The European elections, a constant concern

The avalanche of current global political and economic information continues to accelerate. The Trump presidency in the US is an inexhaustible source of surprises, scares, and setbacks that continue to unsettle us. As if that weren't enough, this Sunday saw three important European elections that had us deeply concerned about the uncertainty of the results and the potential consequences they could have. In all three cases, the role of forces opposed to European integration that could win was on the table. Although there is no second round of the Polish presidential elections, the results of the Romanian presidential and Portuguese parliamentary elections were not disastrous, although the Portuguese elections exceeded negative expectations.

These forces opposed to European integration are currently generally far-right. They were clearly so in Romania and Portugal, and de facto, also occupy this space in Poland. In Romania, we are concerned that successful candidates for the highest authority in a country may have emerged who, before the elections, were only known to followers on one social network but unknown to the generally well-informed public. In this case, the divide has been primarily age-based, but also territorial. Young people get their information only from social media—TikTok in this case—while older people get their information from traditional media. influencer Unknown–. These political leaderships are built from nothing, based on repeating information that may be completely false. Fortunately, in Romania, the pro-European candidate, who until now was the mayor of Bucharest, ended up winning. For a country so heavily benefiting from European support, leaving the EU would have been a disaster. I suppose the electorate will have had time to assess whether the gains from leaving outweighed the losses.

In Portugal, there was a strengthening of the far-right candidate, who was unknown until a few years ago, but who won nearly 23% of the vote and the same number of seats as the Socialist Party, which suffered a significant decline. The Portuguese far-right's resounding success may have some justification. technique, such as the multiplication of elections in just a few years, which always creates space for new and unknown political forces that can insist on their agenda without taking on government responsibilities. In this case, as in so many other countries where the far right is growing, its agenda was anti-immigration and hostile to the political class, which it considers to have been entrenched in power for fifty years. In the Portuguese case, this means since the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship. It doesn't matter that the problems may be false or greatly exaggerated. What matters is that these accusations were believed by a significant portion of the electorate.

We can't say anything about Poland yet, beyond the strong starting position of the candidate most aligned with the Prime Minister's positions—Donald Tusk. But there are still many uncertainties about what might happen in the second round.

Of these recent developments, we can say, I think without risk of being wrong, that everything could have been worse. It can also be said that the fragmentation of the public communication space is very intense. Perhaps the only thing we share is a complete distrust of what each other explains and what they report. In short: we don't believe what the other says. We only share some big headlines—the death of the Pope, for example—but the underlying meanings of the headlines are not the same. On the other hand, it's very difficult to accept, from our perspective, that the accusations made by political forces with which we completely disagree may contain some truth, or simply convey feelings that voters may deeply experience. And in a democracy, voters rule.

Paying attention to complaints, no matter how far removed from our sensibilities, is essential to reevaluate the policies being proposed and see whether they still make sense or not—and if they do, to assess how to improve them. This is obviously the case with immigration, which has led left-wing parties to lose a large part of their traditional electoral bases, who have decided to prefer the proposals of the far right. Let us not demonize them, as we will only make them more popular as transgressors of the status quo dominant ideological forces. These are not times to retreat into a band of people defending policies that the electorate rejects.