Contenu du sommaire : Les élections européennes de juin 2009

What can we learn about the Europeanisation of European elections from the elections held in June 2009? Do they lead us to question, at least partially, the standing of the model of second-order elections that minimises the supranational dimension of these elections and hold doubts as to the political representation that do the citizens of the European parliamentary arena.

The construction of Europe is permeated by enduring paradoxes. In relation to Europe's parliamentary development, there is one such paradox that cannot fail to attract the observer's attention: the European Parliament continues to acquire increasing power as a response to the Union's democratic deficit at the same time as the Union's citizens display increasing indifference to the European Parliament elections. This gap between the constant strengthening of the process of formal legitimation or of law granted by treaties to the European Parliament and the way in which this progression is understood leads us to ask two questions. First: how, why and by virtue of whose power does this continual increase in power of the European Parliament within the institutional setting of the European Union take place? Second: at this time when the process of European construction is becoming a constitutional one, a process that is not itself without conflict, just how far does the European Parliament support go?

Only 40% of Europeans voted in the 2009 European elections. Abstention increased yet again, by two percentage points compared to 2004. Yet again, abstainers constitute the largest European party. Abstention cannot be analysed as either a linear phenomenon or as homogeneous behaviour. Factors that are at one and the same time sociological, institutional and political all play a part. In addition, abstention is part of a transformational movement in relation to voting. But its extent reveals above all the Europeanisation of a critical challenge for the creation of a political Europe: information and education for European citizenship.

The June 2009 European elections saw a clear victory for the parties of the moderate right. While this new ‘blue wave' confirms the hegemony of the right over the left, it also redesigns the map of European conservatism. In a context of social and economic crisis, these results pose the question: why are the supporters of economic liberalism doing so well everywhere in Europe at the expense of progressive forces? What is the ‘winning formula' that might explain their success?

There was a marked decline in the vote of the socialist parties in the 2009 European elections. While governing parties suffered the heaviest losses the sometimes very heavy losses suffered by those parties in opposition raises the question of a general decline of European socialism. The balance of power in the European Parliament has clearly tilted in favour of the Right and, in most countries, parties belonging to the EPP Group won out over those belonging to the PES. However, in the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe the socialist parties did better than elsewhere, thus making it impossible for the time being to confirm a general decline.

Unlike the 2004 European elections, which displayed the second-order electoral characteristic of the ‘punishment vote' against parties in power, of both Left and Right, the 2009 European elections produced three categories of result that showed that voters dealt in a different way with parties affiliated to the EPP Group and to those within the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D): in most countries, groups affiliated to the EPP beat groups of socialist tendency both by maintaining ‘pole position' as leading national party and in the voting figures, which saw the main opposition party take the lead. The voters' preference for the Centre-Right was also confirmed where there was a redistribution of votes within a governing coalition.

Since they first entered the European Parliament 25 years ago, the Greens have had a widely varying degree of success in both national and European elections. It has often been noted that the Greens obtained their best results in the wealthy countries of the North while they have had greater difficulty in establishing themselves in the South and the East. Do the Greens' results in the June 2009 European elections confirm this tendency? And is it possible to outline a socio-demographic profile of the typical Green voter at the European level?

The performance of autonomist parties at the 2009 European elections confirmed the downward electoral cycle of the party family at the European level. Some autonomist parties managed to recover from the generalised defeat in 2004, but they did not approximate their scores in 1999, when they managed to elect 22 MEPs (or 3.6% of all 626 MEPs). Thus, a general trend can be discerned—as for other party families in these European elections, as the decline of the social-democrats and the success of the centre right, far right and eurosceptiscs (see other articles in this issue). However, there are also some exceptions to this downward trend, such as the SNP and the Lega Nord. This article describes first the electoral performance of the autonomist party family at the aggregate and regional level. First, we will start with a descriptive analysis of the electoral results of autonomist parties at the 2009 European elections region by region. Then, we test some hypotheses and explaining this quasi-general downturn in the second part of this article. Last, we examine the strategies of representation of autonomist parties in the European Parliament in different parliamentary groups, and how they affect the functioning of the autonomist « Europarty », the European Free Alliance.

In France, the European elections held on 7 June 2009 took place in the context of great tension between ‘nationalisation' and ‘Europeanisation'. Despite a lacklustre and low-key campaign that ended with low voter turnout, the elections in fact contained a few surprises compared to the classic logic of ‘mid-term elections'. The majority party, the UMP, and its allies performed fairly well. The vote of the main opposition party, the PS, collapsed, benefiting the ecological forces, which won an almost equal number of votes. Finally, extremist discontent was not strengthened by the European election vote.

A bare third of UK voters turned out in the context of a struggling Labour government and financial scandal. If the result confirmed Labour's decline, the Conservatives might have expected to do better. Other parties remained static, with the exception of the Scottish nationalists, UKIP and, more marginally, the BNP. UKIP's success confirms that EU membership remains a real issue for a hard core of voters. Voters show considerable uncertainty on European questions in general, though there seems to be a firm pro-European base emerging among Labour, Libdem and green voters.

The political context of the June 2009 European elections in Spain was one of steady and deepening economic crisis together with a political crisis that had begun at the start of the second term of the socialist government of J.L. Rodriguez Zapatero in 2008. The June 2009 electoral campaign was tightly focussed on the confrontation between the two major parties: the PSOE and the PP. Compared to the 2004 European elections, the results showed a slight decline in the socialist vote, more so in urban areas, with the PP benefiting in varying degrees depending on the particular Community. And for the first time in the European elections there was a clear ‘punishment vote' against the government, something hitherto little used in Spain.

The context of ‘Bulgaria's second European elections, held in 2009'was marked by the political developments that had taken place since 2001, the date of the legislative elections that changed the Bulgarian political landscape and brought to an end the country's post-communist transition period. These elections led to a significant partisan realignment, in Stein Rokkan's sense of the term: a stabilisation in the process of changing alignments that had substantially disturbed the partisan system.

This study compares the major trends in European elections in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe since their accession to the European Union. Beyond the different nationalities, the study shows how the thesis of specific types of voting behaviour in the region must be adjusted in the light of the latest European elections. As in the West, the course and the results of these elections show, but even more forcefully, the signs of a disenchantment with democracy, accentuated by the financial crisis.

An embryonic party system is developing at the European level at the same time as there is a steady increase in the powers of the European Parliament, the only supranational assembly in the world to be elected by direct universal suffrage. For national parties this raises the question of their integration within this transnational party system. In addition, in the absence of any real European electoral campaign, European elections since 1979 have always appeared to be simply the sum total of a number of national elections. This integration, seen in affiliations to European political parties and to the corresponding groups within the European Parliament, has historically been much more complex in France for the Right than for the Left.