European Parliament Elections 2019

[Jo498]

This is going on a tangent but why am I so skeptical about the Greens and "new" ecology movements like FfF?

"We" are environmentally aware since many decades: Club of Rome and Oil crisis in the mid-70s, Chernoby, acid rain etc. in the 1980s, big climate conferences since the 1990s. The Greens have been a regional factor in Germany since the 1980s as well. And there were a few small good things that happened because of "green" policies, i.e. the banning of these ozone destroying spray cans, the improvement of river and air quality in most industrial countries. But overall it's been disastrous. Almost all gains in efficiency in car engines etc. have been eaten up by more and heavier cars (and likewise for many other areas). The railways in Germany have become worse since then (thousands of kilometres of track abolished tc.) Flying was a rare luxury when the Greens appeared on the scene almost 40 years ago, now several holiday flights per year are completely normal for average people. And so on. We are still kidding ourselves that we could keep up that lifestyle with electric cars etc. but this is nonsense. A radical change would be needed and for me the last 30-40 years show that such change is politically, economically (within the current system) and socially impossible and the impact of the Greens hardly matters in the big picture. In practice it is lip service/virtue signalling and advantages for the most powerfully lobbying players (that for a time could include "environmentally friendly" industries like wind power.) Admittedly, I don't know about most other countries but as all are locked into the current system, I don't think it will be much better (although I can well believe that Germany has among the worst gap between lip services and practices).

(Of course the real problem with climate change etc. is that the impact of the "West's" CO2 emissions etc. will become dwarved by China's and India's etc.)

And in addition to this we will have the effect that because in a country like Germany the Greens only switched places with the Social democrats the "center left" bloc has not become larger (rather smaller, they were technically in the majority 1998-2009), so even incremental changes will be compromised by compromises with coalition partners who will centrist/liberal/center right, so the result will be less green/socialist than it could have been 20 years ago in center left/green governments.

[The Marquis de Leech]

To what extent do people actually take the European Parliament elections seriously, rather than as a protest vote without consequence? It'd naturally vary from country to country, but I'm curious about the on-the-ground opinions.

[SeanF]

14 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

To what extent do people actually take the European Parliament elections seriously, rather than as a protest vote without consequence? It'd naturally vary from country to country, but I'm curious about the on-the-ground opinions.

Since 1999, in the UK, people have used the EU elections as a means to express their views on the EU.  Prior to that, they were a typical mid-term referendum on the performance of the government of the day.

[Loge]

Turnout in Germany was above 60% this time, so people seem to have taken the election more seriously than they used to. Results aren't much different from what the opinion polls for the national elections say. The greens were somewhat stronger than you'd expect. I guess there's a higher turnout among their (rather wealthy) voters.

[Which Tyler]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Since 1999, in the UK, people have used the EU elections as a means to express their views on the EU.  Prior to that, they were a typical mid-term referendum on the performance of the government of the day.

Correction (IMO).

Since 1999, in the UK, people who dislike the EU have used EU elections as a means to express their views on the EU. Most people don't bother to vote at all, whilst the rest, vote as they always vote when they receive a ballot paper without even thinking about it, vote as a protest, or vote as they'd like to if they didn't have to think tactically for GEs and council elections.

[lanspresado]

Nobody in my home country (Sweden) it seems knows anything about how the EU works. Since most people are informed through media and the news (where issues within the EU are consistenly not brought up) the ignorance is staggering.

It also feels like nothing of it matters when we only get about 10 MEPs.

[Seli]

On 5/27/2019 at 11:54 AM, Jo498 said:

...

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article194198299/Europawahl-2019-Ergebnisse-aller-EU-Laender-die-Sieger-im-Ueberblick.html

If the first map there is correct, only Spain is still "social democrat" and conservatives, populist and anti-EU are dominating Europe. So we are between the frying pan of keeping the status quo of the so-called conservatives, i.e. the current neo-liberal lobby-bureaucracy and the fire of the populists and skeptics who are fed up with that and want to break up/leave the EU. Because the former are still more powerful, I expect very little to change and therefore the situation will probably get worse with ever deeper gaps between the factions. Until the consequences of Brexit play out it is hard to make any predictions. Possibly Italexit in a few years?

For the Netherlands that map is likely both correct as misleading at the same time. While the ALDE affiliated parties (our conservative and progressive liberals) got the biggest share of the vote when combined the S&D affiliated party was the biggest one. All of them are pro EU though, as are the greens and Christian Democrats who did well.

Populists and hard Eurosceptics didn't do well. And of course our conservative religious faction got a huge fraction of the vote due to low general turnout.

Not that is that important in the bigger scheme of things, but it shows there is much more intricacy underneath the simple map painting of largest factions.

[Aurane]

Well, I wasn't expecting that result in Belgium. I wonder what triggered that reaction.  Anyways, it seems that the left is getting lefter and the right righter.  I hope that there can be some sort of reform without talking drastic measures but that seems to be becoming increasingly difficult. This seems to be especially apparent in the 3 seas initiative region.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

So comission presidency is looking to be interesting afterall.

ALDE now emboldened and stregthened by Macron and his party refuse to back the candidates (model). Bear in mind, Timmermans and Weber campaigned as being on top of the ticket (the faces of the elections if you will), in order to give the parliament the comission a bigger democratic legitimacy. The same way Juncker and Schulz did last time. Now "let's make the EU more democratic/transparent" Macron is like, you know screw that, we as the head of states have the right to propose somebody. Could be anybody we can pull out of our asses. This entire democratic candidate model is nonsense. The Greens on election night were pretty adament with Ska Keller saying, we will vote for one of the two candidates for comission president. We (EU parliament) agreed to campaign on those terms to make the EU more accessible and more transparent.

Well at least we have another name popping up as successor for Tusk as council president. Grybauskaite's name keeps on getting mentioned.

[Tijgy]

On 5/29/2019 at 9:47 PM, Aurane said:

Well, I wasn't expecting that result in Belgium. I wonder what triggered that reaction.  Anyways, it seems that the left is getting lefter and the right righter.  I hope that there can be some sort of reform without talking drastic measures but that seems to be becoming increasingly difficult. This seems to be especially apparent in the 3 seas initiative region.

The Flemish media/opinion makers should maybe just stop with calling the (white) Flemish inherently racist  

https://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/witte-vlamingen-zijn-bang-voor-een-remplacement-door-niet-witte-vlamingen/article-opinion-1189879.html