After attending school in Finland and later the U.S., Belgium and the U.K., Stubb entered politics in 2004 as a member of the European Parliament. He hit the Finnish big time in 2008 when — to his own surprise — he was named foreign minister.
Praised by allies for his high-energy approach to politics, he was also criticized during his time in government for his occasionally hasty statements, and was forced to apologize after being accused of swearing at a meeting of the Nordic Council, a regional cooperation body.
During a difficult year as prime minister in 2014 he failed to reverse his NCP’s declining popularity, and lost a parliamentary election in 2015 amid an economic slump. After a subsequent spell as finance minister he quit Finnish politics in 2017, vowing never to return.
During the five-month presidential election campaign, observers say, Stubb earned the support of voters by demonstrating a calmer and more thoughtful demeanor during debates than had been his custom, and for being at pains to show respect for his rivals.
“However this election goes, it will be good for Finland,” he said in a debate with Haavisto earlier last week.
Stubb has said he intends to be a unifying force in Finnish society, something the country appears to need after a series of racism scandals involving government ministers and, more recently, strikes over work conditions and wages that paralyzed public services.
The earlier target represents a loss for the German Greens who, ahead of a three-day party congress in Lyon this weekend, had pushed for the climate neutrality target to be delayed to 2045, according to amendments seen by POLITICO.
The election manifesto, which was adopted by a large majority of national delegations, warned that meeting these climate objectives “must not rely on false solutions such as geo-engineering.”
The Greens are at risk of losing about a third of their seats in the European Parliament at the EU election in June, while a backlash against Brussels’ green agenda has been sweeping across the Continent in recent weeks. The party’s response has been to redouble the push on its core demands for higher climate ambition.
The final manifesto, for example, calls for the EU energy system to rely on 100 percent renewable sources and to phase out all fossil fuels by 2040, “starting with coal by 2030.” It also calls on the EU to adopt a plan for phasing out “fossil gas and oil as early as 2035 and no later than 2040.”
That point is another loss for the German Greens, who had pushed for deleting phaseout dates for fossil gas and oil from the manifesto.
The Greens have also been fighting back against the conservatives’ and far right’s attacks blaming them for farmers’ current struggles and for forcing the green transition to quickly on the sector.
Over the weekend, the Greens amended their manifesto to respond to farmers’ discontent, saying they will campaign for “a new agricultural model that reduces emissions, protect the environment, and foster social justice.”
The text insists that “farmers should make a decent income of their work,” and that the Greens will push to “make sure farmers are not exposed to unfair competition from products not respecting the same standards, including those imported from third countries” — which have been key demands of farmers’ unions during the recent demonstrations.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron has propelled rising star Gabriel Attal center stage in a high-risk gamble aimed at stopping the far right’s surge ahead of the European election.
In a surprise move on Tuesday, Macron appointed his former education minister and one of France’s most popular politicians as the country’s youngest-ever prime minister in a bid to re-energize his flagging presidency — at the risk of hastening the end of his own reign.
Macron has been under pressure to jump-start his presidency as the far-right National Rally outstrips the centrists in polls ahead of the EU election in June, and in the wake of two brutal fights last year over immigration and pensions.
In contrast to the no-holds-barred election campaign led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s lead candidate, Macron’s presidency has struggled to project any energy and vitality after seven years running France, and talk of a lame-duck presidency has become widespread in political circles.
Despite his short political career, the 34-year-old Attal has earned himself a reputation as an obstinate attack dog or a “word sniper” against the far right, having already crossed swords with Bardella in past election debates, and a deft operator fluent as government spokesperson during the Covid pandemic and as education minister.
“It’s a great media coup,” said a conservative Les Républicains heavyweight, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. Macron “is doing it because [Attal] will lead the European election campaign … he was the only one who could hold his own against Bardella,” he said.
Several political insiders told POLITICO the battle of the European election was one of the main reasons Macron chose Attal.
“Gabriel Attal and Jordan Bardella are of the same generation, it’s obvious. Attal has political acumen, knows how to deliver a punchline, with substance, so it’s someone who can face off with the National Rally,” said an aide to Macron. But it’ll be thanks to “his action” that he’ll be able to beat the National Rally, he added.
The nomination of a pugnacious politician with his own ambitions also carries a sizeable risk for the president, who has in the past favored more self-effacing, technocratic figures as his lieutenants. An Attal premiership may accelerate conversations on what comes after Macron as the French president cannot run for a third term.
The meteoric rise of Attal, not unlike Macron himself, is also ruffling feathers among Macron’s heavyweight allies who look askance at the young uber-achiever taking over the reins of government. Macron was “forced to work hard” to get the nomination accepted when it was supposed to be “a slam dunk,” said an ally of the president on Monday.
Macron’s Mini-Me on the campaign
The upcoming European election will be the last time Macron faces off with his nemesis Marine Le Pen before the end of his mandate in four years. A far-right victory would resonate for years and poison the president’s legacy.
The president’s troops have emerged battered after his much-hardened immigration bill was passed with the support of the far-right, an episode that almost splintered his centrist alliance. The immigration battle came on the heels of acrimonious debates last spring over the reform of French pensions which sparked weeks of nationwide protests.
Macron is languishing in poll ratings according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls with only 30 percent approval ratings.
His outgoing Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne was criticized as a technocrat who lacked charisma and political agility, worn out by successive struggles to pass legislation following Macron’s defeat in parliamentary elections last year. She also lost a lot of political capital when she failed to anticipate or prevent a shock defeat in parliament, when the National Assembly rejected the immigration bill without a vote in December.
Attal, on the other hand, is a fresh hand at the helm.
“It’s great news, we’re going to have a government head who is a political operator, and capable of embodying Macron’s pro-European vision,” said Alexandre Holroyd, an MP from Macron’s Renaissance Party.
“To stop the far-right, which is rising not just in France but across Europe, we have to show that political action is efficient,” and talking to the general public is one thing Attal is good at, he added.
Strategically, Attal’s nomination may also help secure the support of center-left voters, as leftwing MEP Raphaël Glucksmann emerges as a competing candidate ahead of the European election. Attal, a former Socialist Party member and the first openly gay prime minister, espouses progressive ideas and has made cyber-bullying and homophobia prominent causes.
What’s really changed?
Macron himself has tasked Attal with the “regeneration” of his government, with “audacity” and “in the spirit of 2017,” his first election year, he wrote on X.
But while Attal is a fresh face, Macron’s margin of maneuver on the domestic front is shrinking, and it’s unlikely the new premiership will be plain sailing. The centrists still lack a majority in parliament, so passing legislation will remain a painful, humiliating process as the government seeks ad hoc alliances with opposition MPs.
Macron is also struggling to find inspiration for his second mandate, and has piled up vague initiatives, such as the “100 days” last year, the “Saint Denis meetings” with opposition leaders, and this month “the meeting with the nation.”
But the nomination does partially resolve an issue that has dogged Macron’s camp for weeks: who will run as Macron’s lead candidate in the European election? The far right has been hitting the campaign trail for weeks and Macron, a notorious procrastinator, has still not chosen a lead candidate for France’s Renew campaign.
With many heavyweights in government reluctant to lead a difficult campaign, the names floated in Paris — Europe Minister Laurence Boone or Renew Group leader Stéphane Séjourné — appeared to lack sufficient clout to stand up to the far-right.
Gabriel Attal carries more than just the European campaign on his shoulders | Pool photo by Ludovic Marin via AFP/Getty Images
With this week’s reshuffle, Renew’s lead candidate in France could play more of a supporting role.
But Attal carries more than just the European campaign on his shoulders. As one of the stars of “Génération Macron,” young politicians who straddle the left-right divide and came to power with the French president, Attal will save or hasten the end of Macronism and its centrist, pro-European political offer.
It’s the “last bullet before the end of his mandate,” said the same conservative heavyweight cited above.
A majority of voters across seven Western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, believe their democracy is in worse shape than it was five years ago, according to a poll whose results were seen by POLITICO.
Nearly seven in 10 American respondents said the state of democracy had declined in recent years, while 73 percent of poll takers shared the same opinion in France. In the United Kingdom, more than six out of 10 respondents said that democracy was working less well than five years ago, according to the poll which was carried out by Ipsos in September.
The results reveal widespread angst about the state of democracy ahead of major votes in the United States, the U.K, and the European Union in the year ahead — as well as mixed views of the 27-member union.
In all but one of the countries — which also included Croatia, Italy, Poland and Sweden — about half of voters reported being “dissatisfied” with the way democracy was working, while majorities agreed with the statement that the system is “rigged” in favor of the rich and powerful, and that “radical change” was needed.
Only in Sweden did a clear majority, 58 percent, say they were satisfied with how the system of government was working.
Among EU countries, the survey revealed deeply contrasting views on the state of the Union. A majority of respondents in the countries surveyed said they were in favor of the EU, but a plurality in all the countries said they were dissatisfied with the state of democracy at the EU level, while only tiny minorities reported feeling they had any influence over EU decisions.
Those views were offset by higher levels of satisfaction at the way democracy worked at the local level.
Only in Croatia was satisfaction with democracy at the EU level, at 26 percent, higher than it was for democracy at the national level, at 21 percent.
The results of the survey will give EU leaders food for thought as they gear up for European Parliament elections. While voters elect the Parliament directly, the choice of who gets the top jobs — such as president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, or the head of the EU Council, which gathers heads of state and government — is indirect. National leaders pick their nominees, which are then submitted to the Parliament for conformation.
