title: The 2019 Elections and the Future Role of the European Parliament: Upsetting the Institutional Balance?
Creators: name: Cannizzaro, Enzo
Publisher: name: European Papers (www.europeanpapers.eu)
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: EU political system
subject: European Parliament
subject: elections
subject: euroscepticism
subject: populist parties
subject: institutional balance

description: European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2019 4(1), 3-6
description: The elections of May 26 have been welcomed with a sense of relief by the inhabitants of the European districts in Brussels and Strasbourg. If, on the eve of the elections' day, the dominant mood was fear of a euro-sceptic landslide, that would have deepened the cleavage between peoples and elites and shaken at its roots the process of integration, this mood has gradually changed as this looming perspective faded away. It turned out to be almost enthusiastic as certainty materialized to have the majority of the Members of the European Parliament's on the "right" side. In a nutshell, the populist parties increased their shares of the ballots, but less than expected. A final touch of optimism came from the turnout, which has significantly increased, thus bestowing more legitimacy on the resistance to the populist wave. One may presume that, with a haircut on austerity policies, some more emphasis on social policy, and a crackdown on immigration, business could continue as usual. Things, however, may be more complex than that. The avoided danger of having the Parliament controlled by nationalist parties should not overshadow the profound implications of this elections day. In particular, two aspects ought to be seriously considered, despite the fact that they are somewhat incoherent. On the one hand, the elections, unlike their preceding ones, have been dominated by European, not domestic, themes and, in particular, by the fate of the integration project. On the other hand, precisely because of that, the European Parliament is now deeply divided between a pro-integration majority and a euro-sceptic minority, sometimes labeled as sovereigntist. It is this divide that will probably have a major impact on the functioning of the European Parliament and, ultimately, on its role in the decision-making process of the Union. The 2019 elections may reverse the direction of the European political tide. Instead of injecting new blood in, and of bestowing additional authority upon, the European Parliament, the Europeanisation of the elections may prompt, paradoxically, the opposite effect: to establish a permanent link between the majorities in the European Parliament and the intergovernmental Institutions, and, by so doing, to undermine the authority of the former to the benefit of the latter. Even more paradoxically, it may expedite the transformation of the European Parliament, from one of the independent branches of the European political system to a verbose Parliamentary house, controlled by the executive and deprived of a real decisional autonomy. If this were the effect of the revolutionary elections of 2019, this would be the beginning of the end of the new model of democracy that has germinated in the European laboratories.