Far-right groups are expected to do well in June's European Parliament election. How can left-wing and centrist parties turn this trend around?
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00:00 [Music]
00:11 Hello and welcome to Brussels My Love, Euronews' weekly talk show.
00:16 I'm Seana Murray, standing in for Maeve, but she'll be with us throughout the show.
00:19 Because, coming up this week, 100 days until people go to the polls.
00:24 This year's European elections in June will shape the EU's political direction over the next five years.
00:29 Because, unlike almost any other year in the EU's history, this election comes at a time when there is so much at stake for Europe.
00:37 And voter turnout. In 2019, the last EU election, voter turnout was the highest since 1994 at 52%.
00:47 Normally, turnout drops every year. So, if citizens don't use their vote, how can the Parliament say it truly represents the people?
00:56 Now, let's meet our panel this week. We have Laura Shields from Red Thread EU, Andrea Renda from CEPS, the Centre for European Policy Studies,
01:05 and Kate Polongaro from MLEX Europe. But before we get to our panel, let's hear from Maeve.
01:11 [Clock ticking]
01:12 The countdown is on.
01:14 [Music]
01:16 In early June, 400 million Europeans can decide who should occupy this Tower of Babel for the next five years.
01:25 [Music]
01:27 Up for grabs, 720 seats split among 27 countries.
01:33 [Music]
01:35 Their job, co-legislate on diverse issues from support to Ukraine, pesticide regulation to social rights.
01:43 [Music]
01:45 Campaign mode is on, and political party jamborees are underway across the continent.
01:50 [Music]
01:52 But with EU elections remaining 27 national ones, and bread and butter issues likely to drive voters,
02:00 we ask if aspiring MEPs will manage to galvanise and inspire their electorate, and if they will spread fear or hope.
02:08 [Music]
02:11 So, will MEPs manage to galvanise people to get out to the vote? That's key of what we want to discuss here.
02:17 But, Andre, I'm going to go to you first, because let's explain how it works in the European Parliament.
02:22 You have seven European parliamentary groups based on ideological commitments.
02:27 You have the far left, the Greens, the SND, which is the socialist centre-left, Renew, which is centrist,
02:33 the centre-right, the EPP, European People's Party, and then you have the ECR and ID, which tend to be further right to far right.
02:41 Do you think people vote in that context?
02:45 Most people that vote, based on the polls and the surveys that we have, do not really have in their radar
02:52 which kind of group the party will end up into or belongs to already.
02:57 So they normally vote for the national party, they try to support their national politicians.
03:01 It would be a lot better if they knew what kind of dynamics this would lead to in the European Parliament.
03:07 You have all the groups that basically represent the typical spectrum of political opinions that you see in many countries,
03:12 from the far left to the far right, and in between two of the biggest groups that typically call the shots
03:18 when it comes to identifying who the final candidates will be and how to compose the future European Commission,
03:24 which are the EPP and the socialists and democrats.
03:27 But in all this, the sands are shifting, meaning that the projections are that there will be,
03:33 both in the conservative and reformists and the identity and democracies,
03:38 more right-wing groups, there will be expansion in far right, very far right in some contexts.
03:45 They will get more votes and this of course might be very important for the future of the EU
03:51 because it might lead to perhaps some pro-Putin stances or weaker anti-Russia stances,
03:56 different stances towards the Green Deal and social rights as opposed to what kind of competences to move at the EU level
04:03 as opposed to prerogatives of the member states.
04:05 So that is, as always, an existential, we always say in these elections that this is the Europe of the last chance,
04:11 that it's super important. In this case, it really looks like a very important...
04:16 Kate, that is a really important point from Andrea, right?
04:18 The political sands are shifting and the implication is the further right you go,
04:22 you may have very different stances when it comes to support for Ukraine, the Green Deal, climate change, workers' rights.