In recent years, EU-level political parties have been trying to make the process more democratic by asking leaders to give top jobs to the lead candidates, or Spitzenkandidaten, from the party that wins the most votes in the election. But that system was ignored by leaders after the last election, when they rejected the lead candidate of the conservative European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, in favor of current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
While all the major parties say they are committed to proposing lead candidates ahead of the next EP election, leaders haven’t publicly committed to follow the system.
“These findings suggest that a key challenge for the EU ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections will be to leverage continuing support for the EU project to help restore positive perceptions of EU institutions, agencies and bodies,” Christine Tresignie, managing director of Ipsos European public affairs, said in a statement.
The poll was carried out September 21-30 via an online random probability survey. Respondents aged 16 and over were questioned in Croatia, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, while in the United States adults aged 18 and over were polled.
THE HAGUE — One line in Geert Wilders’ inflammatory pitch to Dutch voters will haunt Brussels more than any other: a referendum on leaving the EU.
Seven years after the British voted for Brexit, a so-called Nexit ballot was a core plank of the far-right leader’s ultimately successful offer in the Netherlands.
And while Wilders softened his anti-Islam rhetoric in recent weeks, there are no signs he wants to water down his Euroskepticism after his shock election victory.
Even if Dutch voters are not persuaded to follow the Brits out of the EU — polling suggests it’s unlikely — there’s every indication that a Wilders-led government in The Hague will still be a nightmare for Brussels.
A seat for Wilders around the EU summit table would transform the dynamic, alongside other far-right and nationalist leaders already in post. Suddenly, policies ranging from climate action, to EU reform and weapons for Ukraine will be up for debate, and even reversal.
Since the exit polls were announced, potential center-right partners have not ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders, who emerged as the clear winner. That’s despite the fact that for the past 10 years, he’s been kept out by centrists.
For his part, the 60-year-old veteran appears to be dead serious about taking power himself this time.
Ever since Mark Rutte’s replacement as VVD leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, indicated early in the campaign that she could potentially enter coalition talks with Wilders, the far-right leader has worked hard to look more reasonable. He diluted some of his most strident positions, particularly on Islam — such as banning mosques — saying there are bigger priorities to fix.
On Wednesday night, with the results coming in, Wilders was more explicit: “I understand very well that parties do not want to be in a government with a party that wants unconstitutional measures,” he said. “We are not going to talk about mosques, Qurans and Islamic schools.”
Even if Wilders is willing to drop his demand for an EU referendum in exchange for power, his victory will still send a shudder through the EU institutions.
And if centrist parties club together to keep Wilders out — again — there may be a price to pay with angry Dutch voters later on.
Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage showed in the U.K. that you don’t need to be in power to be powerfully influential.
Winds of change
Migration was a dominant issue in the Dutch election. For EU politicians, it remains a pressing concern. As migrant numbers continue to rise, so too has support for far-right parties in many countries in Europe. In Italy last year, Giorgia Meloni won power for her Brothers of Italy. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally remains a potent force, in second place in the polls. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany has also surged to second place in recent months.
In his victory speech, Wilders vowed to tackle what he called the “asylum tsunami” hitting the Netherlands.
“The main reasons voters have supported Wilders in these elections is his anti-immigration agenda, followed by his stances on the cost of living crisis and his health care position,” said Sarah de Lange, politics professor at the University of Amsterdam. Mainstream parties “legitimized Wilders” by making immigration a key issue, she said. “Voters might have thought that if that is the issue at stake, why not vote for the original rather than the copy?”
For the left, the bright spot in the Netherlands was a strong showing for a well-organized alliance between Labor and the Greens. Frans Timmermans, the former European Commission vice president, galvanized support behind him. But even that joint ticket could not get close to beating Wilders’ tally.
Next June, the 27 countries of the EU hold an election for the European Parliament.
On the same day voters choose their MEPs, Belgium is holding a general election. Far-right Flemish independence leader Tom Van Grieken, who is also eyeing up a major breakthrough, offered his congratulations to Wilders: “Parties like ours are on their way in the whole of Europe,” he said.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was celebrating, too: “The winds of change are here!”
Pieter Haeck reported from Amsterdam and Tim Ross reported from London.
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Tim Ross, Pieter Haeck, Eline Schaart and Jakob Hanke Vela
THE HAGUE — Dutch voters may be about to get someone very different from the outgoing veteran prime minister Mark Rutte.
A former refugee, Dilan Yeşilgöz, who succeeded Rutte as leader of the VVD party, is now leading the polls ahead of Wednesday’s vote and could become the first female prime minister in Dutch history.
The contest is on a knife-edge, with three parties vying to win the most seats, but her nearest rival, Pieter Omtzigt has signalled he may not want the top job for himself.
That makes it even likelier that Yeşilgöz, the country’s justice minister, will become premier at the head of the next government.
A self-confessed workaholic, Yeşilgöz is media savvy and does not talk much about being a woman in politics. She is invariably good humored and full of energy in public, despite what she says are “tough” demands of her current job. Her liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy is now in joint first place with 18 points in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, after she took over from Rutte as its leader.
Her platform has been a promise to crack down on migration, an issue that has long dogged Dutch politics.
But Yeşilgöz told POLITICO it is her own background as a refugee that has shaped her view on migration.
“There’s an influx of too many people, not only asylum seekers but also migrant workers and international students, which means that we don’t have the capacity to help real refugees,” Yeşilgöz said. She listed problems in the system, including poor quality reception facilities for asylum seekers and housing shortages as obstacles.
Yet Yeşilgöz has a mountain ahead of her to succeed in the election.
If the VVD wins, it would be exceptional. There are hardly any examples of governing parties that, during a change in leadership, still remain the largest.
Yet the latest POLITICO Poll of Polls shows that VVD is neck and neck with centrist outsider Omtzigt’s new party, New Social Contract. The green-left alliance of Frans Timmermans is also in with a chance, on 15 percent.
NETHERLANDS NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
As justice minister in the current caretaker government, she has been described as a tough negotiator and a strong communicator, who only does three things besides work: sleep, exercise and eating healthily.
But while Rutte has always been very private about his personal life, Yeşilgöz has been far more open, talking frankly about her marriage, her battles with an immune condition and her hesitation about having children.
Also unlike Rutte, who was often spotted cycling to appointments, Yeşilgöz is driven everywhere and has to be heavily protected by a personal security detail due to her position as a justice minister. “It is a big part of my life and that is very tough. But I choose to keep going, to not quit, because I will not be intimidated,” she said.
The increasingly violent and coarse nature of public discourse in the Netherlands is a growing issue in Dutch politics. Outgoing finance minister Sigrid Kaag announced earlier that she was leaving politics amid concerns over her safety.
Fair and strict
Brussels is also keeping a close eye on the upcoming election. The Netherlands has positioned itself under the leadership of Rutte as a reliable and dominant partner in the EU. But officials in embassies and institutions in Brussels now wonder if the next government will maintain such a positive role after the November 22 vote.
It’s a clear “yes” from Yeşilgöz, if she ends up as premier. “As a small country, we can play a big role. We have always done that, and it’s incredibly important that we will keep doing that,” she said.
Playing strict and and playing fair will be the main pillars that underpin her approach to the EU, said Yeşilgöz. That includes no tinkering with the criteria when new countries want to become an EU member — a debate that is already heating up in light of Ukraine’s application to join the 27-country bloc.
A man boards a tram next to a People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) campaign poster featuring a picture of party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz | Carl Court/Getty Images
Traditionally, the Dutch have been hawks-in-chief on EU fiscal policy, criticizing big spenders and demanding a reduction in debt levels. But in more recent times, the Dutch government has favored flexibility, within reason.
“Just being very strict and not looking at the context at all, I am exaggerating a bit, that’s not going to be our line,” Yeşilgöz said. “But being very flexible and actually making things less clear and more complex is not our line either. Europe must be a stable cooperation, and clear financial agreements are very important to this end.”
Post-Rutte
Although the VVD is leading in the polls, the race is far from done.
The main challenge for Yeşilgöz during the campaign has been to convince voters that she wants renewal despite her party being in power for more than a decade.
The past thirteen years a lot of things have been going well, she said, pointing to the fact that The Netherlands weathered the economic crisis and coronavirus pandemics relatively safely.
“At the same time, when you zoom in and see that many people with normal jobs and incomes lie awake at night because of their bills … so I can’t say that things are going well for everyone,” she said.
“On top of that there have been in the past years some blind spots,” she said. These included the poor handling of compensation claims in relation to earthquake damage in Groningen and a childcare benefits fiasco in which thousands of people, often dual-nationals, were incorrectly labeled fraudsters. “It is evident that we have learned from that and need to prevent new blind spots from appearing.”
And what of her former lader, Rutte? He was spotted in Brussels earlier this month on a visit to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, after hinting he would like to take over the position at the top of the military alliance himself.
Asked whether Rutte was gunning to lead NATO, Yeşilgöz laughed.“Wherever he ends up, that organization is very lucky to have him,” she said.
WARSAW — After eight years of rule by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, Polish voters on Sunday chose change — giving three opposition democratic parties enough seats to form a new government.
So now is the way clear to bring Poland back into the European mainstream after dallying as an illiberal democracy?
Not so fast.
The country’s likely ruling coalition faces years of very hard political graft to undo the changes wrought by PiS since 2015.
Here are five main takeaways from an election that will shake Poland and Europe.
1. Job No. 1 — creating a new government
The final result puts PiS in first place, with35.4 percent, according to a preliminary vote count, and 194 seats, but that’s too few for a majority in the 460-member lower house of parliament.
“We will definitely try to build a parliamentary majority,” said Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
The first move belongs to President Andrzej Duda, a former PiS member who has always been loyal to the party. He has said that presidents traditionally choose the leader of the largest party to try to form a government, but if PiS really is a no-hoper, Duda could delay the formation of a stable government.
