While the dust is settling over the European elections, is the new European parliament preparing for its business as usual? The political groups are now in the process of appointing their leaders and negotiating the committees' chairmanship, as they usually do in this part of the electoral cycle. But how will things work once the effective, legislative work of the new parliament starts, now that around 30 per cent of its seats are occupied by members that are, albeit to different extents and for different reasons, sceptical about the European project?
The gains made by the nationalists and the so-called Eurosceptics raised a lot of eyebrows during election night and on the morning after, generating immense media interest even beyond EU borders. In fact, the concentration of the media and political commentators on this side of the story overshadowed the rest of the results, for example, the fact that the neck-and-neck competition between the Socialists and EPP was eventually won by the latter, and as a result Jean-Claude Juncker is now in pole position for achieving the European commission presidency. This 'surprise' among some analysts is in itself rather surprising, as the polls indicated it already a few months before. PollWatch2014, a project developed by VoteWatch Europe in partnership with Burson-Marsteller/Europe Decides, has tracked the opinion polls in all 28 countries and published projections of the next balance of power in parliament, during the months before the elections. It correctly predicted 97 per cent of the seats won by each of the political groups, and 90 per cent of seats won by each national party. Even at the very first projection in February 2014 the figures were showing a clear shift towards the Eurosceptics and, as the weeks passed and new predictions were released, it became clear that things were not going to change much until election day.
"No matter how possible coalitions are put together, neither centre-right nor centre-left will have an absolute majority to pass its policy preferences"
What does this mean for the work of the new parliament? It probably means that the first few months of the term will be more agitated than usual, and that the outcomes of a number of dossiers are unpredictable. No matter how possible coalitions are put together, neither centre-right nor centre-left will have an absolute majority to pass its policy preferences. As a result, on issues where the big groups, EPP and S&D, can agree easier, such as constitutional affairs and EU budget, they are likely to go for a 'grand coalition'. Given that even though they only have a fragile absolute majority of around 55 per cent, they will probably invite the ALDE group to join them and create a pro-European 'super-grand coalition'.
However, on issues where the votes in the 2009-2014 term have shown that there are stronger ideological divisions, such as economic affairs, environment, energy, international trade, internal market, civil liberties and security, it is not clear who will get the upper hand, and therefore what the shape of the dossiers in these areas is going to be. The outcome of votes in these policy areas will depend on the internal discipline of the centrist groups which vary from one policy area to another, but also on the positions of the new national parties, including the Eurosceptic ones among which there is a great variety of opinions in the above-mentioned areas.
"VoteWatch Europe predicts that the European parliament positions will shift slightly away from strict budget discipline oriented doctrine and allow more public spending at the level of national governments"
For the time being, VoteWatch Europe predicts that the European parliament positions will shift slightly away from strict budget discipline oriented doctrine and allow more public spending at the level of national governments. The support for the continuation of the transatlantic trade and investment partnership negotiations is unclear, as both the far-left and far-right oppose it, while the Greens/EFA and the S&D group have raised objections concerning environmental and social standards, and oppose the integration of the investor-state dispute settlement in the agreement. A majority of MEPs are likely to support the creation, also via EU-funded projects, of a pan-European energy infrastructure. Such a majority is likely to position in favour of continuation of nuclear energy in the EU energy mix, while supporting new measures for renewables, energy efficiency and CO2 reduction.
On the other hand, the stronger presence of MEPs that oppose strengthening the EU institutions will put migration more often on the parliament's agenda, and is likely to more often question the EU's external action as a whole. It remains to be seen to what extent these foreseen developments will be confirmed, when MEPs start their work - and VoteWatch Europe starts reporting on all of this.