04:30 Well, certainly, and we are hearing a lot about in the media coverage, especially in polls,
04:34 we will see a surge of the far right. This has kind of been the boogeyman of European politics over the last few election cycles.
04:39 But there is really an indication that we are going to be seeing that,
04:42 especially, for example, with the big win of Giorgio Melloni in Italy,
04:45 and more of the EPP, the centre-right group, working with or being open to working with these more far-right or nationalistic groups.
04:54 That means that we may actually see the political sands shifting and these more extreme views that,
04:59 in a different context, would have been considered completely out of the mainstream
05:02 but now may become more integrated into our mainstream political dialogue and discourse that we are hearing here in Brussels.
05:07 The move to the right, it does come up a lot in every election, but looking at the polling,
05:13 it does seem to be quite a significant shift to the far right that we are potentially going to see.
05:19 Yes, absolutely, because people always vote for, well, not people, but populists always do well with simple messages when they promise easy solutions.
05:26 And also, turnout tends to be low in European elections and that does favour extremes, and in this case, probably the extreme right.
05:35 I think what has also happened is that there is a lot of dissatisfaction around cost of living,
05:39 people are annoyed about immigration, and that plays well domestically with those parties,
05:44 and so we are going to see that happening more in the European elections for sure.
05:48 Well, because as we mentioned there, as Andrea mentioned, the two biggest groups are the socialists and the EPP.
05:53 So for more on how the two main political groups are preparing for these elections,
05:56 Maeve went to Rome, to the Socialist Congress, and then to Bucharest to the European People's Party Congress.
06:02 And she sent me this report on what the mood was like at the Socialist Congress in Rome.
06:07 Well, Shona, political congresses are unique. Politicians always come to them pumped up with adrenaline, with love.
06:14 They're alongside their friends, their allies, people who think just like them.
06:19 But this Congress is different. There is a sense of urgency here that the socialists haven't been connecting so well
06:25 with their voters in the past couple of years, and the rise of the far right is threatening their existence.
06:31 For more on how she feels, we've been speaking to the head of the socialists at the European Parliament.
06:36 That's the Spanish politician, Irrachi GarcÃa Pérez.
06:40 We're here to win these European elections.
06:45 We've improved the lives of citizens across Europe in recent years, passing a minimum wage directive,
06:50 supporting an unemployment program during the pandemic.
06:53 We need to continue to defend the European social model, a Europe that grows economically,
06:57 but that this economic growth translates into people living better.
07:05 Well, I want to come to you, Laura, about that, because communication is your expertise.
07:09 And Irrachi GarcÃa, you couldn't argue with her that, you know, you want to defend workers' rights
07:14 and you want to have a more socialized Europe. So what's the problem? Why aren't they getting the votes?
07:18 I think one of the socialists just aren't messaging very well at the moment.
07:22 So if we think about what's been happening, certainly at a European level in politics recently,
07:26 is that they've been chipping away at, or certainly the conservatives have been chipping away at aspects of the Green Deal.
07:32 So you had the nature restoration law vote was very close. We had the farmers here.
07:37 You know, there was a bit of backtracking on pesticides, all of that kind of stuff.
07:41 And instead, and then there's all the concern about immigration.
07:44 And instead, what the socialists are doing is they just seem all over the place.
07:47 And they need to be leaning in much harder on a lot of the stuff that they've done and taking the fight right to the populists.
07:52 And that doesn't mean talking about immigration, but on things like the Green Deal, on wages, on rights and all of those sorts of things.
07:59 They need to go in much harder and have a case where they say, actually, this is what's at stake here.
08:03 This really matters. But I wouldn't be calling it hope over fear.
08:06 I would actually be much more nitty gritty about it, because we know that Europeans still care about climate change.
08:11 And we know that they care about Ukraine. And we know that they also care about cost of living.
08:16 So the socialists need to go much harder on the things that matter to people and not be distracted by talking about immigration.
08:22 It's hard not to be distracted by talking about immigration, though, isn't it, Andrea?
