The EU faces 9-J as a political battle for the survival of its model

The elections of next June 6 to 9 have become a political battle for the survival of the current model of the European Union, threatened from within and without by geostrategic instability and by rising ultranationalist forces with a desire to back down on The process of European integration. Most sources agree that these elections, the tenth since the European Parliament began to be elected by direct suffrage in 1979, deserve to be labeled as the most momentous in the 45 years of European elections. Spain also has a lot at stake in an event that could mark Europe’s turn towards a more conservative, more armored Union, with less internal solidarity and focused towards an East that feels threatened by Russia.

Both the European and international situation indicates that the importance of 9-J far exceeds that of other previous European elections. Never before have Europeans voted under a call that warns of the risk of war and launches the continent into an arms race to which, for the first time, the European Commission will join, even if it is to the detriment of agricultural and cohesion. And never before have European polls tested the political stability of partners as important as Germany, France, Spain or Poland.

“In this year’s elections, not only a distribution of seats is being decided, but also the direction that the EU will take over the coming decades,” says a senior European source. “If the engine of integration formed by Christian democracy and social democracy is broken, the project will mutate and take the path of disintegration and renationalization defended by ultra-nationalist and extreme right-wing groups,” adds the same source.

The message about the dangers to the survival of the Union in its current state has crept into the campaign with a power not seen in previous calls. “We are not going to let them destroy what we have built together,” proclaimed last Wednesday Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission and candidate to repeat the position, in reference to far-right parties such as the French National Regroupment ( RN) or Alternative for Germany (AfD), whom she accuses of being at the service of Russia. Von der Leyen herself, however, is willing to collaborate with ultra groups that she considers “pro-European” such as Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, allies of Vox and Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Polish PiS.

The vice president of the Spanish Government and number one on the socialist list for 9-J, Teresa Ribera, perceives “a very important rise of the extreme right, with proposals contrary to the spirit of coexistence and tolerance typical of European values.” In statements to Morning Express, she adds that “in a turbulent world it is essential to economically and politically consolidate a more integrated EU.”

The alarms about the risk of collapse of the Union come from all corners of the continent, whether through the mouth of the French president, Emmanuel Macron – “Let’s be lucid, our Europe, today’s, is mortal. He can die” – or the former head of the ECB Mario Draghi. “Either Europe acts together and deepens its union or I fear that the EU will not survive as anything more than a mere single market,” warned the Italian, who does not seem to have yet said his last word in European politics and is already being considered in the pools for the distribution of positions after 9-J.

This distribution of positions will be marked more than ever by the European elections. The vote will serve to elucidate the possibilities of re-election at the head of the European Commission, specifically, of President Ursula von der Leyen. The previously re-elected presidents – the much-missed Jacques Delors and the forgettable José Manuel Durão Barroso – were able to ignore the results of the elections at that time (in 1989 and 1993, the French; and in 2009, the Portuguese) because their appointment depended almost on exclusive to the European Council and ratification by Parliament was little more than a formality.

Von der Leyen, on the other hand, has been forced to portray herself as a candidate for the European People’s Party (EPP). And although she is not running to be elected parliamentarian, the scrutiny will in a way be a verdict on her first term and a boost or a blow for her second. Something unprecedented in Brussels, where the continuity of senior positions until now had little or nothing to do with the polls.

On this occasion, voters will be able to assess the balance of the outgoing president. His team claims, among other merits, European unity against Russia, the creation of the recovery fund, loans to finance the ERTE of the pandemic or the joint purchase of vaccines so that all Europeans, rich or poor, could be immunized against same time against covid. In its passive, detractors point out the hesitations with the green pact, its militarism, the increasingly blatant nods to the extreme right or the concessions to the lobby industrial and agricultural.

The ballot boxes can also judge the community plans for the next legislature, something that happened in 2014 with the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker, although that electoral experiment (baptized with the German term spitzenkandidat) went unnoticed by most voters and was derailed when a repeat attempt was made five years later.

Unlike Juncker, Von der Leyen’s figure is quite well known in many European countries after five years of hyperactivity in Brussels. And his desire to repeat as head of the Commission has already caused locals and strangers to speak out about his renewal.

The French conservatives, for example, have already announced that they will vote against his appointment, a position also shared by the Italian center-left of Matteo Renzi. Some ultranationalist leaders, such as the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, base their electoral campaign on the rejection of the figure of the current president of the Commission. And the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has warned that the Spanish socialists will vote against the investiture if the German party makes an agreement with the far right.

So, for the first time, voters are not going blindly about the background and intentions of the top candidate to occupy the presidency of the Commission. Von der Leyen has made it clear that if she is re-elected she will undertake profound changes in the structure and management of the community body.

The German company attached the “geostrategic” label to its current Commission, a successful bet in light of what happened in the world during this mandate (2019-2024). The president plans to place her second Commission under the motto of “defense”, but in the broadest sense of the term because the protective desire extends beyond the military field to include the shielding of borders against irregular migration or barriers. trade against unfair competition from third countries.

The acting president and candidate intends to visualize the khaki turn of Brussels with the appointment, for the first time, of a European Commissioner for Defense. The most appropriate title for the brand new position – in which some sources already place the Polish Radoslaw Sikorski – would rather be European commissioner for the defense industry, because the Commission’s objective is not to command European armed forces. Brussels is content, for the moment, with promoting and incentivizing the integration of national arms conglomerates to create one or several industrial giants capable of standing up to their competitors from the United States or China.

If this plan is fulfilled, the next legislature will lay the foundations of a Europe of defense, whose tangible result would not be a European army from the outset, but rather companies capable of repeating the feat of Airbus, which in a short time reached a size sufficient to rival in the aeronautical sector with the American Boeing, and even surpass it in some markets.

The emergence of this European call to arms will force the EU budgets to be readjusted, dominated until now by the Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion funds. Von der Leyen’s entourage already admits that the negotiations on the new budget framework, which are expected to start in the first year of the legislature, will revolve around the volume of the budget, as usual, but this time also on the spending structure.

The traditional tandem between agriculture and cohesion seems destined to evolve towards a pentagon in which spending items for defense, energy and digital infrastructure will make their way, all of them with the common denominator of reinforcing the diminished European sovereignty. In the absence of additional resources, and with the amortization of the recovery fund hitting from 2027, a new distribution is imposed, with agricultural and structural funds on the decline, or resort to new joint debt issues such as the one launched to combat the effects of the pandemic.

Ribera concludes that “voters must decide between regression and neoliberal proposals of ‘every man for himself’ or a commitment to the modernization of the economy and greater social integration.”

Everything points towards a new Europe, both due to its dimensions, with the giant of Ukraine asking for help at the door, and due to the review of policies anchored in the 20th century regarding the scope of competition, control of state aid or supervision of non-EU investments. . A new Europe that begins next June 9 and whose destiny depends on the ballot boxes.

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