Europe on the “Right” Track

What Americans can learn from Europe’s recent elections

By Brian Gomez and Jonathan Moody

Published in the July 2009 edition of “Inside ALEC,” a monthly magazine of the American Legislative Exchange Council (www.alec.org).

After years of growing government and regulation in Europe, the results of the latest European parliamentary elections serve as a breath of fresh air. Victories for conservatives in nearly every single European country indicate voters are beginning to lose trust in leftist solutions.

Following four days of voting in 27 countries, the results of the June election deciding the new members of the European Union’s Parliament are clear. Votes across the European map show a strong win for the center-right and collapsing support for the center-left. Overall, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) has retained its place as the largest grouping, securing 264 seats out of 736, while the Socialist Group in the European Parliament (PES) received only 161. Right-leaning parties came out ahead in Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary. In fact, only in Greece and Slovakia did the left manage to win by small margins. These two countries are now the last bastions of a declining ideology in Europe.

Furthermore, we are witnessing an interesting development in party-politics in Europe with the rise of new groups of conservative political parties such as the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). British Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Dr. Syed Kamall, is excited about this new coalition, which will be the fourth largest, with 55 Members from eight countries. He contends, “This is a milestone for European politics; finally, a center-right group has been formed that aims to move power from Brussels back to national parliaments

and individuals where it belongs.”

So why the collapse in support for the left in a continent where the welfare state has become the standard? Graham Watson, leader of another EU center-right grouping, predicted that the results of this election would represent a rejection of the Socialist approach. “People don’t want a return to socialism and that’s why the majority here will be a center-right majority,” he said. As the final results show, he was right.

Many left-leaning candidates ran campaigns that criticized center-right leaders for failing to regulate financial markets or spend enough to stimulate faltering economies. But voters did not embrace their cause. Instead, European voters opted for center-right candidates who campaigned on conservative solutions to the economic crisis rather than continuing down the path of taxpayer-financed stimulus and corporate bailouts. EPP’s leader, Joseph Daul, said his group of center-right national parties would support a plan ensuring no new money would be allocated to stimulus.

Europe’s tradition of democratic socialism has made it the testing ground for leftist policies in the modern era. However, the shift in the political atmosphere seen in the June European elections would suggest that big government is not the solution. Europe’s declining economic growth for the past five decades further supports this thesis. In the 1950s, the average economic growth of western European economies was 5.8 percent. Since then, it has fallen every decade until it reached 1.7 percent at the start of the 21st century. Now, amidst a global recession, the EU economy has a negative percentage growth. Are we witnessing the final days of European Socialism?

Whatever the potential implications of the June European elections may be, one thing is clear: the United States appears to be on track to merge onto the very road that Europe is looking to abandon. As the United States is beginning to look to increased regulation of markets, large stimulus packages, centralization of government and corporate bailouts as solutions, we ought to ask how such policies worked for our friends across the Atlantic. Through the recent election results, the answer seems to be quite clear – not very well.

Brian Gomez is a Research and Operations Assistant for the American Legislative Exchange Council and a student at the University of Virginia.

Jonathan Moody is the Policy Coordinator and Elections and Ethics Subcommittee Manager for the American Legislative Exchange Council.