08:26 I think what I see is a bit of a problem in the narrative, as Laura was saying.
08:31 And the S&D gathering focused on narratives such as, you know, what's at stake here is the future of the Green Deal.
08:40 On the other hand, there is a much more powerful message such as the Green Deal will kill you before climate change does.
08:46 It's easier to put people against something that they don't fully grasp.
08:50 And just claiming social or environmental gains that come from policies that traditionally are much more in the hands of member states is very difficult in terms of a narrative.
09:00 Also because the current governance of the EU is perfect for national politicians to Europeanize all the failures and nationalize all the successes.
09:09 It's going to be difficult to claim European successes and at the same time gain votes at the national level.
09:14 This pushback against the Green Deal is entirely predictable as well, as in, you know, you have this incredibly ambitious legislation.
09:20 It's so obvious that as soon as people start to read the detail, there is going to be pushback against it.
09:25 And what surprises me is how panicked politicians are about this, because it was always going to be something where it had to be a long term, keep your eyes on the prize trajectory.
09:35 And what Andrea is talking about also, you know, this messaging, the Green Deal is going to kill you before climate change does, classic short termism.
09:41 And I think if there's one word, I know we're talking about the socialists at the moment.
09:44 Yeah. But what the EPP has managed to do very well is capitalize on that.
09:48 And if anything, if one word is going to summarize the EPP here, I would say it's been opportunism.
09:54 I mean, Kate, was it that obvious that people were going to retaliate against the Green Deal?
09:59 Because I remember when Ursula von der Leyen led it, there was actually quite a lot of political euphoria.
10:04 I mean, the Greens obviously, you know, weren't 100 percent satisfied, but everyone felt that Europe was leading again.
10:10 Well, I think there is a role there for Europe to be the leader on a lot of these really avant garde climate policies.
10:15 And there is a big, strong push in Brussels to do that.
10:17 But I think sometimes it gets lost in translation is from the Brussels folks to the national politics and the regional politics and local politics.
10:26 And that's where we see these farmers and these people pushing back and saying, look, we don't want to be told by Brussels what to do.
10:32 And they are voters, actually, that tend to vote usually for right or far right parties and those more nationalistic parties, because that's where they feel most identified and most heard.
10:41 So there's been a bit of an alienation of the voter in general in a lot of European political movements.
10:46 What I meant about it being entirely predictable was that we always knew that the Green deal was going to be expensive and difficult to implement.
10:52 And sure enough, that is what is going to happen. And it wasn't exactly a secret that that was the case.
10:57 And so that's what I meant about politicians seem to be running scared in this.
11:00 It was so obvious that they needed to go much harder on the just transition messaging, whatever that means.
11:05 For those of you who don't know the Brussels jargon, that means basically nobody left behind. Right.
11:10 They didn't do any of this. Now they're panicking. This is where the socialists need to step in.
11:14 Well, look, speaking of the socialists, let's get more insights from May from that Congress in Rome, because during these Congresses, parties endorsed their lead candidates for the next European elections.
11:24 So let's hear more about who the socialists elected as their candidate to be the next president of the European Commission.
11:31 Well, shown Nicholas Schmidt, the 70 year old politician from Luxembourg, who's currently working as the EU commissioner for jobs and social affairs,
11:40 has been endorsed here in Rome as the official so-called Spitzenkandidat.
11:45 Although he's relatively unknown outside Brussels, here at the Congress, he's been hailed as a hero.
11:50 He was up on stage with Pedro Sánchez, the head of Spain, and Olive Schultz, the German chancellor.
11:55 And he's thanked especially for his work in Brussels on the EU platform workers directive, the EU minimum wage directive, for the child guarantee and for pushing a social agenda.
12:06 But he'll have to work hard, get out a little bit more in the next few weeks to get a bit more known if he wants to become the real face and give an identity to this party.
12:15 We want a strong Europe. We want a united Europe. We want a Europe for a strong economy.
