL SUPPORT

Katz Laszlo

SOUND DESIGN, Mixing and mastering

Wojciech Oleksiak

SOUND EFFECTS

Freesound.org

Music

Jim Barne, Blue Dot Sessions

HOSTS

Katy Lee, Dominic Kraemer

DOMINIC: Hi, Katy.

KATY: Hello, I missed talking to you last week! Apparently some stuff happened while we were away?

D: Yes. Well, for starters, we had a rebrand and we have a new logo and a new website. Don't you think it's lovely?

K: I think it's kind of charmingly chaotic, like we are.

D: Thank you to the amazing RTiiiKA for all the beautiful design work. But I think what you're actually referring to is that there were elections in the 27 countries of the European Union that we haven't talked about yet.

K: Mm hmm.

D: So we've got a ridiculous amount of stuff to unpack this week, including pretty big news from where you are, Katy. France has had quite the post-European elections rollercoaster.

K: Oh my god, it feels like approximately 10 years worth of political drama has happened in the past week, which has included the leader of one of the main political parties locking himself in party headquarters. It's been kind of captivating and alarming at the same time. But yeah, you'll all have heard the news by now that Emmanuel Macron has decided to call a snap parliamentary election here in France for the end of next week, as the result of the far-right doing very well in the European elections. So here, at least, the consequences of the European elections are being very much felt domestically. Basically, Macron has taken a huge gamble and said to the French people, you know, you guys keep voting in ever-increasing numbers for the far-right. Do you actually want them to govern? Let’s vote on it. And even though a very large number of French people would like to see Marine Le Pen's party in power, Macron is betting on a larger number being terrified by that prospect and turning out en masse to block it.

[MACRON CLIP]

D: It seems like quite a risky move. Do you think there's any chance he's going to succeed with this gamble?

K: I honestly don't know. You know, we do use a different electoral system for parliamentary elections than the proportional system that ended up giving so many seats to Marine Le Pen in the European elections just now. So it will be harder for her to win seats in the national parliament. But her party, the Rassemblement National, you know, they’re currently polling at about 35%, which is higher as a bloc than either the Left or Macron’s liberals. Having said that, one thing that has happened in recent days, that no one thought would happen, is that the Left seems to have got its act together, and made an agreement to unite for these elections, so that each constituency will only have a single candidate from a kind of vaguely leftist party like the Socialists or the Greens or La France Insoumise, which is kind of further to the left. And there is some tentative talk from the pollsters that the Left could actually put up a decent challenge to the far-right as a united front. There were also big street demos across France over the weekend calling for people to block the far-right. But yeah, we'll have to see. I mean, a day is a very long time in French politics at the moment. So there's time for about a gazillion years worth of more politics before the elections the weekend after next.

D: It would be quite ironic if this election, which all the reporting so far has been about the far-right, led to the most left-wing parliament in recent French history.

K: You know what? It's all to play for.

D: It's extraordinary how big a shockwave these European election results have been in France, because where I am in the Netherlands, I think most people have forgotten that there was even an election less than two weeks ago.

K: Oh really?

D: There's just too much other stuff going on. And I guess that just goes to show that whilst these elections take place across the entire continent, the different national effects and the national trends are so different and nuanced from country to country. And that's something we want to dig into a little this week along with trying to look forward and figure out what happens next as a result of these elections. And we're going to be doing that with one of the sharpest observers of EU politics, a returning guest who we've been hoping to have back on the show for ages, Alberto Alemanno, roaming European and professor of EU law at HEC in Paris.

K: So this is kind of a bumper elections episode. We are going to be mostly staying focused on that today. However, we got some feedback by none other than Dominic's dad, which is that apparently, Dominic, your dad is sad that we haven't done Good Week, Bad Week for a while. Sorry, Dominic's dad.

D: He is.

K: So here at the personal request of Dominic's dad, it is an election special edition of Good Week, Bad Week.

GOOD ELECTION, BAD ELECTION

K: Good Election, Bad Election. Briefly Dominic, who has had a good week in these elections?