Under the Polish constitution, the president has to call a new parliamentary session within 30 days of the election. He then has 14 days to nominate a candidate for prime minister; once named, the nominee has 14 days to win a vote of confidence in parliament.
If that fails, parliament then chooses a nominee for PM.
That means if Duda sticks with PiS, it could be mid-December before the three opposition parties — Civic Coalition, the Third Way and the Left — get a chance to form a government. Together, they have248 seats in the new legislature.
There are already voices calling on the opposition to short-circuit that by striking a coalition deal with the signatures of at least 231 MPs, demonstrating to Duda that they have a lock on forming a government.
Once in power, the opposition will find that ruling isn’t easy.
What unites the three is their distaste for PiS, but their programs differ markedly.
Civic Coalition, the largest party under the leadership of Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, is part of the center-right European People’s Party in the European Parliament. But it also contains smaller parties from different groupings like the Greens.
The Third Way is a coalition of two parties — Poland 2050, founded by TV host Szymon Hołownia, and the Polish People’s Party (PSL), the country’s oldest political force representing the peasantry. Poland 2050 is part of Renew while PSL is in the EPP. The grouping skews center right, which means it’s likely to clash with the Left on issues like loosening draconian abortion laws.
The Left is in turn an amalgamation of three small groupings whose leaders have often been at daggers drawn.
2. There’s a mighty purge coming
A non-PiS government will have a very difficult time passing legislation as it will not have the three-fifths of parliamentary votes needed to override Duda’s veto; his term ends in 2025.
The new administration’s first job will be cleaning PiS appointees out of controling positions in government, the media and state-controlled corporations. Poland has a long tradition of governments rewarding loyalists with cushy jobs, but PiS took it to an extreme not seen since communist times.
Most of those people face dismissal.
“We will fire all members of supervisory boards and boards of directors. We will conduct new recruitment in transparent competitions, in which competence, not family and party connections, will be decisive,” says the Civic Coalition electoral program.
“We’ll end the rule of the fat cats in state companies,” says the Left’s program.
The immediate market reaction was positive, with energy company Orlen up more than 8 percent on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on Monday, and the biggest bank, PKO BP, up over 11 percent.
Poland’s state media became PiS’s propaganda arm — along with a chain of newspapers bought by state-controlled refiner Orlen — hammering Tusk as the traitorous “Herr Tusk” more loyal to Germany than Poland. Not a lot of people in the media are likely to survive what’s coming, if the new government succeeds in its goal of shutting down the National Media Council — a body stuffed with PiS loyalists that manages public media.
Poland’s state media became PiS’s propaganda arm, hammering Tusk as the traitorous “Herr Tusk” more loyal to Germany than Poland | Zbignieuw Meissner/EFE via EPA
But losing a job isn’t the worst of what’s awaiting many.
3. Go directly to jail
When Tusk’s party last won power from a short-lived PiS government in 2007, the winners treated their political rivals with kid gloves and hardly anyone was prosecuted. This time the gloves are off.
In its political program, Civic Coalition promises to prosecute anyone for “breaking the constitution and rule of law.”
It aims at Duda, Morawiecki, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, Central Bank Governor Adam Glapiński for mismanaging the fight against inflation, and Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek for heading a controversial buyout that saw the sale of part of a large refinery to foreign interests.
Expect prosecutors to track down the numerous scandals that have hit PiS over the years — from the government of former Prime Minister Beata Szydło refusing to publish verdicts issued by the Constitutional Tribunal, to Duda refusing to swear in properly elected judges to the tribunal.
There are also dodgy contracts issued during the panicky early phase of the COVID pandemic, millions spent on a 2020 election by mail that had not been approved by parliament, state companies setting up funds that poured money into PiS-backed projects, a bribes-for-visas scandal, and many more.
Many people with corporate jobs kicked back part of their salaries to PiS. Additionally, state-controlled companies directed a torrent of advertising money to often niche pro-government newspapers while neglecting larger independent media.
All of those transactions are likely to be examined and — if found to be against the interests of the corporation and its shareholders — could result in criminal charges.
The coalition promises to “hold responsible” people “guilty of civil service crimes.”
4. Reaching out to Brussels
Tusk is a Brussels animal — he spent five years there as European Council president and was also chief of the European People’s party.
PiS’s departure marks a sea change with the EU — which spent eight years tangling with Warsaw over radical changes to the judicial system aimed at bringing judges under tighter political control.
The European Commission moved to end Poland’s voting rights as an EU member under a so-called Article 7 procedure, blocked the payout of €36 billion in loans and grants from the bloc’s pandemic recovery fund, sued Poland at the Court of Justice of the EU, while the European Parliament passed resolutions decrying Warsaw’s backsliding on democratic principles.
The European Commission moved to end Poland’s voting rights as an EU member under a so-called Article 7 procedure | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
“The day after the election, I will go and unblock the money,” Tusk vowed before the vote.
Although Tusk said all that’s required is “a little goodwill and competence,” it’s going to be tougher than he’s letting on. The PiS government tried to unlock the money by passing a partial rollback of its judicial reforms, but they’re stuck in the PiS-controlled Constitutional Tribunal. Passing any new law will require Duda’s signature and without that, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen doesn’t have the legal basis to acknowledge that Poland has met the milestones it needs to achieve to get the money.
“Perhaps the strategy of Tusk will be to try to reopen the negotiation on the milestones and kind of striking a new deal with the European Commission,” said Jakub Jaraczewski, a research coordinator for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based NGO.
5. Making waves in Europe
PiS made a lot of enemies — and the new government will try to undo that damage.
Relations with Berlin have been foul, with Kaczyński pounding the German government for wanting to undermine Polish independence and accusing Berlin of aiming to strike a deal with Moscow “because it is in their economic interest as well as that of their national character: the pursuit of domination at any cost.” Kaczyński and other PiS politicians have also constantly harried Germany for not coming clean about wartime atrocities against Poland.
Tusk has been careful not to touch that issue for fear of harming his party’s electoral chances, but he’s historically had good relations with Berlin — although Poland, no matter under which government, is a big and often prickly country that’s not an easy partner.
Tusk blamed PiS for the downturn in relations with Ukraine after the Polish government restricted Ukrainian grain imports not to annoy Polish farmers and to say it would not send more weapons to Kyiv. Tusk called it “stabbing a political knife in Ukraine’s back, while the battles on the frontline are being decided.”
While Brussels, Berlin and Kyiv will be breathing a sigh of relief at the change of direction in Warsaw, things are likely to be a little more tense in Budapest. Poland and Hungary had a mutual defense pact, blocking the needed unanimity in the European Council to move on the Article 7 procedure.
Without Kaczyński to protect him, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán is much more exposed. There are other populists in Europe, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Robert Fico, who looks likely to take over in Slovakia, but they don’t face Article 7 procedures and their countries have tight relations with the EU — making it difficult to see why they’d risk that to go out on a limb to save Orbán.
Paola Tamma contributed reporting.
This article has been updated with the final election results.
In two German state elections that are seen as a bellwether of the national mood, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, surged while the three parties that make up the country’s federal coalition government suffered significant losses.
Conservative forces won clear victories in both the states of Bavaria and Hesse. In Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), a sister-party to the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is projected to win 37 percent of the vote. In Hesse, the CDU is set to win 34.6 percent of the vote.
But the biggest winner of the night was arguably the AfD, a party that has become increasingly extreme since its founding in 2013. The AfD came in second place in Hesse and third place in Bavaria, according to preliminary results, landmark gains for the party.
The AfD’s strong performance outside its traditional bastion in the states of the former East Germany suggests the party has successfully expanded its base of support. This development has already sparked a renewed flurry of soul-searching among leaders of mainstream parties.
“The increased performance of the AfD can only worry every democrat in this country,” Ricarda Lang, a co-leader of the Greens, said on public television. “I would like to see us move away from finger-pointing and for every democratic party to now consider what we can do to make [the election results] look different again in the future.”
In both Bavaria and Hesse, the three parties that make up German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition — the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) — all saw their support drop. That outcome demonstrated widespread dissatisfaction with the federal government at a time of growing economic and social insecurity.
The German economy has been stuck in an extended rut, precipitated in part by the surge in energy prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A sharp rise in the number of asylum seekers entering Germany this year and a growing shortage of affordable housing has also fueled voter dissatisfaction.
The AfD was clearly able to capitalize on this discontent. Robert Lambrou, the AfD’s parliamentary group leader in Hesse, where the party was projected to win 18.4 percent of the vote, called the party’s performance in the state “breathtaking.” Many people, he added, “feel that a change in policy is needed. We have high inflation, high energy prices, high rents. We have completely unchecked mass immigration. There is a lot to be done here.”
In Bavaria, the AfD was projected to win 14.6 percent of the vote, just behind the Free Voters, a right-wing upstart party that governs in coalition with the CSU in the state. The outcome means that, in both state elections, the AfD outperformed all parties in Germany’s federal ruling coalition, a scenario that would have been hard to imagine some years ago.
Germany’s ruling coalition had already been beset by infighting, particularly between the Greens and the FDP — parties that are in many ways ideological opposites. The poor outcome for the coalition parties may well make the discord worse, as each party seeks to reinforce its base of support.
In Hesse, a former SPD stronghold, the Social Democrats suffered an embarrassing defeat, winning just 15.1 percent of the vote, according to projections. The loss is all the more stinging for the party because its candidate in the state is Scholz’s federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, who in a speech called the result “very disappointing.”
With such a poor result, many are now speculating on whether Faeser will be able to keep her job as interior minister. Chancellor Scholz is likely to face pressure to make sweeping changes in order to reverse the fortunes of his party and coalition.
