The only light at the end of the tunnel is the result of the Irish vote, where the Euroskeptic Sinn Fein failed to win a seat in the European Parliament. But there are signs of traps for the future of the union: In almost all the major countries of Europe, the conservative parties won the elections. Even more alarming is the fact that extreme nationalist parties fared surprisingly well.Results in the United Kingdom are representative of the general European voting patterns: The left-wing government sustained a huge blow, conservatives and Euroskeptics did well and the ultranationalist British National Party managed to find seats in the European Parliament. Not good news for supporters of the further enlargement of Europe, not good news for immigrant communities and not good news for Turkey.
The overall turnout of voters was even lower than expected. This means two things at the same time: European institutions still mean little to, let's say, a German voter, and we cannot deduce results about future national votes from these results. Understandably, opposition parties that rely on a reactionary mood, issue-oriented parties like the Greens and parties with a strong ideological message are more apt in mobilizing their supporters to spare their hours to go to ballot box. Though this explains the recent surge of the environmentalist, rejectionist, anti-union and anti-immigration parties, this also means that the EU Parliament is losing its touch with its raison d'être.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) received 14.4 percent of the vote and secured 13 seats in the European Parliament. The greater winner of the elections, the Conservative Party, is already critical of certain European policies. Even worse is the fact that the British Nationalist Party (BNP) received 6.5 percent of the vote and secured two seats in the European Parliament. One of those seats will be occupied by the very leader of BNP, Nick Griffin, a staunch enemy of immigrants.
Why does a party that says “No!” to the European Union join the parliamentary election of that union? The only explanation is this: “They are coming in order to block political processes; especially those that account for the further unification of Europe.” It is for sure that Nick Griffin is going to be a natural ally of Nicolas Sarkozy in the European Parliament by means of their common antagonism to “the coming of Turks.” Supranational politics creates strange marriages… I am sure that a Frenchmen would be the latest “thing” Griffin would like to cooperate with.
Only in countries where the governments are already anti-immigration, anti-enlargement and anti-Turkey, the governments retained their dominant positions in the election: France and Germany are good examples. But in countries where the governments are left wing, open to the further enlargement of the EU and openly supportive of Turkey's membership to the union, the opposition parties scored high: Portugal, Spain and Italy are such cases. Even in Greece the ruling party lost the race in the face of the main opposition party, the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), where the ultra-right Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) increased its MEPs from one to two and vote to 7.2 percent.
In Latvia, the Russian ethnic vote made its presence felt for the first time after the independence of the country in 1991. In the Czech Republic, the right won a clear victory. In Hungary, an anti-globalization party, the Movement for a Better Hungary, came out of the blue and won three seats in the European Parliament.
There is no use in giving more examples. The clear fact is this: The European Parliament will be populated by MEPs who are against the very existence of that parliament. This says a lot about the future of the EU. Anti-Turkism, anti-enlargement, anti-immigration, anti-globalization and anti-unification are all represented by the same people, and they are at the same time increasing. If European leaders continue to demonize immigrants in general and the prospective membership of Turkey to the union in particular, they will also be inciting the fires of separatism and Euroskepticism among their own constituencies.