D: Well, following on from the European elections, there are lots of people I could have given Good Week to, but the person I've chosen is the prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, because she seems to have had a particularly good election. Her radical right party Brothers of Italy, which I should remind you have neo-fascist roots, topped the Italian European elections with almost 29% of the vote. Still under a third of the voters who turned up in Italy, I don't want to overstate her popularity. And the Italian Social Democrats actually also had a relatively good week, they came in second, and some are describing it as maybe a mini revival on the cards for the Italian Social Democrats and it could be a sign that there could be a pan-European revival for traditionally socially democratic parties on the cards.

K: Yeah, the Socialists here in France also did not terribly for the first time in a really long time, that news has been kind of missed under the bombshell of the elections. But it does seem like it maybe could be a thing. But in Italy, even if that did happen, Meloni was the big winner, right?

D: Yes. And she actually stood herself as the lead candidate for her party in these European elections, a decision that was kind of just for show because she is, of course, not going to be sitting as a member of the European Parliament. But it was a savvy move that made the election in Italy all about Meloni. And on the broader international stage, she certainly seems to have succeeded in cementing her position as a key political figure of this continent of Europe.

K: Yeah, she also had the chance to look very kind of stateswoman-like and important this week because Italy was hosting the G7 summit.

D: Indeed, I'm sure she revelled in hosting that meeting of seven leaders of quote unquote, advanced democracies. But it wasn't all Good Week for Meloni at G7. There were some pretty chaotic and embarrassing stories coming out of the actual organisation of the summit. Did you see the photos from the disgusting boat that thousands of security staff working for the summit were housed on?

K: No, I haven't seen this, what's this boat story?

D: It looked really rancid. There were not enough cabins apparently; there were photos of overflowing toilets. It was really quite disgusting.

K: Oh no!

D: But those embarrassments aside, she seemed to continue successfully walking this tightrope between being a populist far-right leader whilst presenting herself on some key geopolitical issues as mainstream-ish, and aligning with her non far-right G7 allies, and that alignment is perhaps most pointed and most important for her international reputation in her continued support for Ukraine.

[MELONI CLIP]

D: At the summit, the G7, including Meloni, agreed to use frozen Russian assets to loan $50 billion to Ukraine. So she manages to keep her seat at the table and paint herself as a, quote unquote, reasonable and acceptable politician by supporting Ukraine. It's something that other far-right leaders seem to be starting to do as well. For example, Geert Wilders, this far-right leader who won the general election in November in the Netherlands, he's sounding much more pro-Ukraine these days as well, despite years of Putin-friendly statements in the past.

K: Interesting.

D: Cas Mudde who's a well-known political professor who specialises in the far-right, he says that we need to separate Ukraine's fight for independence with the fight for liberal democracy. They're not the same thing. And he says conflating the two even weakens liberal democracy by normalising far-right pro Ukrainians like Giorgia Meloni and like the Law and Justice party in Poland. Meloni is still chipping away at the rights of marginalised groups at home in Italy and weakening liberal democracy, for example, with the alleged attempts from Meloni to turn the Italian broadcaster, RAI, into a propaganda machine for ruling parties. In the run up to the European election, there was a lot of talk about whether European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is going to need the support in the European Parliament of Maloney and her European conservatives and reformists grouping in order to secure a second term. And actually those overtures to Meloni somewhat backfired on von der Leyen because the centre-left parties that support on the line, then threatened to block her second presidency if she teamed up with Meloni.

K: So you could actually argue that Meloni is less influential than she might have been because of the way that the elections turned out.

D: Yeah, I guess you could have. But I think she won't be disappointed because her grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists in the European Parliament, have grown. She's definitely stronger politically in Italy as well, after this election, the 29% and her brothers of Italy party got here is higher than the 26%. Her party got the last Italian general election in 2022. So she's bucking a bit of a trend that we saw in many other countries in Europe, where if the far-right have been actually in power, they then lost some support in the European elections. And therefore, I think it's reasonable to give her a good week, which I must stress again is not an endorsement. I'm not saying she is good. Just that I can imagine her sitting back in her office, thinking, yeah, things are going good for me.

K: Mmm.