The election outcome was particularly disastrous for the FDP, a junior partner in Scholz’s coalition. The party won just three percent of the vote in Bavaria and five percent of the vote in Hesse, according to projections. The party is in danger of crashing out of both state parliaments if it fails to meet the required five-percent hurdle.
For the leaders of Germany’s federal coalition government, the election outcome has already raised loud alarm bells. The only question is whether there’s enough unity within the coalition to turn the tide.
“Of course, we are not deaf and blind,” SPD Secretary-General Kevin Kühnert said on German public television after the initial election results came in. “All of us together in this coalition should recognize the signals.”
BERLIN — The political maneuver shaking Germany’s postwar democratic order involves a piece of legislation that is about as mundane as it gets.
Center-right legislators in the eastern German state of Thuringia wanted to cut a local property tax by a small amount — and did so with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
The move broke with years of tradition in which mainstream parties have vowed to maintain a Brandmauer, or firewall, between themselves and the AfD, a party many in a country alert to the legacy of Nazism see as a dire threat to democracy. Even accepting the party’s support, the thinking goes, would legitimize far-right forces or make them salonfähig — socially acceptable.
And so, when parliamentarians from the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, passed the tax reduction on a late afternoon in September with AfD votes, it sent tremors across the country’s political landscape that still are reverberating.
“For me, a taboo has been broken,” Katrin Göring-Eckardt, a leader of the Greens who hails from Thuringia, said after the vote. “It shows me not only that the firewall is gone, but that there is open collaboration.”
For mainstream parties, and the CDU in particular, the question of how to handle the growing presence of far-right radicals in governing bodies from federal and state parliaments to local councils is likely to grow only more vexing.
That especially is the case in the states of the former East Germany, where the AfD now leads in polls at around 28 percent. Next year, the eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg will all hold parliamentary elections. Polls show the party leading in all three states.
The AfD is likely to expand its presence in the parliaments of Bavaria and Hesse when those states vote on Sunday. In Hesse, the AfD is coming close to overtaking German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party, according to the latest polls.
The dilemma facing mainstream parties is clear. To work with the AfD means to normalize a party that many believe seeks to subvert the republic from within. But to ostracize the party only alienates its many voters.
The firewall also serves as an unintended political gift, allowing the AfD to depict itself — at a time of high dissatisfaction with mainstream parties — as the clear choice for those who want to send a burn-it-down message to the country’s political establishment.
At the same time, the controversy over the latest vote in Thuringia seems to have played into the AfD’s hands, allowing the party to depict itself as seeking to uphold rather than undermine democracy.
The “‘firewall’ is history — and Thuringia is just the beginning,” AfD party leader Alice Weidel posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the vote. “It’s time to respond to the democratic will of citizens everywhere in Germany.”
Historic fears
Germany’s political leaders are all too aware that the Nazi seizure of power began with democratic electoral success. In fact, it was in Thuringia where, in 1930, the Nazi party first took real governing power in coalition with conservative parties.
The “‘firewall’ is history — and Thuringia is just the beginning,” AfD party leader Alice Weidel posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the vote. “It’s time to respond to the democratic will of citizens everywhere in Germany” | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images
That fact was not lost on the CDU’s opponents.
“German conservatism has already been a stirrup holder of fascism,” Janine Wissler, a head of the Left party, told the German Press Agency after the vote. “Back then, too, it started in Thuringia,” she added. “Instead of having learned from that, the CDU is going down a path that’s as dangerous as fire.”
CDU leaders in Thuringia deny the vote on the tax reduction means the firewall is crumbling. They say there was no cooperation with the AfD ahead of the vote (though AfD members say there were discussions between lawmakers).
“I cannot make good, important decisions for the state that provide relief for families and the economy dependent on the fact that the wrong people might agree,” Mario Voigt, the head of the CDU in Thuringia said after the vote.
Friedrich Merz, the national leader of the CDU, has sent mixed signals on the firewall — or at least on what exactly the firewall means. Merz says the CDU will not form coalitions with the AfD but he’s been less clear on whether the CDU will work with the party in other ways.
In a television interview over the summer, he seemed to suggest working with the AfD on the local level was all but inevitable.
Friedrich Merz, the national leader of the CDU, has sent mixed signals on the firewall | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images
“We are of course obliged to accept democratic elections,” he said. “And if a district administrator, a mayor is elected there who belongs to the AfD, it’s natural that you look for ways to then continue to work in this city.”
After an uproar ensued, Merz walked back the comment. “There will be no cooperation between the CDU and the AfD at the municipal level either,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
After the vote in Thuringia, Merz stood by the CDU leadership of the state. “We don’t go by who agrees, we go by what we think is right in the matter,” he said on German television.
Even some within his own party do not see things that way. Daniel Günther, the CDU premier of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, sharply criticized his party colleagues in Thuringia. “As a conservative, I must be able to say plainly and simply the sentence, ‘I do not form majorities with extremists,’” Günther said.
‘Cordon sanitaire’
It’s not the first time Thuringia has been at the center of a controversy over the firewall. In 2020, a little-known politician in the pro-business Free Democratic Party, Thomas Kemmerich, was elected state premier with the support of the CDU and AfD. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in to call the vote “unforgivable.”
In the furor that followed, Kemmerich resigned as did the then-head of the CDU faction in the state. But given the AfD’s large presence in the local parliament, the issue was bound to resurface.
It’s not the first time Thuringia has been at the center of a controversy over the firewall | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images
The problem is far from Germany’s alone. Mainstream parties are under growing pressure due to the rise of the radical right across Europe.
In France, parties from across the political spectrum have formed a cordon sanitaire, or sanitary cordon, to keep Marine Le Pen, a leader of the far-right National Rally, out of the presidency. But with Le Pen’s party now the biggest opposition group in the National Assembly, the cordon is getting harder to maintain.
In the European Parliament, where a similar cordon has been erected, the center-right European People’s Party has been openly courting the European Conservatives and Reformists, home to Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party.
In Thuringia, the stakes are even higher as the local branch of the AfD contains some of the party’s most extreme members. State-level intelligence authorities tasked with surveilling anti-constitutional groups have characterized the party’s local branch as extremist.
The leader of the AfD in Thuringia is Björn Höcke, who is set to face trial for using banned Nazi rhetoric. (In 2021, he closed a speech with the phrase “Alles für Deutschland!” or “Everything for Germany!” — a slogan used by Nazi stormtroopers.)
Höcke railed against Holocaust remembrance in Germany and warned of “Volkstod,” the death of the Volk, through “population replacement.” For such views, German courts have ruled that Höcke could justifiably be referred to as a fascist or Nazi.
GERMANY NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
WARSAW — Poland’s opposition held an enormous rally in Warsaw and other cities on Sunday — claiming more than a million people took part — but the mood two weeks ahead of the election is grim rather than triumphant.
That’s because the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been holding on to a significant lead in the polls. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls has PiS at 38 percent while Civic Coalition, the main opposition grouping, is at 30 percent.
The Million Hearts march called by Donald Tusk, a former prime minister who heads the Civic Coalition, was supposed to lift the spirits of opposition supporters and show them that PiS — in power since 2015 — can be beaten.
“The impossible has become possible, when I see this sea of hearts, when I see these hundreds of thousands of smiling faces, I feel that this turning point in the history of our homeland is approaching,” Tusk told the crowd in Warsaw.
But the mood among the thousands of people streaming through the heart of the Polish capital — many waving red-and-white Polish or deep-blue EU flags — was more sober.
“I’ve had it up to my ears with the government of these awful people who are destroying my country,” said Kalina de Nisau, wearing a wrap made out of knotted EU and Polish flags. “But I’m not certain that this march will change the outcome. It’s very difficult.”
While Tusk and other party leaders were exhorting the huge crowd in Warsaw, PiS leaders were in Poland’s coal mining capital of Katowice to warn darkly of the dangers awaiting Poland if Tusk and his allies win on October 15.
Merkel and migrants
“If we succeed in beating [Civic Coalition] we’ll chase away Tusk. Where? To Berlin,” announced Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, hitting on a popular PiS theme that Tusk is in cahoots with Germany to cripple Poland. He then called Tusk the “political husband” of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
He also accused Tusk of trying to organize a wave of illegal migrants into the EU, waving a sheaf of documents he said spelled out the scheme “in black and white.” PiS is trying to deflect the blowback from a growing bribes-for-visas scandal where Polish consulates are accused of issuing work visas for cash, and also of issuing huge numbers of visas to non-EU citizens.
Germany last week brought in heightened border controls on its frontiers with the Czech Republic and Poland to curb an influx of asylum seekers.
PiS also downplayed the scale of the opposition march — which may be the largest in Polish history.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s de facto ruler, denounced “powerful media” that support Tusk for exaggerating the size of the rally.
“They are able to say, for example, that there were a million people in Warsaw today, as Tusk said, although both photos and police statements state that there were 60,000,” Kaczyński said, quoting an unofficial police estimate. During the rally, the route of the march was 4 kilometers long and the eight-lane streets and sidewalks were densely packed with people.
Tusk seized on the size of the crowd to insist it shows a desire to break with PiS, which has seen years of bitter fights with Brussels over accusations it is backsliding on rule of law and democracy thanks to radical changes made to the justice system.
“It’s not about this being the largest political demonstration in European history,” Tusk said. “Europe lives in the hope that Poland will again become a 100 percent European country, democratic and free.”
But a PiS defeat in two weeks is going to need a very rapid change in fortunes for the opposition. Otherwise, PiS is likely to be the largest party, and will then have to hunt for partners to form a coalition that would see it ruling for an unprecedented third four-year term.