12:21 And we can only do that together. We have to have a social Europe, a social Europe where every citizen feels not left behind.
12:31 We need a clear position towards the extreme right. What are their solutions? There are none.
12:37 Laura, I mean, he's repeating a little bit what you said there. We need, there are no simple solutions.
12:43 Yes, but I'm honestly listening to him there, he could have been any socialist candidate in any other European elections.
12:49 I mean, they always talk about united Europe, social Europe, strong Europe, whatever that means.
12:53 I'm not, you know, whilst I commend those as values, I don't think they're leaning into this stuff here.
12:57 Yes, we do need to hear the solutions, but rather than the rhetoric, why isn't he telling us what the solutions are?
13:02 Well, I do think that this is one thing that when it comes to cost of living issues where the socialists sometimes do fall short,
13:08 they end up with these value based conversations and they don't necessarily go to those bread and butter issues.
13:13 And that's where we've seen the fracturing of the left, frankly, is in a lot of these hardcore inflation issues, energy crisis, cost of living crisis, housing crisis.
13:20 People are worried.
13:21 Yeah. And also, I mean, when the war in Ukraine started, when Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a huge groundswell of support and sympathy across Europe from people as well as politicians.
13:30 And for a brief moment, it looked like that we were getting something sensible on climate, energy security and economic security.
13:35 So this shift away from Russian energy and more towards green and also autonomous energy creation.
13:41 So things like heat pumps, solar panels, all that stuff.
13:44 And I don't understand now why that given that there is this goodwill still on the climate and on Ukraine, that the socialists aren't making more of that and looking at actually where they've got traction with these voters rather than just panicking a little bit and making a mess out of it, as as Kate says.
14:01 OK, I mean, I want to provoke all of you.
14:04 That's for me, especially those of you that work on communication in these elections.
14:08 If you look at hope versus fear, fear is much stronger.
14:12 And the ones that will be able, unfortunately, to instrumentalize and somehow weaponize fears in the election will win more votes.
14:19 And we've seen that with Ursula von der Leyen.
14:21 She's presenting herself as the savior, you know, save you with vaccines.
14:26 I'm not going to do joint procurement of weapons and save you against the Russian monster.
14:30 She doesn't talk about Green Deal and social economy because that's not going to mobilize lots of lots of votes.
14:35 OK, actually, just on that point, because we've heard from the socialists in Rome, but let's hear from the center right Christian Democrats, the European People's Party, who are in Bucharest.
14:43 Maeve is reporting from there.
14:44 Maeve, tell us a little bit about the mood.
14:47 Well, Shona, there's seriously high energy here as the European People's Party is the biggest group inside the European Parliament.
14:53 The Congress is perhaps one of the most impressive.
14:56 In fact, it feels almost like a festival behind there.
15:00 But I'm also detecting a slight feeling of complacency among some delegates because they do have the most recognizable faces among the heads of state and government that things are going just fine.
15:11 You can take a listen to Manfred Weber.
15:13 That's the president of the European People's Party inside the European Parliament.
15:17 Our commitment is crystal clear.
15:19 We are the party to fight against climate change.
15:21 We are the party of Green Deal.
15:23 The Greens voted in the European Parliament against the climate law.
15:26 We voted in favor of the climate law.
15:28 So that's why we don't need Greens and left for doing so.
15:31 We show the world that we are leading there on the way how to achieve then climate neutrality.
15:37 There are different ideas on the table and the left is going a quite ideological way.
15:41 They are forbidding, for example, the combustion engine.
15:43 And we think we should have clear goals.
15:46 But we want to do this in a pragmatic way and not in an ideologically driven way.
15:50 Andrea, Manfred Weber there saying the EPP is the party of the Green Deal even though the majority of them voted against the nature restoration deal.
15:58 And they said that they voted for the climate law when the Greens didn't because the Greens said it didn't go far enough to protect people and the environment.