D: By the way, Katy, did you see that super awkward video of Meloni and Macron shaking hands that went viral last week?

K: Yeah, I did. Ice cold.

D: I was quite struck to see that she really wasn't even trying to hide her contempt for him. And apparently the two of them had clashed over some language around abortion in the official statement that comes out after these G7 meetings. Macron wanted there to be a statement about the importance of, quote, access to safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care. Meloni –

K: Macron’s had a pretty bad week otherwise and has made some questionable decisions. But this wasn't one of them. So hats off for that.

D: Yeah, apparently Meloni didn't want that statement to be in there. Although she has since denied that she opposed it. So we don't really know what's going on. But reportedly, there was a diplomatic spat. And that might explain why she was giving him serious side-eye when they shook hands after the meeting. So this like hoo-hah around the statement could be another sign of how powerful she is actually, that she can get a statement about access to abortion taken out of the G7 statement, and also, according to some reports, statements in support of LGBTQ rights. Anyway, who's had a bad week, Katy?

K: I'm gonna give Bad Week to Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. You might say it's not that bad a week, because Orbán’s hard-right party Fidesz came top in Hungary in the European elections, they got just over half of the seats, 11 out of 21. So, not bad. But that headline figure masks the fact that this is actually the worst performance for Fidesz since Hungary joined the EU 20 years ago, despite spending a huge amount of money on online political advertising during this campaign. More in fact than any other political party in Europe. These results represent a drop of 11% in support for Fidesz since the last election, which is pretty hefty. So this is being seen as a sign that maybe, finally, Orbán’s very long grip on power might be weakening a little bit.

D: There does seem to have been quite a lot of change in Hungarian national politics over the last few months, right?

K: Yeah, there was this big paedophilia cover-up scandal back in February, which we talked about at the time on the show with our favourite Hungarian journalist, Viktória Serdült. It really, really rocked the Hungarian political establishment. And I remember asking Viktória back then about something interesting that seemed to be going on with this guy called Péter Magyar. He's a former ruling party insider. But he was suddenly all over social media being really openly critical of Orbán and accusing him of building a political system that had enriched a handful of his cronies and basically not benefited the Hungarian people at all. At the time that we spoke, Viktória said that it really wasn't clear what this guy Péter Magyar was up to. But since then it has become abundantly clear what he's up to, which is a rather audacious attempt to genuinely challenge Orbán for power. Magyar has relaunched a previously obscure party called Tisza, which bills itself as being politically centrist, if socially conservative, and wanting to improve public services. It's been gathering big crowds at rallies in Budapest. And Tisza just won 29% of the vote in Hungary in the European elections, which is pretty remarkable for a movement that only launched officially in April.

D: That is quite amazing, and presumably doesn't bode so well for Orbán in the next national elections, right?

K: It doesn't, no. Those elections are in 2026. And Magyar has said that these European election results have given him a lot of momentum to start campaigning to actually topple Orbán from power in two years time.

[MAGYAR CLIP]

K: He is clearly someone who is very media savvy and knows had to pull in a crowd. I should add that he's not an uncontroversial figure. His ex-wife, Judit Varga, who used to be Hungary's justice minister – she has accused him of domestic abuse during their relationship. That doesn't appear to have stopped Péter Magyar from gaining political support so far. I guess one of the big questions for the coming months is how hard is the Hungarian government going to make life for Magyar now that he represents a very real threat, you know? This is not a government that values having a level playing field for its opponents, where constructive opposition is seen as healthy for democracy. So we'll have to see.

D: I saw that it's also been a bad week for Orbán because, hasn't he been fined over Hungary’s treatment of asylum seekers?

K: Yeah. So right off the back of these election results the European Court of Justice, which is the top court in the EU, just a few days later landed Orbán’s government with a huge fine, 200 million euros, over its treatment of asylum seekers. The court called it ‘an exceptionally serious breach of EU law’. And there's also an additional fine of one million euros a day for every day that Hungary doesn't change its policies. And this money is just going to be automatically taken off Hungary's EU budget. So it’s really bad news compounding bad news for Orbán this week.

D: We all know that the Hungarian government is deeply unfriendly to migrants. But what specifically did the court say was illegal?