“I’m not very optimistic,” said Katarzyna Osuch, walking along with the sea of people in Warsaw. “I think PiS might continue ruling. … I’m very disappointed.”
Warsaw has stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv and is focusing on arming itself instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, amid a dispute over Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat, according to European Pravda. “If you don’t want to be on the defensive, you have to have something to defend yourself with,” he added, insisting, though, that the move wouldn’t endanger Ukraine’s security.
Morawiecki’s terse comments came as tensions escalated between Kyiv and the EU over the past week, after the European Commission moved to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the bloc, ending restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU countries originally sought to protect their farmers from competition.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia responded to the Commission’s move by imposing unilateral bans on Ukrainian grain imports, in apparent violation of the EU’s internal market rules. Kyiv struck back by filing lawsuits against the three countries at the World Trade Organization.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday took a thinly veiled swipe at those imposing grain bans, telling the U.N. General Assembly: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
While Zelenskyy didn’t specifically name-check Poland, Warsaw summoned Kyiv’s ambassador to the foreign ministry in response.
Morawiecki also delivered a “warning” to “Ukraine’s authorities,” earlier telling Polsat, “if they are to escalate the conflict like that, we will add additional products to the ban on imports into Poland. Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized.”
Poland is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign ahead of an election next month, with the right-wing Law and Justice government battling for reelection. While Warsaw initially threw its weight behind the campaign to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s attempted invasion, that full-throated support has waned as the consequences of supporting Ukraine for its own farmers have become more evident.
WARSAW — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to rebuild bridges with Poland late on Saturday, seeking to take the sting out of a political dispute with Warsaw by giving awards to two Polish humanitarian volunteers on his way back from a trip to the U.S. and Canada.
Although Poland was a die-hard ally of Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion, the conservative, nationalist government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party has taken an unexpectedly hard line against its war-torn neighbor in the past days, largely for reasons related to the impending election on October 15.
In order to protect Polish farmers — crucial to the ruling party’s electoral prospects next month — Warsaw has blocked agricultural imports from Ukraine, in a protectionist move that Kyiv says is illegal and has referred to the World Trade Organization. Amid this dispute over food products, Warsaw made the shock announcement it would no longer send arms to Ukrainian forces fighting the Russians.
Over recent days, Zelenskyy has been keen to avoid venturing into Polish electoral politics, but has instead tried to play up the importance of direct relations between ordinary Poles and Ukrainians. In that vein, Marcin Przydacz, head of the office of international policy at the presidency, told the Onet news platform that Zelenskyy had simply visited Poland in transit on his way home to Kyiv and had not met politicians.
Instead, Zelenskyy presented decorations to two Poles involved in helping Ukraine. Zelenskyy said journalist Bianka Zalewska from the U.S.-owned television network TVN had helped provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians and transport wounded children to Polish hospitals. Combat medic Damian Duda had gathered teams to treat wounded soldiers near the front line and set up a fund to assist medics and provide them with training, he said.
“I would like to thank all of Poland for their invaluable support and solidarity, which helps to defend the freedom of our entire Europe!” Zelenskyy said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Duda explained to Onet that he was awarded the presidential order “For Meritorious Service” Third Class for his work since 2014 as a battlefield medic.
“I work in the Ukrainian trenches, saving Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. “I was there until the end [of the Ukrainian defense] in Bakhmut, in Soledar, in Zaporizhzhia,” he said. “Our work is voluntary, our work is cost-free and I am glad that risking our lives to help another human being has been noticed by President Zelenskyy,” the medic said.
Kamil Turecki is a journalist with Poland’s Onet, a sister publication of POLITICO, also owned by Axel Springer.
VIENNA — No one does victimhood quite like Austria.
Over the past century, the Central European country has presented itself to the outside world as an innocent bystander on an island of gemütlichkeit, doing what it can to get by in a treacherous global environment.
“Austria was always apolitical,” insists Herr Karl, the archetypal Austrian opportunist, brought to life in 1961 by Helmut Qualtinger, the country’s greatest satirist. “We were never political people.”
Recalling Austria’s collaboration with the Nazis, Herr Karl, a portly stockist who speaks in a working-class Viennese dialect, was full of self pity: “We scraped a bit of cash together — we had to make a living…How we struggled to survive!”
Russia’s war on Ukraine offers a bitter reminder that Austria remains a country of Herr Karls, playing all sides, professing devotion to Western ideals, even as they quietly look for ways to continue to profit from the country’s friendly relations with Moscow.
The most glaring example of this hypocrisy is Austria’s continued reliance on Russian natural gas, which accounts for about 55 percent of the country’s overall consumption. Though that’s down from 80 percent at the beginning of 2022, Austria, in contrast to most other EU countries, remains dependent on Russia.
Confront an Austrian government official with this fact and you’ll be met with a lengthy whinge over how the country, one of the world’s richest, is struggling to cope with the economic crosswinds triggered by the war. That will be followed by a litany of examples of how a host of other EU countries is guilty of much more egregious behavior vis a vis Moscow.
The unspoken, if inevitable, conclusion: the real victim here is Austria.
The myth of Austrian victimhood has long been a leitmotif of the country’s bilious tabloids, which serve readers regular helpings of all the ways in which the outside world, especially Brussels and Washington, undermines them.
Outside supervision
Earlier this month, the EU’s representative in Austria, Martin Selmayr, ended up in the sights of the tabloids — and the government — for uttering the inconvenient truth that the millions Vienna pays to Russia for gas every month amounted to “blood money.”
“He’s acting like a colonial army officer,” fumed Andreas Mölzer, a right-wing commentator for the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s best-selling tabloid, noting with delight that both of Selmayr’s grandfathers were German generals in the war.
A few weeks before his “blood money” remarks, Selmayr told a Vienna newspaper that “the European army is NATO” | Patrick Seeger/EPA
“The Eurocrats have this attitude that they can just tell Austrians what to do,” Mölzer concluded.
Yet if Austria’s history since the collapse of the Habsburg empire in 1918 has shown anything, it’s that the country needs outside supervision. Left to their own devices, Austrians’ worst instincts take hold.
One needn’t look further than 1938 to understand the implications. But there’s no shortage of other examples: voters’ enthusiastic support for former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim as president in 1986, despite credible evidence that he had lied about his wartime service as an intelligence officer for the Nazis; the state’s foot-dragging on paying reparations to slave laborers used by Austrian companies during the war; the resistance to return valuable artworks looted from Jews by the Nazis to their rightful owners.
Not that Austrians learn from their mistakes. To this day, Austrians rarely heed the better angels of their nature unless the outside world forces them to, either by shaming them into submission or brute force.
That said, the West is almost as much to blame for Austria’s moral shortcomings as the Austrians themselves.
The Magna Carta for Austria’s cult of victimhood can be found in the so-called Moscow Declarations of 1943, in which the allied powers declared the country “the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression.” Though the text also stresses that Austria bears a responsibility — “which she cannot evade” — for collaborating with the Nazis, the Austrians latched onto the “victim” label after the war and didn’t look back.
In the decades that followed, the country relied on its stunning natural beauty and faded imperial charm to transform its international image into that of an alpine Shangri-La, a snow-globe filled with prancing Lipizzaners and jolly folk enjoying Wiener schnitzel and Sachertorte.
Convenient excuse
A key element of that gauzy fantasy was the country’s neutrality, imposed on it in 1955 by the Soviet Union as a condition for ending Austria’s postwar allied occupation. At the time, Austrians viewed neutrality as a necessary evil towards regaining full sovereignty.
During the course of the Cold War, however, neutrality took on an almost religious quality. In the popular imagination, it was neutrality, coupled with Austrians’ deft handling of Soviet leaders, that allowed the country to escape the fate of its Warsaw Pact neighbors (while also doing business with the Eastern Bloc).
Today, Austrian neutrality is little more than a convenient excuse to avoid responsibility.
Austria’s center-right-led government insists that on Ukraine it is only neutral in terms of military action, not on political principle. In other words, it won’t send weapons to Kyiv, but it does support the EU’s sanctions and allows arms shipments destined for Ukraine to pass through Austrian territory.
Andreas Babler took over as leader of the Social Democrats in June AND has a long history of opposing not just NATO, but Austrian participation in any EU defense initiatives | Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP via Getty Images
In the Austrian population as a whole, decades of fetishizing neutrality has left many convinced that it’s their birthright not to take sides. Most are blissfully unaware of the EU’s mutual defense clause, under which member states agree to come to one another’s aid in the event of “armed aggression.”
That mentality explains why Austria’s political parties — with the notable exception of the liberal Neos — refuse to touch, or even debate, the country’s neutrality and its security implications.
In March, just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy began an address via video to Austria’s parliament, Freedom Party MPs placed signs stamped with “Neutrality” and “Peace” on their desks before standing up in unison and leaving the chamber.
The far right wasn’t alone in its disapproval of Zelenskyy. More than half of the Social Democratic MPs also boycotted the event to avoid upsetting Russia.
Geographic good fortune
Andreas Babler, who took over as leader of the Social Democrats in June, has a long history of opposing not just NATO, but Austrian participation in any EU defense initiatives.
In 2020, he characterized the EU as “the most aggressive military alliance that has ever existed,” adding that it “was worse than NATO.”
It’s an extraordinary assertion given that NATO is the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from swallowing Austria during the Cold War. The defense alliance, which Austrian leaders briefly entertained joining in the 1990s, remains the linchpin of the country’s security for a simple reason: Austria’s only non-NATO neighbor is Switzerland.
