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1. Thread on the European Parliament elections. The party level results are complicated enough that everyone will be arguing about them for weeks - especially if there are (as there likely will be) moves from one parliamentary grouping to another.
2. There seems to be a shift to Greens and a mobilization around climate action. The other structural story is the surge in turnout. politico.eu/article/eu-ele… More people are turning out (over 50%) than in decades. This _may_ mark a significant turning point in European politics.
3. The big problem for the European Parliament for decades has been that nobody much cared who got elected to it. In the professional language of political scientists, European Parliament elections were "second order elections." That is, many people didn't bother to vote.
4. And those who did often were driven by other factors than any interest in who actually represented their interests in Strasbourg and Brussels. Very often, they just wanted to vote in protest against whoever was in power in their own national capital.
5. One plausible - but as yet far from certain - read of the elections - is that this is changing. European politics are becoming real to voters in a way that they haven't before. Why? Perhaps because there is real struggle happening with real stakes at the European level.
6. As political scientists like @simonjhix have argued, European Union politics have lacked partisan contention. They now have plenty of it, even if it doesn't yet map on very well to existing European party structures. There has also been a big change in euroskeptic far right.
7. Outside of UK, obviously, they now tend to talk less about getting out of the European Union ( the paroxysms of Britain do not look particularly attractive from outside). Their skepticism is now translating into an internal skepticism about Brussels liberalism/neoliberalism.
8. (which often goes hand in hand with an enthusiasm for Brussels funding). As a political alternative, they push a la Orban etc for a Christianist notion of Europe defending itself from a variety of hostile influences.
9. Other parties are pushing back with their own visions of Europe - and the politics of the Greens is a particularly good match for European level. Climate change policy in Europe has been pushed by decisions made in Brussels, and obviously requires cross-national coordination.
10. The result is straightforward. Policy decisions made in Brussels now clearly matter at national level including decisions that are not made through intergovernmental bargaining. There is strong political disagreement over these decisions rather than center-left/right carve-up
11. And political contention gets voters interested/involved. The various top-down technocratic reforms and stitch-ups that European elites have tried for decades - increased codecision powers for the Parliament, Spitzenkandidat proposals and so on haven't created much legitimacy
12. Instead, the partial movement of actual disagreement from the domestic to the European level that may be getting people involved as technical seeming decisions taken far away suddenly have clear political implications. I stress the word 'may' -but this may be important. Finis