16:05 Are they stealing everyone's cloth?
16:07 Well, of course, it's a party for all seasons, right?
16:10 But at the same time, it's a party that has been really promoting a narrative of competitiveness until recently now before switching to defense.
16:18 We've seen this pendulum swing constantly over the past five years from resilience to competitiveness to sustainability, solidarity, eventually strategic autonomy and now defense.
16:28 It is a party that can claim ownership of most of this dossiers.
16:34 At the same time, it's the party that can perhaps the only party that can credibly say we can centralize at the EU level some of the competencies that might protect Europeans in the future.
16:44 That's why the defense part is going to be very important because other than this, no one believes that the EU by doing things, you know, by spending European, you spend better and you can be more credible there.
16:54 So only von der Leyen with the EPP, but also von der Leyen for the first time presents itself, you know, the candidate presents itself as a candidate of a coalition already, not really of the EPP only because Schmidt is not a credible rival there, in my opinion.
17:08 So von der Leyen is presenting herself as reassuring on the left and perhaps mobilizing a bit of fear of what happens if she's not elected on the right hand side.
17:18 What do you think will happen, though, for the EPP? It's moving to the right.
17:22 Do you think that the EPP will be looking towards getting the votes of the EC or the ID, unlike last time where it took votes from the S&D and Renew?
17:30 I think certainly there is scope there for them to be doing that. I mean, von der Leyen did previously not decline to say that she will not work with ECR and ID parties.
17:40 She did say that she was open to working with pro-Europeans who share values, protect democracy or pro-Ukraine.
17:45 So that could there are some parties within those two groups that do fit that, that those criteria.
17:51 So we could see that there is an opening there for them to sort of scoop up some of those voters or form a bit of a coalition.
17:57 That's different than the one we have right now with the liberals and the socialists.
18:00 OK, well, speaking of VDL or von der Leyen, Ursula von der Leyen, she was unknown to us five years ago.
18:05 Now she's looking at a second term as president of the European Commission.
18:09 Let's go back to Maeve in Bucharest. Maeve, we could see there was quite the exuberant coronation for President von der Leyen at the EPP Congress.
18:17 That's right, Shona. The current commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has been crowned here as the Spitzenkandidat,
18:23 so the face of the European People's Party for those upcoming elections.
18:27 Even though, curiously enough, her name will not even appear on the ballot paper.
18:31 But you can see Ursula von der Leyen very much feeling at home here, in a great mood,
18:36 taking time out to have selfies taken with fellow participant members.
18:40 But she does have, too, some political enemies here at the Congress, like from Slovenia,
18:45 and also the French Republican, who said they will not be endorsing her as the candidate.
18:50 She's too left, too technocratic, and too close to the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
18:55 So, it was a coronation for her, Laura, but at the same time, some of her own party say she's moving towards Macron too much.
19:02 Well, yes, because obviously, as we were talking about before, she's going to have to lead a coalition.
19:07 She cannot get enough votes if she doesn't actually appeal to the other parties,
19:11 because whilst the EPP will still be the largest party, they are going to still need the votes of more than 50% of the parliament,
19:18 just a simple majority, to get renewed. So, she is going to have to appeal to them.
19:22 And also, the EPP is quite split. They have a liberal wing, and they have a more right-wing ring.
19:26 So, they're going to have to be able to accommodate those things, and she's going to play all sides to try and get that.
19:32 And actually, we will come back to that exact point, because I'm afraid that's all we have on this topic.
19:36 But we'll definitely keep you informed on all developments about this electoral campaign with our special EP elections coverage.
19:42 But for now, don't go anywhere, because after the break, we'll discuss if EU citizens actually care
19:46 about who sits in the parliament and the Commission. See you soon on Euronews.
19:51 Welcome back to Brussels My Love, Euronews' weekend talk show.
20:02 We're in European elections mode here. EU citizens decide the make-up of the next European parliament
20:08 and the top jobs at the head of the EU institutions, the European Commission, the European Council, and of course, the parliament.