Austria’s neutrality and geographic good fortune have led it to spend next to nothing on defense. Last year, for example, spending fell to just 0.8 percent of GDP from 0.9 percent, putting it near the bottom of the EU league table with the likes of Luxembourg, Ireland and Malta.
A few years ago, the country’s defense minister even proposed doing away with “national defense” altogether so that the army could concentrate on challenges such as natural disaster relief and combatting cyber threats. The idea was ultimately rejected, but that it was proposed at all — by the person who oversees the military no less — illustrates how seriously Austria takes its security needs.
Over the past year, the government has pledged to increase defense spending, yet those plans are still well below what the country would be obligated to pay were it in NATO.
Put simply, Austria is freeloading on its neighbors and the United States and will continue to do so until it’s pressured to change course.
Reality check
That’s why it needs more straight talk from people like Selmayr, not less.
A few weeks before his “blood money” remarks, the diplomat told a Vienna newspaper that “the European army is NATO,” noting that the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance would leave only Austria and a few small island states outside the tent.
Austria’s neutrality and geographic good fortune have led it to spend next to nothing on defense | Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
The reality check dashed Austria’s hope that it could avoid paying its share for EU defense by waiting for Brussels to create its own force.
Even so, rhetoric alone is not going to convince Austria to shift course. Nearly 80 percent of Austrians support neutrality because it’s so comfortable. The EU and the U.S. need to make it uncomfortable.
At the moment, most Austrians only see the upsides to neutrality; yet that’s only because the West has refused to impose any costs on the country for freeriding. That needs to change.
Critics of a more aggressive approach towards Vienna argue that it will only harden the population’s resolve to sustain neutrality and bolster the far right. That may be true in the short term, but the history of foreign pressure on Austria, especially from Washington — be it the isolation it faced during the Waldheim affair or the push to compensate slave laborers from the war — shows that the interventions ultimately work.
If forced to choose between remaining in the Western fold or facing isolation, Austrians will always chose the former.
Though almost no Austrian security officials will say so publicly, few have any illusions about the necessity of a sea change. More than one-third acknowledge that the country’s neutrality is no longer credible, according to a study published this month by the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy. A further third say the country’s participation in the EU’s common foreign and security policy has a “strong influence” on the credibility of its neutrality claim (presumably not in a good way).
And nearly 60 percent say the country needs to improve its interoperability with NATO in order to fight alongside its EU allies in the event of an armed conflict.
The problem is that no one is forcing them.
If Austria’s partners continue to avoid a confrontation, the country is likely to continue its slide towards Orbánism.
The Freedom Party, which wants to suspend EU aid for Ukraine and lift sanctions against Russia, leads the polls by a widening margin with just a year until the next national election. With neighboring Slovakia on a similar trajectory, Russian President Vladimir Putin may soon have a major foothold in the heart of the EU.
So far, the EU and Washington have been silent on the Freedom Party’s worrying rise, counting on Austrians to snap out of it.
Barring foreign pressure, they won’t. Why would they? With its populist prescriptions and beer hall rhetoric, the Freedom Party encourages Austrians to see themselves as what they most want to be: victims.
Or as Herr Karl famously put it: “Nothing that they accused us of was true.”
RADAWIEC DUŻY, Poland — Forget mass campaign rallies: Poland’s ruling conservatives are betting that prayer, straw-weaving contests and homegrown disco hits can win them this fall’s general election.
At an airstrip in Radawiec Duży, in the country’s eastern rural heartland, planes have been cleared to make way for the central stage. Some 200 people are ushered to their seats to the sound of folk music sung by a local choir.
Despite the sweltering summer heat, the men wear dark suits and the women traditional floral dresses and skirts as they gather around the stage. On this otherwise barren stretch of land, everything — and everyone — is adorned with stems of straw.
Dożynki, as the festival is called, is a celebration of rural life and the summer harvest. At its heart lie the elaborate sculptures woven by local peasant women. Later in the day, a competition will be held to choose the best one, from among those crafted into a Polish eagle, storks and even a crucified Jesus Christ.
The festival is held annually, and countless others like it take place throughout rural Poland between August and September. This year, however, it takes on a double meaning, as it melds neatly into a string of what are being cast as “picnics” in which the ruling party is hoping to shore up its support in traditional countryside bastions.
On October 15, Poland will hold a national election in which Jarosław Kaczyński’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) wants to win an unprecedented third term in office. To do so, they need the support of rural voters. But amid mass protests by farmers, furious over farm produce pouring across the border from Ukraine, their traditional constituency is wavering.
Preaching to the choir
One by one, local dignitaries take the stage to thank the farmers for their hard work and dedication. Jarosław Stawiarski, the 58-year-old marshall of the Lublin voivodeship, or region, decides to take it up a notch, highlighting that the PiS-led government has done more to help the countryside than any other before it.
“The Polish countryside is the essence of our nation,” he tells the crowd. “The people in power now are doing everything they can to ensure that the farmer’s toil is fairly rewarded. God bless.”
Bishop Mieczysław Cisło leads a traditional Catholic mass with a cautionary message: The secular West is a threat to Poland’s traditional way of life.
“Today a fundamental conflict is taking place over the shape of a united Europe and the attitude of those who are responsible for their homeland, for the nation,” Cisło says.
“People don’t appreciate the great sacrifice, every drop of blood shed for the nation, every drop of sweat from the farmer’s forehead that soaked into the native soil.”
Poland’s education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, breaks bread with participants of the harvest festival in Radawiec Duży | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
In the VIP tent, Poland’s education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, nods in agreement, as do the local lawmakers, businessmen, military officials and clergymen seated around him.
Soon, everyone will break bread blessed by Cisło.
Target voters
Most of the people gathered at the airstrip, however, are farther afield, mingling among the stands selling curly fries, sausages, beer and tractor-shaped balloons. There’s an amusement park with a 30-meter drop ride and bumper cars. Older children can experience what it feels like to be part of Poland’s burgeoning military by holding a sniper rifle under the watchful eye of a uniformed army officer.
A PiS volunteer collects voters’ signatures. She gets one from a frail 80-year-old man called Marek, who’s biked here from the regional capital of Lublin, about 12 kilometers away.
“Donald Tusk is an anti-Polish German,” he says, referring to the leader of the main opposition group, the Civic Coalition, which is seeking to dethrone the government. “PiS doesn’t lie — at least not usually.”
Older children can experience what it feels like to be part of Poland’s burgeoning military by holding a sniper rifle under the watchful eye of a uniformed army officer | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
Marek declines to give his full name because he doesn’t trust the Western media.
Back by the stage, the last of the speeches are finished, the straw sculptures are taken down, and the VIP guests disperse.
The organizers are lucky — similar PiS-linked celebrations elsewhere in the country this summer have not gone as smoothly, with one resulting in the near crash of a Black Hawk helicopter worth tens of millions of dollars.
‘Not my vibe’
Soon the stage is being prepared for evening concerts of disco polo, a Polish variant of dance pop that is hugely popular in the countryside.
The crowd has swelled to thousands — but it’s also undergone a generational change.
Patryk Bielak, 30, came with his girlfriend, but they skipped the earlier part of the program.
“We came for Zenek,” he says, referring to one of the disco polo performers. “We’re young, we’re not interested in political pandering.”
Bielak plans to vote for the Civic Coalition.
Disco polo band Bayera on the stage of the harvest festival in Radawiec Duży | Bartosz Brzeziński/POLITICO
Another late arrival, Gabriela Frąk, 20, has opted for the far-right Konfederacja.
“PiS has nothing to offer young people,” she says. “Everything is packaged for seniors who won’t have much influence on what will happen in Poland in 10, 15 or 20 years.”
With just over a month to go before the October election, PiS is still in the lead with 37 percent of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. The Civic Coalition is in second place with 31 percent, followed by Konfederacja with 10 percent.
CORRECTION: This story has been amended to correct the first name of Poland’s education minister.
BRUSSELS — Right-wing and Euroskeptic parties are set to surge in the next European election at the expense of centrist parties, exclusive polling analysis by POLITICO’s Research and Analysis Division shows.
If the elections were held today, the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) would become the third-biggest group in the European Parliament — tied with the centrist Renew — with 89 seats.
That would represent a massive 23-seat gain from the 2019 elections for the sometime-Euroskeptic ECR — home of Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party — with most of the surge coming from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.
Similarly, the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group would make sizable gains, winning 77 seats — a 15-seat rise driven by the Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) recent surge in the polls.
The anticipated rightward swing reflects a broader trend across national elections in Europe, where voters in countries such as Italy, Finland and Greece have increasingly elevated more conservative and hard-right parties.
That said, POLITICO’s analysis shows that the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) would retain its spot as the Parliament’s largest group, despite a predicted 12-seat loss taking it down to 165 seats.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany | Rinny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images
The center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) would even gain two seats to preserve its spot as Parliament’s No. 2 group, with 145 seats. Renew would drop 12 seats to match ECR in the third slot, the analysis shows.
That means the traditional grand coalition of the EPP, S&D and Renew, which spans the center left to center right, would keep its clear majority over a potential new right-leaning alliance of EPP, ECR and Renew.
Recently, however, the EPP has shown a willingness to partner with ECR, allying with the group to oppose Green Deal legislation.
The election’s biggest losers would be the Greens, which would keep only 48 seats, a loss of 24 spots, while the Left group would gain eight seats but remain the smallest group in Parliament with 45 seats.
Europeans will head to the polls from June 6-9 next year to select the 705 MEPs who represent them in Brussels. The number of MEPs is set to increase to 720 for the 2024 elections but, as the changes still need to be formally approved by the European Council and Parliament itself, the polling estimates are based on a 705-seat scenario.
