Leonid Slutskiy: the past elections to the European Parliament seriously change the political landscape

“The position of ultra-right forces has expectedly been strengthened. In principle, this reflects the recent years’ trends. According to preliminary results, they receive 111 seats against 78 in the last convocation of the European Parliament. At the same time, the results of the union of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group (ALDE) and the movement of President of France [Emmanuel] Macron ”Republic on the Move“, which receives 105 seats, are a breakthrough. This bloc has already been called the radical pro-European wing of the European Parliament,” he noted.

Leonid Slutskiy Slutsky
Leonid Eduardovich stressed that the parties that have been shaping EU policy for many years — the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (PASD), by contrast, lose the majority, although retaining their leading positions.

“According to preliminary data, the EPP receives 179 mandates, losing 38, and PASD gets 152 places, losing 34 seats. This means that it will be more and more difficult to create the parliamentary coalition, and a real struggle for the post of head of the European Commission will now begin,” said the head of the Committee on International Affairs.

According to him, voting in the elections to the European Parliament has also affected the political situation in a number of European capitals.

“The victory of the Marine Le Pen’s party in France has already led to the call for the dissolution of the National Assembly, early parliamentary elections can be held in Greece, where the opposition also got the first place in the European Parliament, in Germany the success of the Greens and the huge failure of the Social Democrats threaten the stability of the existing coalition. This is the big picture. For our part, we hope that the new configuration of the European Parliament and the strengthening of the influence of pragmatically-minded forces will allow renewing inter-parliamentary cooperation with Russia. We, of course, need to return to the joint interaction formats and resolve all issues through dialogue,” the parliamentarian concluded.