K: So this actually goes back to a ruling from four years ago by the same court that found that Hungary was making it virtually impossible to apply for asylum in the country. They were keeping migrants in quote unquote, transit zones that were basically detention camps. And they were also pushing back asylum seekers who had entered Hungary into this no man's land on the border of Serbia. At the time of that ruling back in 2020, Hungary was told, ‘you need to stop restricting migrants' access to asylum processes, people need to be able to ask for asylum in any EU country they arrive in, and they need to be allowed to stay while their applications are processed.’ And it was found this week that they have in fact continued to restrict access to the proper processes, hence this big fat fine. Which I think is very good news for the rest of us and a sign that the European court is doing its job properly, you know? Countries like Hungary that just refuse to follow the laws that we share, can't expect to just keep taking EU money. So yeah, a doubly bad week for Orbán.

*

D: None of this podcasting that we do would be possible without the support of our wonderful supporters on a website called Patreon.com. People donate a few euros, or a bit more than a few euros if they can, each month. And that helps us cover the costs of this podcast. If you think that what we do is important or frankly, simply enjoyable, then please consider donating at patreon.com/europeanspodcast.

K: We have some lovely new supporters to think this week. They are Pia, Meredith, Liv, Hannah, Mariamne and Jenny.

D: Thank you all so much.

*

INTERVIEW WITH ALBERTO ALEMANNO

K: So we've now had a little bit of time to digest the results of the European elections the weekend before last. But even though we've had that time, I don't know about you, Dominic, but I'm still kind of struggling with the idea of whether to feel like, ‘Oh okay, these results are pretty much what we expected’, versus ‘Oh, these results are very alarming’.

D: Yeah, I saw someone online saying that these are the most confusing set of European election results we've ever had. Hardest to unpick, which is why we're here today!

K: Which is why we're here today. Yeah, something that I think has been particularly interesting that maybe hasn't been captured so much in the headlines that have been trying to sum up the Europe-wide picture is that the kind of overall headlines seem to be either about how the political centre has broadly held, or they're about how the far-right has surged. But actually, when you zoom into different parts of the continent, like Scandinavia or Southern Europe, you get a really different story depending on the place, that really reflects what's been going on in that part of Europe. So that is one of the things that we want to get into today, along with what we really know at this point, with the benefit of nearly two weeks of breathing space after the elections, about what changes in Europe now. And we're going to be doing that with a seasoned observer of all things European. We are so pleased to have him back on the show – Professor Alberto Alemanno.

D: Hi, Alberto. Thanks for joining us today.

ALBERTO ALEMANNO: Hi, guys. Good to see you after so long.

D: Yeah!

K: You’ve ventured into the Brussels bubble just for us. We feel very grateful.

A: Correct. Under the rain.

K: Oh, welcome to Brussels!

D: We're speaking to you on Tuesday afternoon. For a while yesterday, it felt like there was a pretty broad consensus forming around who should be given the four most powerful jobs in the EU, with Ursula von der Leyen hoping to get her second term as president. That consensus seemed to fizzle overnight. What’s with the hold-up?

A: Yes, I think I still need to digest yesterday’s formal dinner because we had this pre-baked deal in the wake of the European Parliament election, European leaders saying, ‘We're going to try to make sense of these 200 million votes that actually took place, and translate this into a selection of leaders, of key leaders, who are going to be running the European Union in the coming five years. And the three largest political families, in terms of votes received, the usual ones, those who have been running Europe for the past 25 years – they decided to basically split the so-called top jobs among them. So basically, that meant that the European Popular [People’s] Party would get the Commission presidency, von der Leyen basically getting a second mandate. The Socialists and Democrats getting the European Council presidency, the job that Charles Michel had would go to the former prime minister of Portugal, António Costa, and the liberals would get the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, and that would be the Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas. And finally, the EPP yesterday said, ‘Well, this is not enough, we want to have more.’ So in a nutshell, all of a sudden, the European Popular Party decided to ask for more than two of the four jobs, not contenting themselves with the presidency of the Parliament and the Commission, they also want half of the mandate – stay with me – of the European Council presidency, which was supposedly going to the European Socialists. And the Socialists reacted very badly by saying, ‘There's no way, if you're going to split our top job in two parts. in two mandates, then we want to have the same for the Commission presidency. Which is something that not only is illegal – it goes against the treaty – but it doesn't make sense at all. Like, splitting a government in two parts, and to decide to do this over an informal dinner – it all sounds a bit surreal, right?

