As of: January 19, 2024, 5:12 a.m
By: Sandra Kathe
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Before the European elections in June, a study examines the effects of various crises on people in Europe.
But they vary from country to country.
Berlin - The noticeable consequences of climate change, increasing migration, a global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war: a few months before the EU-wide elections for the European Parliament from June 6th to 9th are evident in many European countries states that the crises of the past decades have left their mark.
The political mood is heated, the parties on the right and left spectrum are becoming stronger in surveys.
A study by the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations has now looked at the effects that the crises could have on the European elections and which of the problems particularly affect people in the various countries in Europe.
The study is based on a survey in which people from eleven European countries, including nine EU countries as well as Great Britain and Switzerland, took part.
At the beginning of June, the people of the EU will elect a new European Parliament.
(Symbolic photo) © Frederick Florin/AFP
How crises influence the European elections: Study analyzes possible voting decisions
The result: The five crises in the areas of climate, migration, finance, health and foreign policy have left their mark in all of the participating states, but are perceived differently by the majority of participants.
The study therefore says that the participating states can be divided into five European “crisis tribes”.
And we also draw initial conclusions from this for the upcoming European elections.
Because even if a feared trend towards populist parties largely failed to materialize in the last European Parliament election in 2019, a similar development is looming in the 2024 election. Only that instead of the main topics of migration and potential EU exit promises from 2019, there is currently a whole lot the focus is on new challenges for Europe.
“Crisis tribes” before the European elections: In Germany, the issue of migration sets the tone
It is noticeable that Germany is the only country in the survey in which a majority of participants perceive migration as the biggest problem from the current crises.
In France and Denmark, concern about developments in the climate crisis is the focus.
In Italy and Portugal, a majority are primarily concerned about economic development; in Spain, Great Britain and Romania, health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic were perceived as particularly impactful.
Countries in which the Ukraine war plays a particularly important role in people's minds are Estonia and Poland due to their geographical proximity.
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Depending on the “crisis tribe” to which the respondents in the survey belonged, the evaluation also revealed the effect that people with a focus on different problems rated the work of their state government differently positively or negatively.
The researchers point out that people whose main problem is migration rate the work of those in power in their country significantly worse than the overall average.
Respondents who belong to the “crisis tribe,” which is primarily influenced by the war in Ukraine, view their government’s work significantly more positively than average.
Concern about a type of extinction: How climate and migration are shaping the debates
According to the study, which “crisis tribe” the respondents belong to also has a measurable impact on the favored parties and may thus provide information about tendencies for the upcoming European elections.
According to the study, there is a tendency that Europe's current crises do not allow a clear distribution between right-wing or left-wing parties.
Although a majority of people who are particularly concerned about the issue of migration voted for right-wing populist parties such as the AfD in Germany or the Rassemblement National in France, people who are concerned about climate change primarily vote for green parties.
In the other areas, however, the surveys are much less clear.
Before the European elections, the team behind the study assumes that the topics of migration and the climate crisis will dominate the media and political debates across Europe, also because the respondents who find the two topics particularly important represent such different positions yet both revolve around some kind of extinction.
Because while the concern of people in the climate “crisis tribe” revolves around the future of the living space for people, animals and plants, people in the migration crisis tribe primarily worry about the extinction of their nation and the associated cultural identity.
But the other crises will undoubtedly influence the voting decisions of people in the EU, according to the study.
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