Towards a new European polity? Social democrats and the 2014 ep elections

Laura Caroli; Nicola Genga; Alvaro Imbernon; Iulian Stanescu

Laura Caroli Phd. in Geopolitics, Geostrategy, Geoeconomics
Nicola Genga Post Doctoral Fellow in Political Science at the Department of Communication and Social Research of "Sapienza" University of Rome, Italy.
Alvaro Imbernon Researcher at ESADEgeo (Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics)
Iulian Stanescu Phd. in Sociology, Researcher at the Research Institute for Quality of Life, Bucharest, Romania

Keywords: European Elections, transnational parties, progressivism, populism, Europeanisation

Abstract

The article highlights key issues and trends for the performance of PES and allies in the 2014 European Elections. Hence a historical background analysis is provided to observe the evolving balance of representation in the EU Parliament across three decades. Moreover, the paper aims at identifying the key member states for an improved result for the SD group in terms of seats. To this extent, major obstacles are found both in the declining electoral support for the Left at a national level and in the possible prevalence of a second order model boosting the hard euro sceptical populist protest against the current EU institutions. Particularly, the latter is the case in France, Italy and the United Kingdom. For this reason the Europeanisation of the EP election is taken as a crucial factor for the electoral campaigning, along with the nomination of the candidate for President of the European Commission as an aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty.