On June 9, we are called to elect our representatives to the European Union. The elections will allow the consolidation and visibility of the conservative and national populist Europe that already governs in Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, France, Sweden, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Croatia, Estonia, Finland , Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Portugal, Belgium and Lithuania. Of the 27 countries that make up the EU, 22 are governed by right-wing and center-right parties (not so Spain, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia and Malta).
Every time there are new European elections, the vote of citizens is activated, appealing to them to vote to fight Euroscepticism, anti-Europeanism, a negative view of the future, indifference to social injustices or the desire to settle accounts with the parties that govern in their countries. However, on this occasion what is being asked of them, in the vast majority of countries, is that they exercise their vote to prevent European founding values, such as integration, solidarity and peace, from limiting the taking of decisions to address issues such as immigration, the reduction of public expenditure or European defence.
European citizens are increasingly aware that the Union has been built and is being built on the basis of the accession of countries that value commercial aspects, such as Sweden; others who do it to survive politically and geographically, such as Ukraine, which asks to accelerate its integration in order to respond with greater political and military capacity to the war generated by Russian expansionism; others, to leave behind and heal the wounds of the past, as Spain, Portugal and especially Germany did; geopolitical accessions, as was Turkey’s desire to be part of the great European family to set its future astride East and West, or accessions to lead Europe, as is the case of France.
The EU, which was born for the ultimate reconciliation of European countries after the Second World War, is now beset by the ghosts of war, and finds itself in the dilemma of creating and spreading the idea of ??a Union capable of responding militarily to countries that might attack its integrity and, in this way, contribute more to NATO’s war potential or to maintain its current position of defending peace with diplomacy and economic pressures.
In this political context, in a European Union built so far from selfish, interested, enthusiastic or necessary accessions to develop and guarantee democracy in the countries that make it up, the powerful image of a Europe where they must live together and relate – there are unfortunate communities like the Ukrainian one, threatened communities like Finland or Sweden, happy communities like Spain, Portugal or Italy, and closed communities like Hungary or Bulgaria.
In these elections, marked by issues such as migration, European military defense, the war in Ukraine and nearby Gaza, climate change or fiscal unification rules, it is at stake to determine the vision that is imposed on how it must face the future of the EU, once it has been established that future integrations, as has happened in other previous ones, will not be marked by the European values ??that founded it, but by geopolitical balances.
It has gone from believing in the European Union, from having faith in it, to needing it to the point that many European citizens have become bored with the dependence that the states of the Union have and the subordination to its institutions and controls.
While for the right and the European national populism the European elections this June must certify that they are the ones who now decide the policy in Europe, for the social democracy they are key to achieving a good electoral result in their countries to defend se of conservative and national populist Europe, taking the form of a hedgehog curling up in a ball of thorns to protect itself from external enemies. For this reason, in these elections, the right wants to talk about the Europe we live in, while the left seeks to evoke the dreamed Europe.
The right will win the elections because it has understood better than the left that happy communities do not want to be dragged down by the problems arising from not knowing how to control immigration and not having taken better care of internal security in their countries.
