Will European Voters Opt for Radical Change in 2015?

2015 will be a critical year for the European Union as it deals with the challenges of economic stagnation and a growing distrust of the EU bureaucracy based in Brussels.  As it stands, voters will go to the polls to elect new governments in eight of the 28 members of the European Union over the course of 2015 (it would have been nine, but Sweden avoided snap parliamentary elections late last month).  What is most interesting is the fact that many of these elections will take place in some of the most economically-damaged and Eurosceptic member states of the EU.  As a result, voters this year will have the opportunity to opt for political parties that are offering radical solutions to some of their countries’ most pressing economic and political problems.

Two European Union member states currently have unemployment rates in excess of a whopping 24%, Greece and Spain, and, it just so happens that each of these countries will be holding parliamentary elections this year (Greece in January and Spain in December).  Moreover, new left-wing anti-austerity political parties have emerged in both countries and each of these parties has surged to the top of opinion polls in their respective countries. 

In Greece, the far-left Syriza party and its popular leader Alexis Tsipras have been on top of the polls since Greece’s economic crisis reached its lowest depths and the party stands a very good chance of leading the next government in Greece.  If it takes power, Syriza has vowed to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s international bailout and this could lead to Greece being forced to drop the euro as its currency.  Meanwhile, in Spain, the far-left Podemos party and its young leader Pablo Iglesias have benefitted from a number of corruption scandals involving Spain’s traditionally two dominant political parties to emerge as the most popular party in that country in early 2015.  It too has vowed to bring an end to the austerity measures that have angered so many Spaniards in recent years and this could lead to a clash between Spain and EU members such as Germany.

Britain and Poland will also hold national elections in 2015 and these two countries have quite a lot in common at present.  First, they were the two most successful large EU economies in 2014, with both countries benefitting from strong domestic demand and a lack of dependence upon exports to the weaker countries of the Eurozone.  Second, both countries have electorates that are opposed to excessive European integration and seek to maintain Europe’s strong security and trade ties with the United States.  Finally, both countries have mainstream conservative political parties that favor looser ties with the European Union, with Britain’s Conservatives (together with the nationalist UK Independence Party) hankering for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, and with Poland’s Law and Justice party seeking to dramatically slow the pace of EU integration.

These four national elections, together with national elections taking place this year in Finland, Denmark, Croatia and Estonia, will go a long way towards determining the pace of reform and integration in the European Union in the coming years.  If each of these peripheral countries opts to elect Eurosceptic or anti-austerity governments, it could lead to a widening of the divisions within Europe between those countries that seek ever-closer European integration and those that favor a looser grouping of countries.  In addition, it could widen the gap between the German-led pro-reform group of countries and those countries, led by France and Italy, that are seeking to roll back the reform and austerity measures that are so unpopular in much of Europe.  Given the fact that the polls in all of these countries suggest that each election is likely to be closely contested, Europe’s future will be hanging in the balance over the course of 2015 as voters around Europe’s periphery determine its long-term future.