ENGLISH: Observations on the European elections

As the BBC News summed the 2009 elections for European Parliament up: "Voters steer Europe to the right"

And indeed they did steer Eeurope to the right, in a public opinion that surprised me a bit. After the media's general attacks of "neoliberalism" and the "excesses of the market", as well as the craze to nationalize and bail out, I did expect a swing to the left. The fact that this swing did not occur, and indeed the winners of this election where far-right parties and the classical (economically) liberals comes as a surprise. At least in the case of the liberals, that's a pleasant surprise. The wins of far-right parties, as seen in the Netherlands or Britain, are more troublesome but I would be careful to call that a movement. The numbers they won aren't really large and the governments in both countries aren't exactly popular. But we should ask two questions. The first being "How come that people look to the right, to conservatives, for answers in these times - and not to the socialists?" and the second "Why does a large number of people go for far-right parties, and not for the conservatives? Can we win them back and how?". Both questions are of a great importance for the next general elections in the member states, or for the next European Parliament elections in 2014. I will devote further entries to these two topics.

The conservative party in the European parliament, the EPP, did maintain it's status as the largest parties but it did not win seats, in fact lost 15. That looks dramatic, but is explained easily. The Tories aren't a member of the EPP anymore. With Britain electing 21 conservative representatives to Parliament, it's becoming obvious why we aren't seeing a win for the EPP. So, even if we have a nominal decrease in votes for the center-right parties, that's skewed by this and some other similar factor. Not everyone sitting in the "No Group" section of the parliament is from the far-right.


What I think this election showed us is that the end of conservativism, proclaimed by many members of the American left and secretly believed by many leftists in Europe, isn't even near. The message is popular. But we need to broadcast it better. What I missed in these election season was a clear, conservative message from the conservative parties. In Germany, the election campaign of the CDU and CSU focused heavily on raising name recognition for the candidates and on laying a bit of groundwork for the general elections. While I absolutely agree that people need to know who is representing them on an EU level, people do not solely care about faces. What they want to know - and that needs to be brought out - is why they should vote for a party and there, we as conservatives need to bring across clear and strong differences to both sides of the spectrum. Why vote for the CDU or for the Tories and not for Labour, Greens or SPD? If these differences are shown, I am sure that higher turnout could be achieved.

Focusing on Germany's results, I see one thing clearly. Many people do not want the Keynesian approach we have seen from the governing CDU/CSU and SPD coalition. The FDP, a classical liberal party, won votes in nearly the same size the CDU/CSU lost them. That's really telling us my favorite lection of these election. The people do not buy the wrong condemnation of capitalism. They realize full well that we do not see the "End of Capitalism" as proclaimed by the radical left and leftists pundits in the past months. And it's there where we can win votes again. Conservatism is deeply connected to economic liberalism and it's there where we should go back.