K: Seems very greedy of the EPP to act like this. I mean, can they really justify asking for three out of the four top jobs given that they won – what, about a quarter of the vote across the continent?

A: We all got a sense that they got carried away a little bit as a result of these elections. They were not, they were not supposed to do so well.

[NEWS CLIP]

A: But it did relatively well in Germany, the country where Ursula von der Leyen comes from, and they did relatively well in Poland, which is another big country, where Donald Tusk recently came to power again. So all of these pushed the EPP to be greedy, as you said, to be demanding, and also neglecting the fact – which is a new development – that the fourth largest group in the European Parliament is Giorgia Meloni’s European conservatives. So now for the first time ever, we have a not necessarily pro-European group asking for one of the top jobs. So the EPP demand, ‘we want more jobs than usual’, is conflicting directly with a new demand that we never heard before – because they never got so many MEPs elected – saying, ‘We also want to add one of the top jobs. And this kind of caught everybody by surprise. And quite frankly, I think they have a point. The new top jobs should reflect the new parliamentary political centre of gravity that exists within this parliament. So we are really far from a done deal, because there was no deal at all in the first place. But also because we see a pretty unprecedented scenario that is making things more complicated, even less intelligible for all of us citizens, even those who devote their life to understand and make sense of this craziness around politics in Europe.

D: It's going to be difficult, though, isn't it, to come to some kind of consensus. Because if the Council decides to give something to the European Conservatives and Reformists, to Meloni and pals, then the Social Democrats have already said in advance that they don't want to be part of any kind of grand coalition with Meloni and the far-right. So is there going to be a way out of this? Can you see any route at the moment forming, where we can come to some kind of agreement and have a new Commission and all these jobs filled?

A: I think we have to distinguish two moments. There is an initial moment that is really capturing our imagination, which is the selection of the next Commission President – Ursula von der Leyen, yes or no. And the other one is, what about the new Commission? Which is going to be the parliamentary majority supporting that Commission. In the past, we knew that Ursula von der Leyen could actually rely on the EPP, the Socialists and the liberals, like in the previous legislature, and these offer her enough political support to adopt so many policies that have been discussed and unpacked in this podcast in the past years, right? But now, there is a risk that such a majority may never be identified. So let's focus on the von der Leyen gamble, or the next Commission President gamble. If she goes towards the right by formalising the support of Meloni, she will be alienating the support from the Greens she might actually need in order to be voted by absolute majority, 361 votes, by the European Parliament. But if she goes only to the Left, she might run the risk still not to have enough votes if the Greens, or at least some of them, will be voting to her. And the crux of the matter, is the fact that the parliament vote on the Commission candidate president is by secret ballot. So groups that might commit to support the candidacy of von der Leyen or another commission president might actually turn their back to the candidate while, as it happened in the past, some groups which were not supposed to support von der Leyen actually vote in favour. It happened with the Five Star Movement, PiS of Poland supporting von der Leyen last time. Well, she only made it by a difference of nine votes. So these are the uncertainties today. And I think what happened is the realisation that the European Council has to do its own homework before sending the next Commission president to the Parliament, because there's a high risk that for the first time ever, the Parliament might send it back, this candidate, to the European Council, and this will open a sort of constitutional crisis because it never happened before. And because the European Council would not know how to make sense of the result of these elections – who could be the individual capable of gathering this 361 votes.

K: So the drama is far from over. But if we look back at the elections themselves, it feels like a lot of the discourse following the European elections has been divided between people saying, ‘oh you know, we shouldn't be too hysterical about the rise of the far-right, the centre has held.’ And then other people saying, ‘We're not being hysterical enough, you know, this is the end of Europe as we know it. How hysterical do you think we should be being?

