The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 50 and Austria are also close to a radical change, and even in Germany there is a trend in this direction. Italy experienced the breakdown of the “Pentapartito” in the 1990s, and was then faced with the upsurge of right-wing conserva- tive and right-wing populist parties (Forza Italia, the Northern League, the National Alliance), which formed four governments under Berlusconi for various periods between 1994 and 2011. However, despite their grand prom- ises, they were unable to overcome the socio- economic misery of the country, in fact exacer- bating it. Since 2013, this dual collapse of the political system has benefited the Five Star Movement, which came to power with the Northern League after the parliamentary elec- tion in March 2018. The latest opinion polls show that the Northern League under Salvini has overtaken M5S, with 33% of votes while M5S has 30%. The left, which was decimated in the last elections, is now mired in internal power struggles and is looking on, virtually powerlessly, as the country lurches to the right on Europe and refugee policy. Although the populist parties and the right-wing nationalist Brothers of Italy command two thirds of the votes, this does not increase political stability. On the contrary: the confrontational course that the new Italian government has now taken towards the EU on the question of budgetary policy has, if anything, worsened the country’s problems. Furthermore, there are considerable disagreements between the two governing parties over how to scale down the big elec- toral promises that have proved impossible to finance. In the Netherlands the two parties that were previously strongest, the CDA and the PvdA, have long since lost control of the parliaments. Together with the right-wing liberal VVD, they still received more than 80% of votes in the 1990s. Since then their share has tended to shrink, and in the early 2000s it was still at around 60%. The CDA and PvdA each still re- ceived well more than 25% of the vote in 2003, but in the 2010 elections the share for each party fell below 20%, and in 2017 the PvdA dropped to 5.7% and the CDA dropped to 12.5%, while Rutte’s party, the VVD, received 21.3 % and Wilders’ party, the PVV, received 13.1%. In comparison to the 1990s and the early 2000s, the three largest parties’ drop in vote share to less than 40% is dramatic. The party landscape became increasingly splintered, making it very difficult to form a government in 2017. It took Rutte six months to put together a four-party coalition government. The French elections in 2017 saw the col- lapse of the two-party system that started with the “Quadrille bipolaire”. Since the 1970s the 5th Republic had been dominated by the PS and Les Républicains (LR, previously UMP) as the left and right-wing alternatives. Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) is a centre party, which has taken some of its staff, even at the top level, from the PS and the LR. The PS was decimated (7.4%, down 22 points) and a re- formist wing of Les Républicains led by Juppé has cooperated with Macron. Now the main op- position is made up of Mèlenchon’s “La France Insoumise” and Le Pen’s “Rassemblement National” – fringe parties of the left and right. The recently elected President of Les Républicains, Laurent Wauquiez, describes himself as “right- wing”, and it remains to be seen what effect his appointment will have on the divided party. The new system is not stable, and Macron’s LREM is a weak party with little organisational structure, even by French standards. The system is also unstable because of Macron’s position. He was already weakened before the emergence