On November 29, Spain will go to the polls, but it will be all of Europe - some with hope, others with apprehension - that will hold its breath. Its outcome will largely depend on whether the conservative turn initiated by European politics in 2024 is consolidated and reinforced - with an explosion of the historic pro-European alliance in the European Parliament as a possible side effect - or, on the contrary, whether the current delicate status quo is maintained. Spain inaugurates, in advance, the electoral dance to which France, Italy and Poland are called in the coming months. In all of them the nationalist and extreme right parties start with great strength, if they are not favorites.
There are not many social democratic heads of government in the European Union at the moment - there are too many fingers on one hand - and the few that there are are generally from small countries. Thus, the Danish Mette Frederiksen - a very peculiar socialist, by the way -, the Maltese Robert Abela and the Lithuanian Mindaugas Sinkevicius. The Spanish Pedro Sánchez is the only one at the head of a large country (fourth in the EU in population and economic power), which makes him the main reference for the left in the European Council and a counterweight in a largely conservative club.
If, as the polls suggest, the elections lead to a change of government in Spain, with the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo as the new president - with the support of the extreme right -, the European landscape will radically change. “The absence of Sánchez would be a disaster because it would end up unleveling the Council and the balance of European politics,” says a prominent member of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group of the European Parliament, led by Iratxe García and where the Spanish socialists constitute the most important national delegation.
If this reversal occurs, it would not be the elections in France, Italy and Poland that would compensate for it. Quite the opposite. In France, Emmanuel Macron's liberal decade comes to an end in 2027 and could end in a real debacle, opening the way to power - for the first time since the end of the Second World War - to a far-right party. Seven months before the elections, the leader of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen, leads all the presidential polls, both in the first and second round, while the country seems plunged into a deep crisis, with the financial markets punishing its high deficit, fuel prices skyrocketing and high school students engaging in violent confrontations with the police in the streets.
In Italy, the prime minister and leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, has an advantage to repeat the position, with her possibilities reinforced - a priori - by the reform of the electoral system approved this Thursday and which gives a representation premium to those parties and coalitions that reach 42% of the votes. In Poland, finally, the conservative Prime Minister Donald Tusk seems well on his way in the polls to remain in the government, but in any case if anyone can threaten him it is not the left but the ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist Law and Justice, which - on the other hand - makes his life impossible from the Presidency of the Republic.
If the electoral picture that ends up being drawn is the one predicted by the respective national polls, the correlation of forces in Europe will experience a strong shift to the right and could end up forging a new majority among the conservative sector with Christian Democratic roots and - if not all, a good part of - the far-right parties.
In fact, since the last European elections, in 2024, this confluence has already made its way into the European Parliament, thanks to the variable geometry policy sponsored by the president of the European People's Party (EPP), the Bavarian Christian Socialist Manfred Weber. Although the majority that supports Ursula von der Leyen's Commission continues to rest in the traditional European bloc - made up of popular, social democrats and liberals, with the intermittent support of environmentalists -, the conservatives have taken advantage of the possibility of articulating "alternative majorities" - with the ultras - to promote some policies that are difficult to accept for their partners.
Last September, for example, he presented and managed to approve in the European Parliament a resolution that attributed the migratory crisis in Ceuta to Pedro Sánchez's extraordinary regularization policy, with the support of the three main far-right groups in parliament: the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) of Giorgia Meloni and associates, the Patriots for Europe of Marine Le Pen - and Vox - and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) led by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It wasn't something coincidental. Joint votes of this type have occurred on a total of 23 occasions, according to the information compiled in the EU Far-Right Tracker list by the NGO The Good Lobby, directed by the Italian academic Alberto Alemanno. “The EPP is not limited to flirting with the extreme right, but has institutionalized a tactical alliance of convenience,” the group maintains.
Can this tactical alliance become a strategic alliance? Given this situation, within the S&D group, voices are beginning to be heard in favor of a break with the EPP and a move to the opposition in the European Parliament in the event that the socialists lose the government in Spain. The most pragmatic sectors do not see this solution favorably and warn that this could lead to the fall of the Von der Leyen Executive and the eventual replacement of the current president of the European Commission - who does everything possible to keep her coalition tied - with a profile more to the right. “It would not be good for the current Commission to fail,” the same socialist leader notes, “but if an ultra-conservative turn occurs, the situation could become impossible.”
Von der Leyen's distress call. The President of the Commission has asked this week for the support of the European Parliament to stop the cuts that are looming over the community budget currently under discussion. The group of so-called frugal countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden), led by Germany, demands a reduction of hundreds of billions in the budget project prepared by the Community Executive for the seven-year period 2028-2034, of 2 trillion euros. Ursula von der Leyen reminded the chamber that her proposal barely represents 1.26% of the EU's GDP and warned that its reduction “would entail the risk of drastically cutting fundamental priorities that we have all agreed on together.”
Von der Leyen, from the German CDU, does not lack support in the European Parliament, where even the leader of the EPP, the also German Manfred Weber (from the CSU, a historical ally of the CDU), is against the cuts to cohesion funds and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It does not seem, however, that the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has listened to them much until now... The 27 will fully enter into the negotiation from now on, once the Irish presidency in office presents - today - the revised document (Negobox, in community jargon), which will already incorporate the reduction of some items to attempt a first approximation of positions.
Extension with conditions. The European Commission has proposed this week to incorporate a set of precautionary or safeguard measures so that future members of an enlarged EU cannot impose their veto on majority agreements or call into question the fundamental principles of the Union. The Brussels proposal, which must eventually be ratified by the 27 at the summit on October 15 and 16, establishes a period of 15 years during which the new members of the club will be subjected to special surveillance, under the threat of sanctions that would range from the loss of community funds to the suspension of their right to vote in the European Council. The closest candidates for accession are Montenegro - which could join in 2028 -, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine, already facing 2030.
