Elections and parties
IMAGO/ZUMA Wire
The European Parliament elections on 9 June will be the third nationwide elections to take place in Poland in eight months. They are expected to set the course for the 2025 presidential elections and will serve as an important test of whether the new coalition of the liberal Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition), the conservative Trzecia Droga (Third Way), and the social democratic Nowa Lewica (New Left) can maintain their hold on government in the long term.
read more "The EU Elections in Poland"
read more "The EU Elections in Poland"
IMAGO/Nik Erik Neubauer
Since joining the European Union in 2004, Slovenia has consistently exhibited one of the lowest voter turnouts in European elections. Indeed, statistics reveal that in 2019, only the Czech Republic (28.72 percent) and Slovakia (24.74 percent) recorded lower turnouts than Slovenia’s 28.89 percent.
Remarkably, voter participation in Slovenia has never surpassed one-third of eligible voters, meaning that a sizable portion of the populace — nearly 1.2 million individuals in a nation with 1.7 million registered voters — consistently abstain from ...
read more "Slovenia’s Political Pendulum Swings Back"
read more "Slovenia’s Political Pendulum Swings Back"
IMAGO/Lehtikuva
As the European Parliament elections this June draw nearer, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is conducting a series of interviews with left-wing parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political programmes, and the challenges facing left-wing forces domestically and at a European level. The foundation’s Duroyan Fertl spoke to Li Andersson, leader of the Finnish Left Alliance, Vasemmistoliitto, about her party’s priorities in this super election year.
read more "Opposing Finland’s Thatcherist Turn"
read more "Opposing Finland’s Thatcherist Turn"
IMAGO/Alberto Gardin
In the Spanish State, all indicators seem to point in the same direction: we are coming to the end of a cycle, in which what has been called the “Space for Change” is in retreat and even disappearing in many regions. Significant internal disagreements within the Left, right-wing and far-right parties committed to propagating fake news and stoking tensions, and a social democracy that has been neglected for years have all come together to create a society divided by media and discursive polarization, and the disaffection of the majority of citizens.
read more "Low Expectations for Spain’s Divided Left"
read more "Low Expectations for Spain’s Divided Left"
Quentin Bruno / The Left
As the European Parliament elections this June draw nearer, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is conducting a series of interviews with left-wing parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political programmes, and the challenges facing left-wing forces domestically and at a European level. The foundation’s Duroyan Fertl spoke to Frederikke Hellemann, second on the list for Danish Left-Green Alliance, or Enhedslisten, about the Danish Left’s priorities in this super election year.
read more "“Back to Basics”"
read more "“Back to Basics”"
IMAGO/Photo News
(German) In Belgien finden die Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament wieder im Schatten der nationalen Parlaments- und Regionalwahlen statt, somit dürfte auch mit ähnlichen Ergebnissen zu rechnen sein. Wird die belgische Arbeiterpartei PTB nach diesem Superwahljahr ihren Schwung beibehalten können?
read more "The Inexorable Rise of the Belgian Workers’ Party"
read more "The Inexorable Rise of the Belgian Workers’ Party"
KPÖ
KPÖ Plus becomes the second strongest force in the municipal council and mayoral elections in Salzburg
Kay-Michael Dankl is greeted with cheers as he arrives on his bike at the Volksheim community centre in Salzburg. Several hundred friends and comrades have gathered at the venue on the evening of 10 March to celebrate election night.
On this evening, KPÖ Plus (an electoral alliance between the Austrian Communist Party and the Young Greens) notched up its second triumph in as many years, following up on the success of last year’s regional elections. It became the ...
read more "Learning from Salzburg"
read more "Learning from Salzburg"
IMAGO / ZUMA Wire
The local and regional (autonomous community) elections of May 2023 marked a shift to the right across most of the Spanish state. Barcelona was no exception: the intense mobilization of the richest neighbourhoods and the electoral stagnation of Barcelona en Comú, the party with which Ada Colau had governed the city since 2015, made the conservative ex-mayor Xavier Trias the candidate with the most votes, at the head of the pro-independence party Junts. Colau lost the office of mayor, which she had held for eight years, and her party backed the ...
read more "Eight years of political change in Barcelona"
read more "Eight years of political change in Barcelona"
IMAGO / SOPA Images
While the votes are still being counted (four MPs representing the Portuguese communities abroad are still to be elected), and after a night of volatile emotions, the main right-wing coalition, the Democratic Alliance (AD, formed by the main right-wing party, the PSD, and a smaller partner, the CDS), defeated the ruling Socialist Party (PS) by a narrow margin of 51,000 votes and just two seats in parliament. After eight years in power, the centre-right PS lost half a million votes (from 41.4% to 28.7%) and conceded defeat. Even if the four MPs...
read more "Portugal: high instability and a shift to the right"
read more "Portugal: high instability and a shift to the right"
Spain’s far right has lagged behind its counterparts in other European countries in gaining a foothold in Spanish political institutions. After the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, far-right platforms experienced failure after failure, and only starting in 2011 did they begin to gain representation in small town councils. Academics like Xavier Casals described this anomaly as an 'absent presence', meaning that the extreme right existed with a subset of voters just like in the other countries, but these were mostly encompassed within ...
read more "The international alliances of the Spanish far right"
read more "The international alliances of the Spanish far right"