These seat projections are based on national voting intention polls aggregated in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, taking into account each country’s current system to allocate Parliament seats.
POLITICO’s Research and Analysis Division also consulted with experts to assign new unaffiliated European lawmakers to their likely groupings.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stepped in to call for restraint late Tuesday in an effort to end an escalating diplomatic spat with Ukrainian ally Poland.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kyiv had summoned Warsaw’s envoy after a senior Polish official suggested Ukraine should be more grateful for the support it has been receiving from Poland since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
“We greatly appreciate the historical support of Poland, which together with us has become a real shield of Europe from sea to sea. And there cannot be a single crack in this shield,” Zelenskyy said.
“We will not allow any political instants to spoil the relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples, and emotions should definitely cool down,” the president added.
Poland has been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters since Moscow’s aggression ramped up in 2022. But in recent months, its relations with Kyiv have been hurt by Warsaw’s decision to extend a ban on some Ukrainian agricultural exports, which the Polish government considers a threat to the interests of domestic farmers.
Initially focused on grain, the dispute is now shifting to soft fruit such as raspberries and currants, with Poland’s farmers — who are set to be a key constituency in the upcoming Polish general elections in October — complaining that lower-priced imports from Ukraine are undercutting them.
The brewing contretemps escalated Tuesday after Ukraine summoned the Polish ambassador to Kyiv over “unacceptable” comments made by a senior Polish official.
In an interview with Polish media, Marcin Przydacz, head of Poland’s international policy office, said Kyiv should “start appreciating the role Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years” — sparking ire from Ukrainian officials who hauled in Warsaw’s ambassador and prompting Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki then to slap Kyiv down.
“The summoning of the Polish ambassador — a representative of the country that was the only one left in Kyiv on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to the Ukrainian foreign ministry should never have happened,” Morawiecki said.
“Given the enormity of the support Poland has given Ukraine, such mistakes should not happen,” the prime minister added.
STRASBOURG — The European Parliament’s response to Qatargate: Fight corruption with paperwork.
When Belgian police made sweeping arrests and recovered €1.5 million from Parliament members in a cash-for-influence probe last December, it sparked mass clamoring for a deep clean of the institution, which has long languished with lax ethics and transparency rules, and even weaker enforcement.
Seven months later, the Parliament and its president, Roberta Metsola, can certainly claim to have tightened some rules — but the results are not much to shout about. With accused MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella back in the Parliament and even voting on ethics changes themselves, the reforms lack the political punch to take the sting out of a scandal that Euroskeptic forces have leaped on ahead of the EU election next year.
“Judge us on what we’ve done rather [than] on what we didn’t,” Metsola told journalists earlier this month, arguing that Parliament has acted swiftly where it could.
While the Parliament can claim some limited improvements, calls for a more profound overhaul in the EU’s only directly elected institution — including more serious enforcement of existing rules — have been met with finger-pointing, blame-shifting and bureaucratic slow-walking.
The Parliament dodged some headline-worthy proposals in the process. It declined to launch its own inquiry into what really happened, it decided not to force MEPs to declare their assets and it won’t be stripping any convicted MEPs of their gold-plated pensions.
Instead, the institution favored more minimal nips and tucks. The rule changes amount to much more bureaucracy and more potential alarm bells to spot malfeasance sooner — but little in the way of stronger enforcement of ethics rules for MEPs.
EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, who investigates complaints about EU administration lamented that the initial sense of urgency to adopt strict reforms had “dissipated.” After handing the EU a reputational blow, she argued, the scandal’s aftermath offered a pre-election chance, “to show that lessons have been learned and safeguards have been put in place.”
Former MEP Richard Corbett, who co-wrote the Socialists & Democrats group’s own inquiry into Qatargate and favors more aggressive reforms, admitted he isn’t sure whether Parliament will get there.
“The Parliament is getting to grips with this gradually, muddling its way through the complex field, but it’s too early to say whether it will do what it should,” he said.
Bags of cash
The sense of resignation that criminals will be criminals was only one of the starting points that shaped the Parliament’s response.
“We will never be able to prevent people taking bags of cash. This is human nature. What we have to do is create a protection network,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a French MEP who sketched out some longer-term recommendations he hopes the Parliament will take up.
Another is that the Belgian authorities’ painstaking judicial investigation is still ongoing, with three MEPs charged and a fourth facing imminent questioning. Much is unknown about how the alleged bribery ring really operated, or what the countries Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania really got for their bribes.
On top of that, Parliament was occasionally looking outward rather than inward for people to blame.
Metsola’s message in the wake of the scandal was that EU democracy was “under attack” by foreign forces. The emphasis on “malign actors, linked to autocratic third countries” set the stage for the Parliament’s response to Qatargate: blame foreign interference, not an integrity deficit.
Instead of creating a new panel to investigate how corruption might have steered Parliament’s work, Parliament repurposed an existing committee on foreign interference and misinformation to probe the matter. The result was a set of medium- and long-term recommendations that focus as much on blocking IT contractors from Russia and China as they do on holding MEPs accountable — and they remain merely recommendations.
Metsola did also turn inward, presenting a 14-point plan in January she labeled as “first steps” of a promised ethics overhaul. The measures are a finely tailored lattice-work of technical measures that could make it harder for Qatargate to happen again, primarily by making it harder to lobby the Parliament undetected.
The central figure in Qatargate, an Italian ex-MEP called Pier Antonio Panzeri, enjoyed unfettered access to the Parliament, using it to give prominence to his human rights NGO Fight Impunity, which held events and even struck a collaboration deal with the institution.
This 14-point package, which Metsola declared is now “done,” includes a new entry register, a six-month cooling-off period banning ex-MEPs from lobbying their colleagues, tighter rules for events, stricter scrutiny of human rights work — all tailored to ensure a future Panzeri hits a tripwire and can be spotted sooner.
Notably, however, an initial idea to ban former MEPs from lobbying for two years after leaving office — which would mirror the European Commission’s rules — instead turned into just a six-month “cooling off” period.
Internal divisions
Behind the scenes, the house remains sharply divided over just how much change is needed. Many MEPs resisted bigger changes to how they conduct their work, despite Metsola’s promise in December that there would be “no business as usual,” which she repeated in July.
The limited ambition reflects an argument — pushed by a powerful subset of MEPs, primarily in Metsola’s large, center-right European People’s Party group — that changing that “business as usual” will only tie the hands of innocent politicians while doing little to stop the few with criminal intent. They’re bolstered by the fact that the Socialists & Democrats remain the only group touched by the scandal.
“There were voices in this house who said, ‘Do nothing, these things will always happen, things are fine as they are,’” Metsola said. Some of the changes, she said, had been “resisted for decades” before Qatargate momentum pushed them through.
The Parliament already has some of the Continent’s highest standards for legislative bodies, said Rainer Wieland, a long-serving EPP member from Germany who sits on the several key rule-making committees: “I don’t think anyone can hold a candle to us.”
MEP Rainer Wieland holds lots of sway over the reforms | Patrick Seeger/EFE via EPA
Those who are still complaining, he added in a debate last week, “are living in wonderland.”
Wieland holds lots of sway over the reforms. He chairs an internal working group on the Parliament’s rules that feeds into the Parliament’s powerful Committee on Constitutional Affairs, where Metsola’s 14-point plan will be translated into cold, hard rules.
Those rule changes are expected to be adopted by the full Parliament in September.
The measures will boost existing transparency rules significantly. The lead MEP on a legislative file will soon have to declare (and deal with) potential conflicts of interest, including those coming from their “emotional life.” And more MEPs will have to publish their meetings related to parliamentary business, including those with representatives from outside the EU.
Members will also have to disclose outside income over €5,000 — with additional details about the sector if they work in something like law or consulting.
Negotiators also agreed to double potential penalties for breaches: MEPs can lose their daily allowance and be barred from most parliamentary work for up to 60 days.
Yet the Parliament’s track record punishing MEPs who break the rules is virtually nonexistent.
As it stands, an internal advisory committee can recommend a punishment, but it’s up to the president to impose it. Of 26 breaches of transparency rules identified over the years, not one MEP has been punished. (Metsola has imposed penalties for things like harassment and hate speech.)
And hopes for an outside integrity cop to help with enforcement were dashed when a long-delayed Commission proposal for an EU-wide independent ethics body was scaled back.
Stymied by legal constraints and left-right divides within the Parliament, the Commission opted for suggesting a standards-setting panel that, at best, would pressure institutions into better policing their own rules.
“I really hate listening to some, especially members of the European Parliament, who say that ‘Without having the ethics body, we cannot behave ethical[ly],’” Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová lamented in June.
Metsola, for her part, has pledged to adhere to the advisory committee’s recommendations going forward. But MEPs from across the political spectrum flagged the president’s complete discretion to mete out punishments as unsustainable.
“The problem was not (and never really was) [so] much the details of the rules!!! But the enforcement,” French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield — who sits in the working group — wrote to POLITICO.
Wieland, the German EPP member on the rule-making committees, presented the situation more matter-of-factly: Parliament had done what it said it would do.
“We fully delivered” on Metsola’s plan, Wieland told POLITICO in an interview. “Not more than that.”
MADRID — Alberto Núñez Feijóo may not want to admit it but his hope of being Spain’s next prime minister may have to be lowered.
On Monday night, the leader of the center-right Popular Party, which won the most votes in last Sunday’s national election in Spain but fell short of securing a governing majority, was left without options to form a government after two key regional parties rejected his overtures.
To become Spain’s prime minister, a candidate whose party has not secured a governing majority needs to either get the backing of 176 of the total 350 MPs in an initial vote in parliament or wait for a second round of voting to secure a simple majority. MPs can also abstain, which means it can be difficult to determine the exact number of seats needed for a successful bid to form a government.
