Shifts to the Right:
The 2024 European Parliament Election and the New European Commission

June 2024 saw the tenth direct election to the European Parliament (EP), after which the members (MEPs) sat in eight different transnational (party) political groups. Post-election, Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected as President of the European Commission for another five-year term, though with a much more right-leaning Commission taking office at the start of December. This shift reflected changes in national governments, especially in Italy whose Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is now central to European Union (EU) developments.

Before the European Community/Union with a EP, there was first the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) with a Common Assembly. The initial direct election to the EP was held in 1979 and elections have been held every five years since. Currently, the EP has 720 deputies.

Once elected in each member state, in most cases from party lists, the MEPs form into transnational political groups; those failing to do so become unaffiliated (officially Non-Inscrits or NI). Political groups must be comprised of at least 23 members from at least one-quarter (so now seven) member states. The Christian Democratic and socialist political groups have always been the two largest groups, with the socialists being the largest after the first four EP elections and then the Christian Democrats being the largest since 1999.

Political groups date back to the ECSC Common Assembly, with three groups formed in 1953: the Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Socialists. These original groups not only still exist but are quite consistent, in that their key constituent parties remain in the group election after election. However, there have been many other political groups and there is nothing to stop parties setting up new groups beyond the minimum number and breadth requirements. This fluidity is particularly the case on the right and far-right of the political spectrum, amongst parties that are neither Christian Democrat nor liberal but instead conservative (broadly defined) and Eurosceptic; that is, anti-integrationist, nationalist, and sometimes populist radical right.

As of the post-election constitutive session of 16 July 2024, the resulting political groups of the EP, from left to right in their political leanings, were as follows: 

• The Left group had 46 seats, with La France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the Italian Five Star Movement being its largest component parties. 
• The group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) had 136 seats, with the Italian Democrats and the Spanish Socialists being its largest component parties. 
• The group of the Greens / European Free Alliance, which combines green parties with regional parties from Spain (and formerly from elsewhere including the United Kingdom), had 53 seats, with the German Greens being its largest component party.
• The liberal Renew Europe group had 77 seats, with the French Ensemble of President Emmanuel Macron being its largest component party.
• The Christian Democratic group of the European People’s Party (EPP) had 188 seats, with the German Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the Spanish People’s Party, and the Polish Civic Coalition being its largest component parties.
• The soft Eurosceptic European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) group had 78 members, with the Brothers of Italy (FdI) of Giorgia Meloni and the Polish Law and Justice being its largest component parties.
• The right-wing populist and Eurosceptic Patriots for Europe group had 84 seats, with the French National Rally of Marine Le Pen being its largest component party. The Hungarian Fidesz of Viktor Orbán is now in this group, having previously (and increasingly controversially) been in the EPP. The Patriots for Europe group was largely a rebranding of the Identity and Democracy group of the previous parliament.
• The only truly new political group formed was the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN). With 25 members it was the smallest group, and over half its members were from the Alliance for Germany.
• Lastly, there were 32 ‘Non-Inscrits’.

Compared to the 2019 EP election, 2024 saw a clear shift to the right. The centre-left, in particular the Greens in France and Germany and the liberals in France and Romania, lost considerable seats. The Eurosceptic right and far-right political groups were the gainers and together won the same share of seats as the EPP. The Renew Europe group thus went from being the third largest (the traditional liberal outcome) to fifth. That said, the EPP remained the hinge group, with the median left-right MEP. They also obtained the chair and/or one or more vice-chairs on every single one of the 20 standing committees of the parliament, the only political group to do so.

Yet, the EPP also shifted to the right. Whereas in the 2019 EP election it stressed the environment, by 2023 this was downplayed and in 2024 its focus was on jobs, defence, and strong borders. Analogous to the Liberals in Canada, the EPP has tended to be ideologically flexible and focused on the political centre ground. That said, the Christian Democrats remain clearly pro-European integration. Above all, they wished to see European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of the EPP achieve a second term in 2024. Of course, such an appointment involves a multi-stage process, which begs the question of how she became Commission President in the first place.

The president of the European Commission is nominated, that is, picked by the national leaders of the member states in the European Council by a super-majority decision, although as of the Treaty of Lisbon (effective December 2009) they must take into account the outcome of the EP election. The EP wants this to be a hard obligation to nominate the “lead candidate” of the largest political group, or at least a lead candidate with majority support in the parliament, thus making the EP election determinant of the Commission President.

Such a ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ (German for ‘lead candidates’) process first occurred in 2014. However, this did not happen in 2019 when the European Council refused to nominate Manfred Weber, the lead candidate of the EPP. Instead, they went with von der Leyen whom they saw as stronger. Then Germany’s defence minister, she did not even campaign for the job. Von der Leyen was pushed for by Germany but also by French President Macron, who both preferred her and never accepted the Spitzenkandidaten system.

