For three days (6-9 June), EU citizens will go to the polls to elect the European Parliament, the 720-member legislature of the European Union.

According to the latest polls, the ‘centre’ forces will continue to hold a majority in the EP in 2024. The ‘centre-right’ European People’s Party (EPP), led by the German Christian Democrats, is in first place with 182 seats, followed by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) with 136 seats.

This centrist majority, which has dominated the EP for the past five years, together with the liberal Renew Europe group with 81 seats, is expected to win 399 out of 720 seats.

Despite disagreements over how to deal with the ‘far right’, as the EPP has opened the door to close cooperation with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party (FdI) and its EP affiliate, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), these three groups have made it clear that they intend to stick to their tripartite coalition.

This means that they will retain control of the EP’s policy-making cycle and have a say in key internal decisions such as the budget.

While both the EPP and the S&D will roughly retain their current seats, Renew Europe, which includes Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, will lose 20 seats, from 102 to 81, the group’s worst result since its creation in 2019.

This leaves Renew in a fight for third place against the right-wing ECR and the right-wing Identity and Democracy (ID), which includes Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN).

Big losses for the Greens

The losses can be partly explained by the departure of MEPs and the leadership of the Spanish liberal party Ciudadanos (formerly the largest national delegation in the group with eight seats) to join Spain’s centre-right Partido Popular (EPP).

At the same time, the Liberals are also facing heavy losses in France, where President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal coalition fell from 23 to 15 seats.

According to the latest projections, the ECR is expected to win 79 seats (12.2%) and the ID 69 (8.5%). The Greens would win 55 seats with 7.7% of the vote and the Left 38 seats with 6.4% of the vote.

The number of seats the Greens are expected to win is 17 less than in the previous period. The biggest loss is expected for the German Greens, who are part of the German traffic light coalition.

The ECR increases its number of seats from 68 to 79, while the ID gains 10 more seats, despite having recently expelled the AfD, the largest national party (expected to win 15 seats), due to a series of scandals.

The right will get a chance to block legislation

The ID and ECR will give the EPP the chance to block legislation by ganging up against the Socialists and Liberals, as they tried to do in the last parliament on the nature restoration law. Moreover, this time the right-wing bloc will have enough seats to gain a majority if necessary.

With Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen and Polish opposition leader Mateusz Morawiecki all calling for some kind of right-wing alliance to balance the pro-European forces, speculation is rife about an imminent shift on the hemisphere’s ‘far right’.

While some would like to see a right-wing super-group that would bring together the ECR and the ID, making the far right the second largest political force with around 160 seats, such an option seems unlikely due to wide disagreements on policy areas and long-standing internal bickering between national parties.

A new left-wing group could also enter the EP

The Left is set to win 38 seats, more or less the same number as now, but with limited room for manoeuvre for broader coalitions. Moreover, the group’s future is uncertain.

In Germany, the new party Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) recently confirmed that it had enough support to form a new left-wing group in the EP.

The BSW is reported to be in talks with organisations such as LFI and SMER, the ruling party in Slovakia.

The largest national group is expected to come from France

The top national delegations will reshape the balance of power in the EP and bring new priorities to the legislative work.

Ahead of the vote on Thursday 6 June, Europe Elects’ latest predictions for Euractiv reveal what could happen in the coming period.

According to the latest predictions, the top five national delegations could be the French RN with 31 seats, the German CDU/CSU with 28 seats, the Spanish Partido Popular (PP) with 23 seats, and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Poland’s centre-right Civic Coalition (KO), both in fifth place with 20 seats each.

Eurozone finance ministers on Wednesday (5 May) gave political support to a G7 plan to lend to Ukraine using profits from Russian assets, which they are ready to discuss after the G7 leaders’ summit in June.

The ministerial discussion showed appreciation for the constructive engagement with G7 partners on this issue and full support for it to continue,” Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers, said in a statement.

Wednesday’s virtual talks were organised to explore options on how to frontload financial assistance to Ukraine by providing loans based on profits from frozen Russian central bank assets.

G7 summit in June is critical

The G7 had collectively frozen about $280bn of such assets, most of which were held at the Belgium-based Euroclear clearing house.

The new support came after G7 finance ministers last month warmed to a plan to withdraw up to $50bn from assets to support Ukraine’s war effort.

