Comments on: Europe 2009 – summary

By: Simon Copland

Simon Copland — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:51:21 +0000

Just saw that the Swedish Pirate will be joining the Greens in the EU Parliament, giving the coalition one more seat. Although they will be staying independent they have agreed to vote with the Greens on every issue that the party doesnt have an agenda set out.

By: Nick C

Nick C — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:04:40 +0000

Yep, Tories form their new ‘anti federalist’ group with 55 MEPs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8112581.stm

By: Ben Raue

Ben Raue — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:40:55 +0000

Okay sure.

EPP-ED – European People’s Party/European Democrats – centre-right coalition. EPP is Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Merkel et al. European Democrats is pretty much just the UK and Czech conservatives, who will be leaving the group after the election.
PES – Party of European Socialists – Centre-left, German SPD, French PS, UK and Irish Labour, etc.
ALDE – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe – Liberal democrats, including German FDP and UK Lib Dems, and Irish Fianna Fail (who only just joined the group).
G/EFA – Greens/European Free Alliance – European Greens should be self-explanatory. EFA is the alliance of left-leaning separatist parties such as the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Basque separatists.
EUL-NGL – European United Left/Nordic Green Left – far-left parties.
I/D – Independence/Democracy – Right-wing eurosceptic parties. Doesn’t include far-right neofascist parties.
UEN – Another right-wing grouping.

By: Tim Andrews

Tim Andrews — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:36:26 +0000

Hey, for those less knowledgeable about the whole thing, can you provide a brief one or two word summary/explanation on which party acronym is which?

By: Adrian

Adrian — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:41:14 +0000

I don’t agree that there was a clear swing away from the centre-left. Most European Green parties are centre-left, in Belgium for example their positions on the vast majority of topics are identical to the socialists. If you consider Socialist to Green shift as an internal centre-left switch the increase in centre-right and decrease in centre-left is very small, and also very regional:

Centre-left win (ranked by margin)
Czech Republic 2:7 (+5)
Denmark 1:6 (+5)
Belgium 6:8 (+2)
Sweden 5:7 (+2)

Left-right tie or +1/-1
France 29:28 (+1)
Greece 8:9 (+1)
Malta 2:3 (+1)
Netherlands 5:6 (+1)
Austria 6:6 (even)
Estonia 1:1 (even)
Lativa 1:1 (even)
Spain 23:23 (even)
Cyprus 2:1 (-1)
Ireland 4:3 (-1)
Lithuania 4:3 (-1)
Luxembourg 3:2 (-1)
Romania 13:12 (-1)
Slovakia 6:5 (-1)
Slovenia 3:2 (-1)

Centre-right win (ranked by margin)
Italy 35:21 (-35)
Poland 28:7 (-21)
Hungary 14:4 (-10)
UK 0[26]:18 (+18[-8])
Germany 42:37 (-5)
Portugal 10:7 (-3)
Bulgaria 6:4 (-2)

You can see that centre-left and centre-right parties were pretty much balanced across almost all of Europe. In fact if you consider Green and Socialist to be centre-left, you can account for almost the entire swing from centre-left to centre-right with just two countries – Italy and Poland. These two countries (with the least stable political systems in Europe) had large left to right swings, everything else in Europe balanced out.