A: You're absolutely right.These two narratives have been really capturing our imagination, those saying the centre is holding, then those saying, ‘Well, the barbarians are at the gates, right, the far-right has won, whoever they are’. And I think that both narratives are right. In a way, we never had so many anti-establishment sceptical parties of Europe being elected, we have approximately 25% of the parliament made of individuals who don't really believe in the European project. But at the same time, the traditional majority, the pro-European majority, they still have approximately 410 votes out of 720. This is a very high figure that should relax or reassure any Commission president that might be designated by the European Council.

[NEWS CLIP]

A: But we all feel that is much more volatile, the political climate. We have approximately 100 MEPs who are unattached or unaffiliated. That means there are MEPs – we don't know who they belong to, which groups they might be joining. All of thIS remains an open question till early July when the new European Parliament will gather for the first time. And a lot of trade-offs, horse-trading are going to be occurring, because some groups like the ECR of Giorgia Meloni, might be very much interested in acquiring some of the groups. So this will be a very important moment of truth, in the realignment of the different political groups that are emerging. But the bottom line, which I think is something that has to be highlighted, that is: most of the National parties today are not telling us in the ballot box, which is the European political party they intend to join or they belong to? So you have parties like the Five Star Movement, now the AfD that, you know, they never really told us where they stand in Europe, they are pro, anti, central, social, where are they? So this lack of intelligibility is making very difficult for everyone, including for European leaders. to make sense of the outcome of these elections. And this is possibly what we have to learn from these elections, that the current system has so many shortcomings, because you cannot artificially aggregate the results of 27 parallel elections in trying to make sense of them.

D: With that in mind, when we zoom in on different parts of Europe and look at how the election results played out, you can actually see different things happening. In most of southern Europe, the mainstream parties actually did really well. Meloni was the only far-right leader to do really well in southern Europe. And if you look at Poland, for example, the liberals did very well, it's the first time Law and Justice haven't topped an election in a decade. In much of northern Europe, the Left actually did quite well, and places where the far-right have already been in power, some of those far-right parties actually had a bit of a backlash against them in these elections. So you can't look at the elections and say that this one thing happened, this one trend is the trend.

A: Yes, I think that European elections took place in very different political contexts. I really think that the reason why the parties on the anti-establishment side, far-right, like in Sweden, or in Finland, didn't go well is exactly because of that – they already got exposed to power. So they partly had to adjust and reduce the radicality. As soon as some of those parties get closer to power, because they're directly, like in Italy, or in Croatia, governing, or indirectly supporting those governments, coming into the system, they change. And we got a sense of this in the calculus that I think President Macron made in saying, ‘Well, since this is what happened in the Nordics, this is what happened in Spain, where Vox has been governing locally and did very, very bad to the point almost disappearing in the last national elections, this is going to work in France, too.’ And I think this calculus has some rationality, but we still don't know whether it's going to work out.

D: It's somewhat ironic that some far-right leaders like Giorgia Meloni and Marine LePen seem to be realising that they can actually use Europe as a forum to strengthen their positions, despite being inherently nationalistic and euroskeptic. Is there a real risk that in doing that they could become the European establishment?

A: I don't think we are there yet, in the sense that these elections have shown that these parties can do very well at the national level, but they don't necessarily do very well at the aggregate level. Because if they do well in one country, they might not necessarily do well in another one. Because the glue existing among them is very much based on values, but it's not based on economics or foreign policy, where they are very much split, right? Think about Russia. Their position is very different between Brothers of Italy or the AfD, right? So the ayre so disunited that they are not necessarily capable of hijacking or redirecting the European project. However, at the same time, by gaining political influence, not necessarily political power, they are already changing the conversation. They are already expanding the boundaries, what political scientists called the Overton window – what is possibly correct to say? And they already did so on migration, partly on defence. Those issues have become mainstream because of their presence.

