Europe 2009 – summary

By
Ben Raue
 – June 17, 2009

The overall results for the European Parliament were:

  • EPP-ED – 264
  • PES – 161
  • ALDE – 83
  • G/EFA – 53
  • EUL-NGL – 33
  • I/D – 18
  • UEN – 14
  • Other – 110

While all of the groups except the Greens lost seats, due to the reduction in size of the Parliament, these were on very different scales. ALDE and the EUL-NGL each lost 5 seats, once you take into account the parliamentary reduction. The Greens gained 13 seats. The People’s Party and Democrats gained 20, and the Socialists lost 35. This shows that there was a clear swing away from the centre-left which effectively went to both the centre-right and the Greens.

The UEN and Independence/Democracy are reduced to effective rumps. In both cases a majority of the group’s remaining seats are held by a single party. 13 of the 18 seats in the Independence/Democracy group are held by the United Kingdom Independence Party, while 9 of the 14 UEN seats are held by Italy’s Lega Nord.

It appears that Italy’s Democratic Party will join in a coalition with the Party of European Socialists, which will become the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats for Europe. These 21 MEPs will lessen the losses suffered by the PES.

There appears that there will be a reorganisation of the groups of the European right, with the creation of a European Conservatives group led by the UK Conservative Party. There will be a group of MEPs left over from the dissolution of UEN and I/D. There are also a sizeable number of far-right MEPs, some of which were formerly part of Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty during its brief existence and others from parties that have never had seats before (such as the British National Party). There may well be sufficient right-wing MEPs, once the Conservative group has formed, to create some sort of far-right coalition.

In one final note, I produced an elaborate prediction just before the election predicting where every seat would go. I’ve gone back and revisited the prediction, and calculated that I correctly predicted 89.95% of the seats, or 662 seats (with 74 seats being incorrectly predicted). It’s not quite as impressive when you bear in mind that all EU countries use proportional representation, so it’s easy to guess the bulk of seats, and it’s always the last few that are up for grabs. Anyway, it’s always good to review your predictions after the election.

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