As for the rest of the commissioners, they reflect national nominations from member state governments (each member state has one commissioner), though their formal loyalty is to the EU as a whole. The power of the Commission President with respect to the other commissioners is not in picking them but in assigning them their portfolios. Each commissioner-designate must get a two-thirds vote in committee hearings determining whether they are qualified. Lastly, since 1994 the entire commission, including again the President, must be approved by a majority investiture vote of the EP.

The political groups of the members of the European Commission thus reflect which parties are in power in the individual member states, as they are the ones who nominate said individuals. Moreover, it is not necessarily the case that an EP political group, or part of it, will vote for the investiture even if there is a commissioner from a member party.

What happened in 2024 was that von der Leyen ultimately pivoted from the centre to the right as the process unfolded. First, she sought to broaden her support in the EP beyond her own core of the EPP, the S&D and Renew Europe. She initially stressed no backtracking on the “Green Deal” economic transformation to win the support of the Greens, but also argued for tighter EU border controls and stronger police co-operation against crime to win the support of the ECR. The former pitch worked at the time, but the latter one did not. Still, in July the parliament voted 401 to 284 to approve her.

In hindsight, beyond stating that von der Leyen was too green, for domestic reasons Meloni did not want the Brothers of Italy seen to be voting with the left, nor did she feel (correctly) that those votes were absolutely needed by von der Leyen. Subsequently, von der Leyen soon stopped talking about the Green Deal that was at the heart of her first term, preferring instead to focus on competitiveness of which a “clean transition” is but a part; she is now acting to this new end.

The nature of the overall commission itself reflected the centre-right nature of most member state governments in 2024; indeed, this was the most right-wing commission in decades. Factoring into this situation was von der Leyen carrying on as Germany’s commissioner, though its government was a left-centre coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals. Overall, a clear majority of the commissioners (15 of 27, including von der Leyen) came from Christian Democratic parties, that is, national parties affiliated with the EPP. Five commissioners came from liberal parties, four from socialist parties, and the Italian commissioner from the Brothers of Italy and thus the ECR. The Hungarian commissioner was an independent but one close to Fidesz and thus the Patriots for Europe. The Slovakian commissioner was from the left-populist SMER, which was suspended from the Socialists in 2023 and thus are part of the ‘Non-Inscrits’.

The Greens voted against Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi and Italy’s Raffaele Fitto; the liberal Renew Europe and the Socialists and Democrats political groups both threatened to do likewise, but in the end voted for each of them. In contrast, the ECR, which, again, did not back von der Leyen for President in July, voted for all but one commissioner. In the end every commissioner was approved, which has not happened since 1999.

When it came time in late November to give final approval to the overall commission, the vote here was only 370 in favour and 282 against, the smallest margin of victory ever (and obviously less than the 401 votes von der Leyen received in July). Upset about Fitto’s central role, only about half of the Green MEPs supported the new commission. Within the socialist group, the French voted against, and the Germans abstained. However, within the ECR the Brothers of Italy and Belgium’s New Flemish Alliance voted in favour of the commission. In summary, the second von der Leyen Commission received full support from only the EPP and the liberals, and in absolute numbers basically equal support from the ECR and the Greens, reflecting its right-of-centre nature and priorities.

To this end, it is clear that von der Leyen reached out to Giorgia Meloni in making Raffaele Fitto one of six executive vice presidents, to whom the other, “regular”, commissioners report. In contrast, the Hungarian commissioner only received a junior portfolio. Fitto himself was a shrewd choice of Meloni; his pre-FdI background was as a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (and thus the EPP) and later centrist parties as opposed to the post-fascist background of the FdI (including Meloni herself), making him someone that much of the centre-left could at least live with. Going forward, Fitto will no doubt serve within the second von der Leyen Commission as a guide to what it politically acceptable to the FdI and generally the ECR.

In conclusion, there was a shift to the right in the 2024 EP election, not just in seats but in the positioning of the hinge EPP. That said, the Eurosceptic right and far-right are divided into no less than three political groups. There are clear distinctions here between the ECR on the one hand and the Patriots for Europe and the ESN on the other. The ECR was founded by the UK Conservatives under David Cameron and remains (somewhat) acceptable to the political centre; the other two groups are more extreme and remain outside the ‘cordon sanitaire’ of democratic parties including with respect to leadership positions on parliamentary committees. Central to this distinction today is the role of Giorgia Meloni, arguably the most powerful European leader given her domestic strength, but crucially in the current geopolitical context someone who has been staunchly pro-Ukraine, versus the implicit or even explicit pro-Russian nature of politicians in the Patriots for Europe and the ESN.