[NEWS CLIP]

A: So their influence is very subtle, it’s almost visceral, and in a way they are diversifying, they are expanding the European project. So we shouldn't be only negative even though it's very scary to watch where those parties come from. If you will look at the youth movements supporting the Brothers of Italy, it’s very scary. But at the same time they open up the political space of Europe, in order to make it much broader. The tent of the European project gets bigger, gets more pluralistic. And in this way potentially shapes for good the European project, as opposed to be sceptical or to keep invoking this cordon sanitaire, this idea that those parties, they don't deserve a seat at the table. I think this is a very dangerous game that the European project clearly cannot afford to take, because its would go against its own values. And that's a bit the paradox at the bottom of any democracy, including European democracy: that to remain a democracy you need to remain and to cultivate some messiness, you need to push for disorder. Because only these conflicts which can not only be rationally in the most purely Brussels bubble way, but they should be emotional, there should be passions around, they should be value conflicts.

[NEWS CLIP]

A: Because without them, democracy will simply exhaust its force. So I’m not too pessimistic on this ability of turning into positive forces, dynamics of power and political preference that seems so disruptive of the system. Some of this disruption perhaps, might be good in the long-term.

D: It's quite an optimistic take. I like, I haven't heard it put like this before, Alberto.

A: If you take a longer term, then it's going to be easier. I you take the long term. I think we could make sense of some of those transformation which might be needed.

D: Germany and France, the biggest countries in the EU and traditionally they have very powerful voices within it. But as we've mentioned already, France's governing party did very badly. And that also happened in Germany. Can we therefore expect smaller countries to maybe get more of a say over the direction of the EU over the next few years, due to this drubbing of the powerful parties in Germany and France?

A: Let me say, Dominic, hopefully so. It is about time that the Franco-German monopoly and the European project gets challenged, and it’s about time for new voices coming from Central European countries and the south and the west, to actually, you know, shape this European project, which cannot be only the toy that France and Germany are somehow shaping. We have been witnessing gradual erosion of the ability of France and Germany to drive the European Union. Germany lost a lot of credibility when it got Europe very much dependent on imported fossil fuels from Russia. France also hasn't necessarily played all his cards, because Europe for France is basically France plus – it’s about transforming France into something bigger. And these two visions have been important historically, but they cannot do justice to the diversity we have in Europe, all the more so as we have many candidate countries who have been waiting in line, like the Western Balkans, for over 20 years. And there is so much fatigue, to the point that when you spend time in those regions, they really ask us whether they need the European project to be happy. And this creates a very dangerous vacuum. Because if you let those countries out of the European sphere of influence, well, they're going to be conquered by other regions in a geopolitically shattered world in which we are today.
[NEWS CLIP]

A: So it's a bit of a dangerous game, not to enrich the engine that is behind the European project by allowing many more voices to get in.

K: Well, speaking of other forces that might like to influence Europe on the fringes, what do you think Vladimir Putin will be making of these election results?

A: Any delay in setting up the next European Commission, the next, let's say, institutional set-up, may be perceived as a sign of weakness. However, I would like to counter that narrative and try to show that in reality Europe’s resilience very much depends on the ability of European democracy to get better, and to face this kind of constitutional momentum. That means, a moment of transformation in which we are all on the same boat, and we feel that we need to make this quantum leap, we need to change things, we need to change the rules of the democratic game, if we want to be better and to keep some credibility. Because you know, Europe continues to dictate the agenda for many countries outside of the European Union, when it comes to rule of law, when it comes to migration, the respect of human rights. But, you know, we probably need to look at ourselves into the mirror, before regaining the kind of legitimacy, you know, to become a credible force that can be still seen as a possible role model in other regions of the world. And that's something our political leaders really like, really care to say, which is something that makes me a bit uncomfortable as a European, but it's still very much embedded into the original European project.

*

D: It's always good to speak to Alberto because he never says exactly what I think he's going to say. He doesn't follow the kind of, the group think on how they're responding to the election. And I find that strangely calming, to hear a different set of opinions, like not just the doom and gloom, about the situation we find ourselves in right now with what some people think is like the beginning of European democracy crumbling. I think Alberto – I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think he thinks the system isn't working so well already. Right. So that maybe that's just gives you a completely different perspective,

K: A breath of fresh air. I'm really glad that he could come on the show this week. Alberto is one of the best people to follow on Twitter. If you still happen to be on that website, and want to be up to date constantly with what's happening in EU politics. He is there @AlemannoEU.

