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Ian Explains: How does the European Union work?
How does the European Union work, exactly? On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the different institutions of the EU and how they work together. In recent EU elections, the centrist European People’s Party held onto a slim majority , pushing back on the rise of far-right nationalist parties that have surged in national elections in places like France and Germany. The EPP will now have to find a way to deliver on key issues like migration reform and the Green Deal using a coalition in European Parliament, no easy task for a body with 720 members that represent some 450 million citizens. But how do EU laws actually get passed? The institutions of the EU can be hard to keep track of: there’s also the European Commision, the European Council, the Council of the EU—admittedly confusing. Ian Bremmer unpacks the seven major institutions that govern the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc and most ambitious effort at supranational governance, a political experiment that’s turned a historically fractious continent into a unified whole.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Macron's snap election gamble will have repercussions for France and EU
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Tabiano Castello, Italy.
Did French President Emmanuel Macron make a grave mistake by calling for parliamentary elections now?
Well, remains to be seen. I think it should be seen also in the run up, in the context of the run up to the 2027 presidential elections, they’re going to be the real crucial ones. I think he faced the prospect of a slow death in the National Assembly and deciding that this was the only option where he had any possibility whatsoever, of recovering some strength, if that's possible. Now, France is facing a very difficult choice between the far-right, a resurgent far-right, which had roughly 40% of the vote in the European elections, and a far-left, which is equally destructive in different ways, and the center ground having lost out considerably.
So a couple of weeks to go before we get the final results. But it's a big gamble that will have profound repercussions, not only for France, but for Europe as a whole.
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Andre Ventura, the leader of the party, is casting his vote to elect the new Prime Minister of Portugal at the Parque das Nacoes school in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 10, 2024. Pre-election polls are indicating that the Democratic Alliance (AD) is the likely winner of the legislative elections.
Winning isn’t everything in Lisbon
Portugal’s election over the weekend had two winners.
The mathematical winner: the center-right Democratic Alliance, which took 79 seats in the 230-seat Parliament, eking out a narrow victory over the left-leaning incumbents of the Socialist Party, with 77.
The zeitgeist winner: the far-right Chega party, which quadrupled its seats to 48. Chega, which means “Enough!” is fiercely anti-immigration and has adopted the “God, Country, Family, and Work” slogan of Portugal’s former dictatorship.
The trouble is that those two winners can’t work together. DA leader Luis Montenegro has ruled out a coalition with Chega which, despite its strong performance, carries the stigma of the country’s fascist past.
That leaves Portugal in its most fragmented and uncertain political state since the end of the dictatorship.
But this isn’t the first time in recent months that a European far-right party has found itself unable to use its kingmaker’s powers. Precisely the same thing happened in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV party was popular enough to sing at the polls, but too toxic to enter government.
As the EU heads towards European Parliamentary elections, bear this in mind – the recent “resurgence of the right” in Europe is more nuanced than it looks.
Populism and partition? Europe's bleak forecast for the year ahead
GZERO’s Tony Maciulis joins Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group's Managing Director for Europe, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to discuss the pressing political and economic situation in Europe. Rahman looks ahead to the EU Parliament's upcoming elections, highlighting concerns over populist party performance. “[Populists] will certainly be better represented” Rahman tells Maciulis, “but that being said, the impacts on policy will be marginal at best.”
Rahman also delves into Europe’s economic challenges, citing bleak growth forecasts and Germany's fiscal constraints. “The overall picture is an economy really in the doldrums, not performing…basically flat." Discussing Ukraine, Rahman underscores the risk of partition and stresses the importance of Western integration for Ukraine's ultimate failure or success against Russia. Rahman also raises concerns over the potential impact of a Trump presidency on transatlantic relations. “Is Trump signaling an invitation to Russia and others to probe and to test? That's really where the concern lies."
Join Ian Bremmer and a panel of experts this Saturday, February 17, at 12 pm ET/9 am PT/6 pm CET for our Global Stage discussion at the Munich Security Conference: Protecting Elections in the Ageof AI.
Keep up with GZERO's Global Stage coverage of MSC 2024 for more.
Europe fears Afghan refugees will cause a political crisis
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
What are the fears in Europe stemming out of what is happening in Afghanistan?
Well, there are of course, a lot fears coming, long-term security and other issues, the effect on global politics of this. But more immediate, of course, there is the refugee issue. There's enormous generosity when it comes to full accepting all of those that we've been able to evacuate that have been working with us in force over the years in Afghanistan. But there's also a fear that there will be a repetition of 2015. There are elections coming up in September in Norway and primarily in Germany and in the beginning of next year in France. And you can see the EU internal interior ministers meeting and you can see what President Macron is saying. And I think the reaction is going to be an enormous will to have humanitarian efforts in the region, the hope that the United Nations can stay in Afghanistan and can help in the region. And that is important. But then we also see, of course, that the walls are coming up. The Turks are building a wall on the border with Iran. Greece is building a wall on the border with Turkey. And add to that, of course, we have the problem of the weaponization of refugees. Lukashenko of Belarus is sort of deliberately, a sort of importing, smuggling, and paying for refugees to come to Minsk, and then he is hovering them over the border to Lithuania and Poland and Latvia in order to pressure those particular countries. That has to be reacted to. So, issues are going to be complex when it comes to Afghanistan. We're going to live with the Afghanistan issue for a very long time.
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