Elections and parties
Agnes Stuber
An interview with Hanna Gedin from the Swedish Left Party Vänsterpartiet on the priorities and challenges of the Swedish Left ahead of the European elections.
In the lead up to the 2024 European Parliament elections this June, the Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung is conducting a series of interviews with parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political demands, and the challenges for left forces domestically and at a European level. Duroyan Fertl spoke to Hanna Gedin, second on the list for Swedish left party ...
read more "”We need to give people hope”"
read more "”We need to give people hope”"
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"
Interview with Mariana Mortágua
Early legislative elections will be held in Portugal next March 10th. The President of the Republic dismissed the government on December 7th and dissolved Parliament on January 15th, bringing an end to a Socialist Party government with an absolute majority elected on January 30th, 2022. The outgoing government was unable to resolve the population’s main difficulties - the housing crisis and bankruptcy for several public services, specifically health and education. This, together with several court ...
read more "“Choosing people’s lives over profits and high rents”"
read more "“Choosing people’s lives over profits and high rents”"
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"
Sumar will have a vice-presidency and 5 ministries, but with limited powers.
Among the MPs who have said yes to Sánchez are the conservative Catalan nationalists of Junts and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
Podemos is left out of the government and leaves the coalition to join the mixed group of independent politicians in the parliament.
The President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez (centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE), won the support of the absolute majority of the ...
read more "Spain’s new coalition government faces a challenging legislative period"
read more "Spain’s new coalition government faces a challenging legislative period"
The amnesty for politicians and activists prosecuted for the independence referendum held in Catalonia on 1 October 2017 mobilizes far-right groups around the slogan "Spain is breaking up".
Nazi, fascist and ultra-Catholic groups rally against Spain's new government.
Spain's right-wing has promised a legislature fraught with action against the government.
In October 2023, the Spanish extreme right saw its biggest popular mobilizations for years, coinciding with the pacts between social democrats and ...
read more "The Spanish far right mobilizes against the new progressive coalition government"
read more "The Spanish far right mobilizes against the new progressive coalition government"
Spain's Extreme Right first months in regional and municipal governmentsAfter the extreme right-wing party Vox entered the regional government of Castilla y León alongside the conservative Partido Popular (PP) in April 2022, the party gained more representation in the local and regional elections of 28 May 2023, allowing the PP-VOX coalition to be replicated in other autonomous communities previously run by progressive coalition governments. This has been the case in Extremadura, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Vox also entered the government of Murcia, ...
read more "Vox’s Public Policy"
read more "Vox’s Public Policy"
Sahra Wagenknecht’s decision to leave Die Linke brings clarity, but at a high cost
Following years of turmoil, a resolution has finally been reached inside Die Linke, the democratic socialist party in the German parliament closely linked to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Sahra Wagenknecht, previously Die Linke’s parliamentary co-speaker and one of its best-known faces, announced her resignation from the party on Monday together with nine other MPs. They will now form a new organization, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), to prepare the launch of a new party in early 2024....
read more "“A Heavy Blow”"
read more "“A Heavy Blow”"