20:14 Will the public come out to vote, though? As I mentioned earlier, turnout was the highest in decades in 2019,
20:20 but the trend is always that turnout reduces. Andrea, how do we get people to realise what's at stake?
20:27 Well, we need better communication on what's at stake at the national level, and I'm not sure we're having this.
20:32 I mean, the plans, for example, in Socialist and Democrats is to have a stronger narrative,
20:37 and I'm sure that they have clear ideas there. The EPP side, they also are sort of waving at different potential impacts in the future.
20:47 They're somehow representing a sort of sense of fear. I think what is needed to get people to vote is rather to transmit a sense of urgency.
20:54 And I'm afraid that it's not going to be easy to do this, if not by really representing something monstrous that is about to happen
21:04 and not just in the drama around this. Well, that's true. But, Kate, when you look at the make-up of the governments in the European Union
21:12 and also the popularity of far-right parties, they're growing anyway. So the sense of urgency coming from the most popular parties will be 'vote far-right'.
21:20 Well, certainly, and I think there is a trend there. We are seeing more and more votes going to the far-right at the national level.
21:25 So we probably will see that replicated here in Brussels as well. And I think that they're speaking more to what voters are concerned about.
21:31 They've dominated the cost of living issues, those inflation issues, those energy issues. They've dominated that and they've shifted the focus to migration,
21:36 which is one of their strong points. They're really good at delivering a consistent, coherent message on that, which is their point of view, and the voters are buying it.
21:44 On the issue of getting the vote out, let's go back to Maeve, who spoke to the socialist delegates in Rome.
21:49 Well, Shona, one of the major themes at the Congress is how to increase voter turnout, make sure that more people go to vote this year than they did back in 2019.
22:00 And many socialists here feel it's time to get up off their sofas and actually go, quote, 'door to door' to speak to people about the major issues that impact their lives.
22:10 And there's only a handful of socialist heads of state currently sitting around the EU Council, so there's a hope here that that will increase as time goes by.
22:17 But to find out what their real plans are in order to lure people to vote for them and endorse their manifesto, I've been asking them. Take a listen.
22:26 I think it's a positive mood and full of confidence and responsibility at the same time.
22:30 I think the mood here is quite energising. We can promote hope instead of fear, and we can give to the people concrete solutions instead of relying on the deepest emotions.
22:44 No, I'm not afraid. Quite the contrary. Our vision is that Europe must protect its citizens, and we must explain this wherever we can.
22:52 Moreover, we need a less ultra-liberal Europe.
22:59 Well, there we go again. Hope instead of fear. But we did hear the realisation that we need concrete solutions and not just sort of empty promises.
23:07 Were you in any way heartened by that, Foxbox, Laura?
23:10 Yes, in some respects. I mean, I think it's important that they recognise it, but the proof will be in how well they campaign and actually what the concrete is.
23:17 My concern on this is that a lot of the time, because it's often people who run to be an MEP are running for domestic reasons.
23:24 They don't necessarily have all the killer facts and figures and concrete solutions.
23:28 And even when you ask the parties in Brussels what they voted for, it's like, we stand for Europe.
23:33 And it's like, no, that's not a concrete solution. Right. What did you vote for?
23:36 What was the differences that you made? Spell it out in really blanket terms.
23:40 And also, they need to know how much milk costs when they're going around their constituencies.
23:45 It's interesting to imagine what do they say when they go door to door, right?
23:48 They can say different things. They can say support us and Nicola Schmidt when he goes in. Nobody knows him.
23:53 OK, they can say help us push from the line a little bit more to the left by having a bigger socialist component in a coalition that will back her, which is a completely different thing.
24:09 Or they could say that we're going to protect the citizens of our country now if we get more votes.
24:17 So and that is something that is not really the DNA of socialists and Democrats in many cases.
