Surveys predict Europe’s far right will surge in EU elections next month, giving it more influence in Brussels politics even if mainstream players will still have greater weight.
Some 370 million voters are being called to cast ballots in the European Union’s 27 countries on June 6-9 to select the 720 lawmakers who will sit in the next European Parliament.
While voter-intention polls point to inroads by radical-right parties, the mainstream in the parliament — made up of three groups: the center-right EPP, the left-leaning Socialists and Democrats, and the centrist Renew Europe is still expected to end up ahead.
Those three groups are used to compromising with each other to get the majority needed for laws to pass.
The question, though, is how far the EPP the European People’s Party of current European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen will open its door to the extreme right.
Von der Leyen, eyeing a second mandate after the elections, has ruled out deals with far-right parties sympathetic towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. They are represented in the parliament’s Identity and Democracy group that includes the National Rally of France’s Marine Le Pen and Germany’s AfD.
But von der Leyen has hinted that she might be open to working with the anti-Putin far-right bloc, the European Conservatives and Reformists group led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
