THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. Reforming Europe in a time of war

Politics in Europe: elections, changes and trends 45 Still, if one thing can be noted it is that the much-pro- claimed decline of European social democracy has failed to materialise. Which might lead us to a second conclusion: its re- turn has led to the recovery of a quite equal balance be- tween the left, centre and right across the governments, similar to the one existing in the EU institutions. While it will always be contentious to dryly classify the political orientation of the national governments, we could make an initial approximation of groupings as follows: − Left: Spain, because both parties that make up the government are indisputably in that camp. However, we might also add, on the sole basis of ideology, those of Denmark and Portugal, where the govern- ments have Socialist prime ministers. − Centre-left: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia, if we take into consideration that they all have Socialist prime ministers. All the same, their programmes are moderate or in some cases drawn up in coalition without the participation of clearly recognised right-wing parties. − Centre: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria (at the time of writing this chapter, with a caretaker government and elections held on 2 October), France, Luxembourg and Romania, because they are led by conservative or liberal heads of government. − Centre-right: Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Es- tonia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Nether- lands, Slovakia and Sweden (with an agreement on parliamentary support with the far right), in a space defined by the absence of socialists and the prepon- derance of the right, be it conservative or liberal, in a government formed by one party or in coalition. − Right: Italy, on the one hand, and Hungary and Po- land, the two Eurosceptic and illiberal governments in the EU, on the other, alongside which it would be entirely mistaken to place single-party conservative governments such as those of Cyprus and Greece, which are resolutely pro-European. Better together than alone: the preference for gov- ernment coalition in the EU The figures leave no doubt: coalition is the preferred government formula in most EU member states. Whether it is because of the need to form strong gov- ernments with a broad electoral, parliamentary and politi- cal base in the face of the economic and social emergency, the conviction that a cross-ideological approach aids sta- ble government or because of the parties’ own weakness, there are coalitions in a large majority of countries. − Government coalition: Austria, Belgium, Bulgar- ia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark (that was the Socialist Democrat prime minister’s intention at the time of writing), Finland, France, Germany, Hunga- ry, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. − Single-party government: Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Malta and Portugal. Of all the coalitions, only one (Spain’s) is formed ex- clusively by leftist parties, while the rest -following the groupings in Section 2 of this chapter- are centre-left, centre, centre-right or right-wing. Among the coalitions listed, there are three that could certainly be considered merely token, either be- cause of the utmost proximity or the relationship of exis- tential dependency between the parties that make them up, with one holding indisputable hegemony: those of France, Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, there is no grand coalition, that is, formed by the two largest parties in a country, one from the left and the other from the right, as in the German or Austrian tradition. However, we can see that some coalitions could be classified as national unity governments, given their de- clared programme goals (tackling an exceptional situa- tion) and the broad range of participants from all corners of the political spectrum. We should also differentiate between the govern- ments, be they in coalition or single party, with a par- liamentary majority (in some cases thanks to external support arrangements) and those that are in a minority, namely: