Towards the EU Election in June
Towards the EU Election in June
In June the European Union elects a new parliament. Even Europeans are often confused how the EU works, so a refresher for all the upcoming forecasting might be helpful.
The EU has a parliament and a government (called Commission) very similar to democratic nation states. Then there is also the Council though which is a little like the bicameral upper house/senate and it is determined by national governments.
The election determines the parliament seats. Afterwards the Council (not the parliament!) proposes a Commission President (currently, this is Ursula von der Leyen, but will she get a second term?) and the parliament votes yes/no. Similarly, the rest of the Commission is proposed and elected in a second step. That means the EU government^W Commission is very much influenced by national governments and only superficially controlled by the parliament. Big difference to most elections and important to keep in mind for the election impact.
The concept lead candidates (Spitzenkandidat) is an attempt to soften this. The idea is that the Commission President depending on the winning party is determined in advance. Unfortunately, this did not work out last time as the EPP lead candidate was ignored, the Council proposed someone else, and the parliament elected her. Nevertheless, the EPP wants to have a lead candidate again. Will it work out this time?
With different rules how seats are split among EU nations and parties, the factions end up with different percentages in each organ.
The two big parties are EPP and S&D. They map well to Britain’s Conservatives and Labour and Germany’s CDU and SPD. I don’t think you can clearly map them to the US ones. Republicans have the conservative values of EPP but the blue collar association of S&D. The Democrats might like “Renew” most with respect to their values. Emmanuel Macron and Margrethe Vestager are two well known representatives there.
It isn’t clear to me what this election is about. The parliament percentages will shift around a little. Lots of commissioners will be replaced. The Commission President will be from EPP. In the end, EU is controlled a lot by the German and French government no matter the outcome of this election.
There is a trend towards right-wing parties. The impact on specific policies and proposals is unclear though.
The next relevant date is March 7, where EPP plans to select their lead candidate.
I also made Manifold dashboard EU 2024 as a collection page.
Zvi Mowshowitz wrote a nice post where he assigns he own probabilities to the 37 ACX questions for 2024. The fascinating aspect: At first, he does this “blind” and in a second step updates his probability using prediction market info.
Important this weekend: Taiwan election.
I’m ahead for my 52 posts this year. 😎
Probably until next week, my accurate readers!