Finance ministers will consider the need for further discussion after the G7 summit in Apulia when they meet in June,’ Donohoe said after the talks.

Leaders of the G7 countries, which include the US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, are due to meet in Italy on 13-15 June to consider various forms of the proposal.

90 per cent of profits to the ‘peace fund’, 10 per cent to the EU budget

According to the G7 plans, the profits from Russian assets held in the EU would cover the interest and at the same time repay the principal of the loan to Ukraine from the US, or the US together with other G7 countries, or from the EU’s own budget.

Annual profits would go into a special fund to cover Ukraine’s arms needs and the country’s reconstruction.

According to the plans, 90 per cent of the money will first go to the European Peace Fund (EPF), the bloc’s mechanism for reimbursing member states for arms supplied to Kiev, and then to the newly created Ukraine Assistance Fund (UAF).

The remaining 10% will go to the EU budget and be used to increase the capacity of the Ukrainian defence industry.

The plan includes the possibility of changing the purpose of the funds if Ukraine’s needs shift from defence to reconstruction.

People familiar with the talks said the plan would require risk-sharing between the EU and the US, as EU countries and the European Central Bank are wary of a potential risk to the EU’s single currency.

US plan is more ambitious

But Washington is also floating a more ambitious proposal in which countries would agree to use profits to provide Ukraine with a large loan as soon as possible, rather than settling for a few billion euros a year in the long term.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the New York Times last week that the loan would be around $50 billion, backed by profits and interest income.

EU officials said that for the US-led plan to work, the EU would have to assure the lender that profits from Russia’s frozen assets would be used to cover the loan.

Germany, backed by a group of countries including Hungary and Poland, is leading opposition to new EU legislation aimed at shedding light on foreign influence in political campaigns.

The proposed law would create a central register of media, civil society organisations and lobby groups that receive funding from outside the EU.

Berlin and other capitals have rallied behind international NGOs condemning the proposed regime, arguing that it mirrors discriminatory measures imposed by the Russian and Georgian governments on opposition voices in those countries.

The Hungarian government clashed with the European Commission when it set up the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, which investigates opposition politicians and NGOs that receive foreign funding.

Brussels to increase ‘transparency of foreign funding’

The Commission unveiled a draft law in December to increase the transparency of foreign funding received by NGOs, lobby groups, consultants and others carrying out “interest representation activities” on behalf of non-EU governments.

The bill was proposed in the wake of the ‘Qatargate’ scandal at the European Parliament, in which MEPs were accused of receiving bribes from Qatar and Morocco through a human rights group set up by a former MEP.

At a meeting of EU ambassadors last week, countries including Germany, Poland and Hungary called for the legislation to be changed, while several other member states were reluctant to take the proposal forward at this stage.

EU could face accusations of hypocrisy

A senior EU diplomat told the Financial Times (FT) that the proposal posed a dilemma for the Union. A system that could work well in a liberal democracy, with a government that encourages and values the contribution of civil society, could easily be abused by illiberal democrats/autocrats. We need to figure out how to make such a scenario impossible,” he said.

The diplomat argued that this would leave the EU open to accusations of ‘hypocrisy’, pointing out that governments such as Georgia had been criticised for introducing foreign influence legislation and were discussing something that would be seen in a similar light.

The Commission’s proposal would require organisations to declare which country they work for, what activities they carry out and how much they pay each year. Organisations would also have to keep records of these activities. Those who do not comply could be fined.

Transparency International and other NGOs criticised the inclusion of only foreign government funds and not all state funds, including those of European capitals, arguing that this could lead to “stigmatisation”.

Commission defends law

The Commission argued that the law was necessary because there is currently no central register of foreign state funding, making it difficult to assess which organisations might be fronts for ‘influence operations’ from abroad.

Věra Jourová, the Commission’s vice-president for values and transparency, said: “There is no chance that we will withdraw the law because I believe we need such a law. We want to know more about lobbying contracts that organisations operating in the EU market have with third country administrations. This is about foreign lobbying”.

Some member states, including France and Germany, already have their own registers and are concerned that the quality of these registers would suffer if the EU created a supranational register.

The new legislation is expected to be discussed by EU ministers later this month.