In a speech after a meeting of the Popular Party’s executive committee, Feijóo reaffirmed his determination to gather the support needed to advance with his candidacy, adding that as the leader of the party that garnered the most votes, it was his “duty.”
But his numbers don’t add up. His Popular Party controls 136 seats in parliament — all of its scenarios for victory require the support of the far-right Vox party’s 33 MPs. But because the combined right-wing forces only account for 169 seats, the conservative leader would also need the support of some regional parties.
While the conservative leader quickly secured the backing of the Navarrese People’s Union — a virtual offshoot of the Popular Party — the rest of his attempts to woo potential allies have gone nowhere, fast.
Vox Secretary-General Ignacio Garriga on Monday stated his party, with whom the Popular Party aspired to form a government,is not interested in supporting a prime minister that is also backed by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), one of the groups whose votes Feijóo would need to become prime minster.
“You can’t have a patriotic vote alongside that of a separatist party,” said Garriga, referring to the PNV. “It’s impossible.”
Feijóo was similarly rebuffed by the PNV’s Andoni Ortuzar, to whom he sent a chummy text message proposing they sit down to talk.
Ortuzar ignored Feijóo’s message for most of the day and only responded in the evening, when he called Feijóo to tell him his group was not interested in even meeting to discuss the possibility of a Popular Party-led government, the PNV posted on social media.
Meanwhile, Fernando Clavijo, secretary-general of the insular Canarian Coalition, told the Spanish media that his party’s sole MP would not back any government that included Vox.
Feijóo does “not have any possibility to become prime minister,” the group’s outgoing MP, Ana Oramas, said.
A summer of magical thinking
The combined rejections from Vox and the regional groups leave Feijóo without realistic options.
At this point, the only way his bid could succeed is if Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s 122 Socialist MPs agree to not vote against his hypothetical candidacy — a fantasy scenario that has no chance of happening after a campaign in which the Popular Party’s primary message was that it was time to “repeal Sanchismo.”
Pedro Sánchez — officially in caretaker mode since Sunday’s election — is laying low these days | Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images
Feijóo seemed determined to not let reality get in his way on Tuesday, insisting the Socialists needed to deal with him instead of negotiating with the left-wing parties and Basque and Catalan separatists, whose votes could allow Sánchez to remain prime minister.
“Spain holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, we’re negotiating finance rules in Brussels … We need stability, pro-European sentiment and centralism,” he said in Santiago de Compostela.
“It would be a huge mistake for separatists to govern Spain,” he added. “It’s the traditional parties that have won the greatest amount of votes.”
While Popular Party spokesperson Borja Sémper rejected the possibility of a grand coalition with the Socialists, in an interview with Spain’s public radio he floated the idea of a minority government led by Feijóo that could forge some sort of pact with the center left to address some of the nation’s “challenges.”
Deputy Prime Minister María Jesús Montero on Tuesday also rejected any possibility of a deal between the Socialists and the Popular Party, and instead underlined Sánchez’s determination to form a coalition with the left-wing Sumar coalition and secure the support of a hodgepodge of Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist groups.
The hope is to secure 172 yeas for Sánchez’s candidacy — slightly more than the 170 nays that will come from the right — and convince Catalan separatist group Junts, which has said it will not back the Socialists, to abstain.
“A progressive majority has backed the continuance of the Sánchez government’s progressive policies and rejected the Popular Party and Vox’s Trumpian politics,” Montero told Cadena Ser.
The expat factor
Although Spain’s election was held last Sunday, the definitive results won’t be known until this Saturday, when the votes of Spaniards living abroad are added to the total. Spanish consular offices around the world have registered over 2 million citizens,but the turnout among them is not yet known.
While the foreign vote has never dramatically shifted the outcome of a Spanish election, it can alter the results of one or two seats — and that could make a difference in this particular parliament.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said that while changes could further complicate Sánchez’s plan to remain prime minister, they would almost certainly not improve Feijóo’s chances of taking power.
The nightmare scenario, of course, would be if enough seats changed hands that the left and right-wing blocs were left controlling the exact same numbers. Simón said that while such a “catastrophic blockage” was highly unlikely, lack of information about participation rates or political leanings of expat voters made it difficult to guess what could happen.
Discretion is everything
Sánchez — officially in caretaker mode since Sunday’s election — is laying low these days. It’s a canny strategy that is focusing the public’s attention on Feijóo’s inability to gather support for his candidacy.
On Tuesday, Sánchez’s spokesperson announced that the traditional summer meeting between the Spanish PM and King Felipe VI in the Marivent Palace in Mallorca had been canceled; the two will meet in Madrid after the holidays. Pundits speculate Sánchez did not want to appear to be getting any special access to the monarch, who will decide who gets to try form Spain’s next government.
Meanwhile, Deputy PM Montero confirmed that behind-the-scenes talks between the Socialists and the groups whose support Sánchez needs were underway. “A successful negotiation depends on discretion,” Montero said.
The left-wing Sumar party, Sánchez’s projected coalition partners, has been entrusted with the delicate task of making contact with the Catalan separatist Junts party, whose abstention in a parliamentary vote on Feijóo’s candidacy will be key to the prime minister’s gamble.
Montero said Sánchez is keen to negotiate with them but no blanket amnesties will be granted — including to its founder Carles Puidgemont, who is sought by Spanish authorities for his role in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Likewise, holding an official independence referendum in Catalonia is also off the table.
“The Socialist Party is a constitutionalist party, so everything we do has to be contemplated within the framework of the constitution,” she said.
MADRID — Incumbent Pedro Sánchez is poised to remain the Spanish prime minister as a result of Sunday’s inconclusive national election in which the center-right Popular Party won the most votes but was left with no clear path to form a government.
As expected, none of Spain’s major parties secured a governing majority. With 99 percent of the votes tallied, the Popular Party had 136 seats, the Socialists 122, the far-right Vox 33, and the left-wing Sumar 31.
Prior to the vote, conservative leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo indicated that he would be willing to form a coalition government with Vox, but both parties fell short of the 176 seats needed to control the Spanish parliament.
There is no scenario in which Spanish MPs would back a minority government composed of the Popular Party and Vox, and Feijóo does not appear to have enough support among the country’s smaller, regional parties to cobble together the backing he would need for minority rule on his own.
The outcome opens the door to Sánchez remaining in power.
Together with Yolanda Díaz’s left-wing Sumar coalition, the prime minister’s Socialist Party could form a coalition that controls 153 seats in parliament, but in order to govern he’ll need to forge deals with a variety of political groups with wildly different objectives.
Sánchez is unlikely to be able to obtain the backing of the 176 MPs needed to be confirmed as prime minister the first time the new parliament discusses the matter, but he could make a bid during the second round of voting, in which the candidate to head the new government has to receive more yays than nays.
In 2019, Sánchez became prime minister following that same roadmap after making deals with regional parties. But in this high-stakes election, voters opted to back larger parties, leading smaller groups like Teruel Existe to lose their seats.
That means the Socialists will have to look for support from Basque and Catalan nationalists — among them those belonging to former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont‘s Junts party.
Puigdemont fled Spain in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum and was subsequently elected to the European Parliament; a top EU court recently stripped his legal immunity, paving the way for his extradition to Spain.
Junts candidate Míriam Nogueras told the press that her party had “understood the result” and would “take advantage of the opportunity.”
“This is a possibility for change, to recover unity,” she said. “But we will not make Pedro Sánchez president in exchange for nothing.”
Over 37 million Spaniards were registered to vote in this election, which was framed as a referendum on Sánchez. The tight race meant the stakes were incredibly high, with Spain facing the possibility of ending up with a government with far-right ministers for the first time since the death of Francisco Franco.
That could have signaled a wider sea-change in Europe ahead of next year’s European Parliament election and given fuel to right-wing forces that want the EU to take more hardline stances on everything from climate policy to migration.
With 33 seats, the far-right Vox party remains the third-largest political group in the Spanish parliament, but this election has seen it shrink from the 52 seats it secured in 2019, indicating the group may be losing steam.
At the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid on Sunday night, euphoric supporters cheered Sánchez while shouting “¡No pasarán!,” the anti-fascist slogan used by Spain’s legitimate government in its struggle against Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Despite being held in the middle of the summer and in the midst of a heatwave, some 24 million Spaniards voted in person, while a record 2.4 million opted for mail-in voting.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace plans to leave the government at the next Cabinet reshuffle and will not stand in the next general election, he told the Sunday Times newspaper.
Wallace informed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of his plans on June 16 but had hoped to make the announcement later in the summer, the newspaper reported late Saturday. A Cabinet reshuffle is expected by September.
“I’m not standing next time,” Wallace was quoted as saying. But he ruled out going “prematurely” and forcing another by-election, the newspaper said.
“I went into politics in the Scottish parliament in 1999. That’s 24 years,” Wallace, who has been defense chief since July 2019, told the paper.
The development comes days after Wallace controversially said Ukraine should put more emphasis on showing “gratitude” to “doubting politicians” in the U.S. and other allied countries who might not be completely convinced of the need to maintain military and economic support to Kyiv as it defends the country from Russia’s invasion.
“There’s a slight word of caution here which is, whether you like it or not people want to see gratitude,” Wallace told reporters at a NATO summit in Lithuania on July 12.
Sunak was forced to try to calm the diplomatic tumult caused by Wallace’s remarks. The prime minister said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed gratitude to Kyiv’s allies “countless times.”
Wallace’s name was in the mix of potential candidates to be the next secretary-general of NATO before the defense alliance in early July agreed to extend Jens Stoltenberg’s term by a year.