INSPIRATION STATION

K: It's the time and the show where we're rolling into the inspiration station and talking about stuff what we have enjoyed over the past week or past two weeks in this case, what have you been enjoying, Dominic?

D: Well, seeing as we're now all totally clued up with European politics, I thought I'd recommend something in that same vein – a new European political true crime podcast series launched just before the election, looking into the Qatargate corruption scandal that rocked the European Parliament during the last term.

K: I've been wondering what happened to this scandal. I feel like we haven't talked about it for ages. It was a huge thing and kind of wasn't.

D: Yeah, I'm honestly not sure how many details of this scandal actually reached the people outside the bubble that is the Brussels institutions. But it was indeed a huge story and is still developing, albeit quite slowly. It's a scandal in which multiple officials and some of their family members were accused of accepting money from Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for political influence. One of the accused was a vice-president of the European Parliament, the Greek Social Democrat, Eva Kaili. And in the first episode of this new series, which is called Untold: Power for Sale, the Financial Times journalists behind the series actually speak to Eva Kaili herself.

K: Ooh.

D: I really recommend you give it a listen. It's so interesting. And yeah, big thanks to our listener Marcus for bringing this series to my attention. Yeah, go check it out. It's called Untold: Power for Sale.

K: I am going to check it out.

D: What have you been enjoying Katy?

K: I'm going to lower the tone considerably now. And recommend probably the worst film on Netflix right now. Which is Sous La Seine, or Under Paris to give its English title. Have you heard about this cultural phenomenon, Or has it passed you by?

D: No, I have not.

K: Okay, to be honest, it doesn't really need any more advertising because people are talking about it. But this segment is supposed to be about things that we've enjoyed over the past week. So I'm giving this film my official seal of approval. It is a terrible, terrible film. It's supposed to be France's answer to ‘Jaws’ in that it is a horror film about killer sharks invading Paris. But unlike Jaws, which is a true classic of the horror genre, this is a film that has been universally panned by the critics in France, and outside France I'm pretty sure all the critics who've given the thumbs up have done it in an ironic way. It's really weird because it stars Bérénice Bejo who’s a very well respected actor. You might remember her from ‘The Artist’. I don't know why she decided to do this film. But anyway, if you are in the mood to watch something that is so bad, it's good, I would really recommend Sous La Seine. The best thing about it is the character of the Paris mayor, who refuses to cancel the international triathlon that's due to be happening in Paris, with hundreds of people swimming in the River Seine, and she does that because after all of this public money that's gone into the event, we can't possibly cancel it, even at the sharks are gonna eat everyone!

D: This sounds ridiculous.

K: It is terrible, it is glorious. I had a pretty shitty week last week and this really put a smile on my face. So if you too, are having a shitty week, I hope that this terrible film makes things a tiny bit better.

D: Good recommendation.

*

K: That's all we have time for this week. We were able to make this election-licious episode thanks for some special extra support from the Culture of Solidarity Fund, powered by the European Cultural foundation in collaboration with Allianz Foundation, and the Evens Foundation. Thank you so much to them and to our amazing Patreon supporters for helping us to make this podcast week after week.

D: Our producer today was Katy Lee and the episode had sound design, mixing and mastering from Wojciech Oleksiak. We'll be back in your feeds next week. In the meantime, check out our new website and look out for my favourite thing about our new visuals – our designer RTiiiKA’s amazing hybrid creation, the cow-wolf.

K: I love the cow-wolf.

D: Europeans podcast.com.

K: Another thing that I really like about it is that our website finally now has a tool that lets you search our, by now very large archive of old episodes, by country and by topic. So you can search for things like you know, just episodes that are about climate stuff, or episodes that are about history or migration. It's a very pleasing feature.

D: And if there's anything that doesn't work, then obviously, it's a new website. And sometimes things go wrong. we'd love your feedback, positive and negative.

K: It’s all change around here and in Europe in general, very exciting times. We'll be back next week with more European miscellania. Bye for now.

D: Arriverderci!

*