24:22 I don't see which of those would be most effective. I don't think that vote for us.
24:28 We will advance on the Green Deal or minimum wage is going to be sufficient to convince people.
24:34 Before I get to you, Kate, let's also hear some voices from Bucharest now. Maeve, what can you tell us about the EPP's plan to attract voters?
24:40 Are they trying to attract those who are leaning towards the far right?
24:45 Well, Seán, the plan seems to be of the EPP to hold on to families who've been voting for them for decades, but also to try and catch the rural vote.
24:54 We've heard a lot of mentions here about the farmers and their woes.
24:58 But to find out more about what the plan of the party is to really galvanize people into voting this June,
25:04 I've been speaking to some delegates here, including the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Bradker.
25:08 The EPP has always had a progressive wing, and that's where we are and that's where we're going to stay.
25:12 And we did vote for it because we were able to get the changes that we wanted.
25:15 So migration, very clear language there, black and white.
25:19 Anything has to be compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights.
25:22 Respect for our position around neutrality, for example.
25:26 And you probably saw in the EPP document specific mentions of things like LGBT rights, which wouldn't have been there before,
25:32 and very strong language around violence against women.
25:34 What is important for us, the youngest must vote.
25:37 The youngest must be careful and to use the vote carefully, and to use the vote and vote liberals.
25:43 I know that sometimes in Brussels, people lose the contact with the reality.
25:49 One thing is the European Parliament, that's a very important institution,
25:54 but another thing is what our people, our citizens, our men and women back home think.
25:59 So it's important that there is not a bubble in Brussels.
26:03 Kate, Leo Bradker, the Taoiseach, the Irish Prime Minister, flying the flag for the progressives left in the EPP,
26:10 saying that migration had to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights,
26:13 LGBT rights are in there and so on, violence against women.
26:18 Well, definitely they are trying to make sure that they're still appealing to people in that left-leaning part of the right wing,
26:25 because those are considered in a lot of camps to be minimum social values that we as a society value.
26:31 However, if you have more far-right people coming in and they start to dispute those values,
26:35 where does that leave the more progressive wing of the EPP group?
26:38 Because obviously if you look at candidates that are leaning towards Maloney, for example,
26:43 who has a little bit more extreme views on LGBTQ rights and abortion rights, for example,
26:47 these are all things that are going to be really important at the local level,
26:51 and you're going to see that here in the composition of the European Parliament.
26:54 Just, Laura, very briefly on that.
26:56 Yes, absolutely. I mean, sort of what I tend to use is that we've been tenderised in terms of our expectations.
27:01 So things gradually shift further to the right and we go, oh, yeah, OK, that's just what that candidate stands for.
27:05 I think there's also a lot of disbelief sometimes when people are voting.
27:09 They don't think some of the most extreme things that their candidates, that they're going to vote for, are promising, are going to happen.
27:16 Do you see what I mean? I think there is a sort of denial about the things that they don't like or that they don't think are important.
27:20 They concentrate on the things they like, but they kind of go, oh, that's not really going to happen.
27:24 Unfortunately, I'm going to have to stop you there because that's all we have time on this topic.
27:27 But thank you so much to our great panel, Laura Shields, Andrea Renda and Kate Bollingaro for their insights
27:33 and also to Maeve McMahon for her reporting on the ground.
27:35 And especially thank you so much to you for watching. See you soon on Euronews.
27:40 [Music]
27:48 Welcome back to Brussels, my love.
27:50 Alongside my panel, we're discussing some of the biggest news in Brussels.
27:53 Now, it seems to be the challenge of an era, the rise of autocracies around the world
27:58 and also at the EU's doorstep, threatening democracies and human rights.
28:03 Andrea, there is a move towards the far right. That's literally what we've been talking about for the past part of the show,
28:08 that we've become sort of normalized to it, or as Laura said, tenderized.
28:12 We've become normalized to having shocking news and then there's part of the cycle of news
28:21 and they get lost a little bit in the narrative.
