GEAB 113

This anticipation is not very original but it must nevertheless be faced with all the lucidity required. It is hardly a hypothesis, but rather a certainty: the allied European far rights will constitute the most consistent and therefore powerful parliamentary group in the next European Parliament, whatever their results in the previous national elections. What will count is the trans-European nature of their progression.

Minorities at national level, dominant at European level

The mechanism is simple: a political force structured at the trans-European level (presenting a common list and program in several EU countries) automatically becomes a dominant parliamentary group in the European Parliament, even if it gets only small scores in each country… knowing the scores likely to be realised by the far-right parties in several countries during the next European election of 2019 are far from being “very small”. Paradoxically, it is the national nature of the European election that will serve the nationalist agendas of one of the few political movements organised at the trans-European level: the far right.

In concrete terms, the political group set up in June 2015 by Marine Le Pen’s FN and Geert Wilders’ PVV in response to the difficulties they met in creating a far right-wing political group in the European Parliament in 2014, the Europe of Nations and Freedoms (ENL), is composed of 40 members and 7 parties from 7 different countries (minimum number of countries required to form a political group in the EP)[1].