The European elections have in common with those of the United States the unalterable periodicity of their call.
Americans vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every four years and the European Parliament votes are held between the months of May and June every five years.
The next North American president will set the course of Western politics and the European deputies will color the political map of 27 member countries that will elect the president of the European Commission, who will be the most visible face at the top of all the community institutions.
American polls give an advantage to Donald Trump, who with his well-known arrogance despises Joe Biden's chances, not to mention those of those Republicans who dare to stand up to him.
His certainty in victory is such that he can dispense with the debates and take advantage of the various criminal trials in which he is accused to turn them into electoral rallies while he answers with disdain and cockiness the questions that several judges have already asked him.
The educated and liberal American elites do not understand or know how to explain why more than half of the voters can send Trump back to the White House.
The conservative, anti-immigration tendency in a country of immigrants, protectionist and endogamous is shared by millions of Americans who seem willing to elect a populist president with extreme right-wing postulates.
The system has enough counterweights to prevent the principles of the most solid democracy in the world from being broken.
We will see.
The future of the world is not decided in Europe's political battle, but it is being fought in the context of an underlying crisis in the midst of two nearby wars –Ukraine and Gaza– and conflicts that can disrupt the free transit of goods in a globalized and interdependent economy.
Polls indicate that the conservatives of the European People's Party will repeat the majority, followed by social democrats, greens and liberals occupying the other side of centrality.
But there is another force represented by far-right governments and parties that govern in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia.
The possibility of the Alternative for Germany becoming the second force in the June 9 elections scares millions of Germans who do not want to risk dangerous adventures.
Marine Le Pen's party in France is likely to have the most votes.
At the European level, the extreme right would be the third most represented option in Parliament, with the aim of forming an anti-European blocking majority.
Centrality, from the conservatives to the socialists, including the greens and liberals, is an essential element to maintain the reality of a Europe of solidarity, which the transferred Jacques Delors represented, which has been the incubator of many wars, but which, in words of Helmut Schmidt, has made in the last century the best contribution to the world, which is the welfare state.
It is the Europe of Schengen, of the euro, of Erasmus, of the protection of minorities, of freedoms and of an equitable distribution of wealth inspired by the social market economy.
Putin doesn't like it and is ready to destroy it.
Lluís Foix is a journalist.
Copyright La Vanguardia, 2024