28:25 We do have already a non-democratic country as a member of the European Union,
28:30 and that is already something that should shock us.
28:33 We have the threat of more non-democratic or fully non-democratic countries instead of the EU.
28:39 And what we see is the inability of some of the political leaders to really represent the magnitude of this threat to citizens.
28:48 That is, I think, the big problem that we are facing now in the discourse around these elections.
28:55 Well, of course, on this really important topic, Nobel Prize laureates came to Brussels this week to discuss the future of democracy.
29:01 And we had the chance to speak with Alexandra Matvichuk.
29:04 She's the head of the Centre for Civil Liberties and the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
29:09 Just take a look at what she says about democracy in Europe.
29:13 I have a sharp feeling that we are losing the freedom, because when we speak about the fact that more than half of the world population will go to election,
29:23 we have to take into consideration that 80% of people on the Earth are living in not free or partially free society.
29:32 Something is happening. In the soviet countries, freedom is shrinking to the size of the prison cell.
29:38 The problem is that there is no way to negotiate it.
29:42 Just the existence of a free world will be always a threat for autocrats because of losing their power.
29:53 Well, Kate, as Andrea said, we already have one member state that is no longer regarded as a full democracy in the EU.
29:59 And then we heard there that we are a sleepwalking into authoritarianism.
30:03 Well, certainly we are seeing all over the world this is a pivotal year for elections.
30:07 And we're going to have to see what the results of those elections are.
30:09 I don't have a crystal ball, but there definitely are some concerning tendencies.
30:13 And as a journalist, of course, you know, we look at freedom of the press even and just the crackdowns on the media.
30:17 And for me, that's the first thing that I sort of look at.
30:19 And it is concerning when you see how the freedoms of the press are being curtailed and overall freedoms of citizens around the world.
30:25 Yeah. And in Greece in particular, for example, Greece is behind some of the most authoritarian countries when it comes to freedom of the press.
30:32 Absolutely. I mean, I think this is where it all becomes a little bit tricky as well, because what do we mean when we talk about authoritarian?
30:38 Are we talking about, you know, governments that are democratically elected, which have authoritarian tendencies?
30:43 Or are we talking about dictatorships? Because if you even look at someone like Russia, which is going to be having elections in a few weeks, we know who's going to win that.
30:50 It seems terribly important to Putin, though, that they have elections and that there is this semblance of democracy.
30:56 And we see this also in Iran, in other countries that have the tendency. I think even North Korea had elections quite recently.
31:02 So it does seem to me to be very difficult for us to pinpoint exactly when it becomes when we start down the authoritarian path.
31:09 And I think all over Europe, we're looking for signs of is this what's going to happen?
31:13 And we just don't know because the waters have been so muddied because authoritarians in particular pay huge lip service to the appearance of democracy and the norms.
31:23 And that makes it really difficult for people who are worried about history repeating itself to be able to say with any certainty what's actually happening.
31:29 There's a few signs that things aren't going great regardless of the semblance of an election.
31:34 Things not going great is not the same as...
31:36 OK, well I've lied in terms of authoritarianism.
31:38 The word there is democratically elected government. It is the adjective democratically.
31:43 Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela is elected, OK, but that doesn't make him the political leader of a very democratic country.
31:51 And the fact that the basic safeguards of the rule of law and the freedom of the media and the freedom of expression,
31:57 so some of the basic fundamental rights are not fully recognised in these countries already should make us look at those as non-fully democratic.
32:05 I'm going to stop you there.
32:06 But thank you to our brilliant panel for their excellent contributions, Laura Shields, Andrea Renda and Kate Bollingaro.
32:12 And thank you so much for watching.
32:14 As always, you can share your thoughts with us by writing to us at brusselsmylove@euronews.com for any suggestions for topics you want us to explore.
32:22 But we'll see you soon here on Euronews.
32:24 [Music]