A European tsunami?

Europe begins to turn towards the populist right-wing

India's weeks-long election attracted a great deal of interest worldwide, and was universally described as the world's largest democratic exercise. It is generally assumed that the second largest such exercise is the American presidential election. This is not true. In fact, barely had the dust settled from the largest election in the world when the second-largest was held: an electorate of 380 million, in 28 countries and across four days, voted representatives to the European Parliament in Brussels. In this election, the vote, for the first time, was for a president of the European Commission, the European Union's highest decision-making body.

The power of federal European institutions, including the Parliament and the Commission, over regular European citizens' lives is often understated. In fact, their regulatory role is large and impactful. The choice of European parliamentarians, however, is not usually as major an event as it should logically be, given the scope of their powers. More often than not, it is used as local referendum on how specific countries feel about their incumbent domestic government; turnout is low among most voting groups, and particularly high among those who feel most strongly about pan-European or Euro-sceptic ideas. This explains why, usually, Europhile Greens and xenophobic far-right parties do better in European than in domestic elections. It is a common trope of criticism of the European integration project that it is undemocratic. However, as the size of these elections reveals, it is in fact an ever more democratic project; it is national mainstream parties that usually fail to explain to their voters why European elections are important.

The 2014 elections come at a time when anger at the European project is high. The after-effects of the financial crisis are still being felt. This is, probably, a major reason why populist parties have done better than ever before. By some estimates, a quarter of votes went to parties opposed to European integration. In Britain, the xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party stunned the mainstream parties by winning the most seats and 28 per cent of the vote. In France, the openly racist National Front won a quarter of the vote, and sent the ruling Socialists to a distant third. And Germany, for the first time, elected a neo-Nazi, Udo Voigt.

For Europe's mainstream leaders, the elections are a wake-up call. Turnout was low and may not reflect the general political trend in Europe's countries. But the message is clear: amid high youth unemployment and the after-effects of austerity, anger against outsiders, immigrants and Brussels' bureaucrats is growing. If these first signs of anger are ignored, then they may, as in India, snowball into political outcomes originally unthinkable. There is a point beyond which the social fabric of Europe will not accept austerity. That point appears to be fast approaching. The revival of growth, of employment, and of economic dynamism should become the priority for Europe's leaders. Or, in a few years, they will be swept away by a populist, right-wing tsunami.