What does the new European parliament augur for human dignity and the family?

Eurosceptics and family values

by Peter Smith

After four days’ of voting across 28 member states (including exotic French constituencies in South America and the Indian Ocean), only 43 percent of an electorate of nearly 500 million people bothered to cast their vote in the five-yearly elections to the European Parliament (EP). 

The biggest winner of this election has, once again, been apathy, the malaise of democratic complacency.

As expected, economic turmoil and increasing scepticism of the benefits of intra-European migration pushed voters away from the centre. As Britain’s Guardian newspaper surmised, sufficient gains were made by far right parties to move them away from Europe’s margins.

Right, left and the establishment

The French Front National won a quarter of the vote in France, Austria’s Freedom party a fifth, Hungary’s Jobbik 15 percent, and the Greek Golden Dawn around 10 percent of the vote in their respective countries. More moderate Eurosceptic parties like the UK Independence Party and Danish People’s Party won the single largest share of their national votes. German voters returned their first Eurosceptic (the Alternative For Germany, AfD) and neo-Nazi (the National Democratic party) MEPs. Hard left movements did well too: Syriza in Greece topped the domestic poll.

The elites of the European ruling classes cannot have been surprised by the results. After numerous occasions on which national votes had rejected further integration (whether through changes to the constitutional Treaties of European Union, enlargement or membership of the Euro) only to be overruled or ignored, the vox populi was clearly expressing doubts about the direction of the European project.

The more it changes...

Despite the anti-federalist vote, however, the elected MEPs are overwhelmingly on the side of state, rather than private, action. This is true even of parties like the Front National, who advocate the extension of the welfare state, support protectionism and oppose globalisation. Only 46 seats of the 751 in the European Parliament are held by economic liberals.

Against this context of Eurosceptic statism, which way will the EU now go on matters like marriage, the family and freedom of religion and conscience? In truth, there will be little change, and the future remains somewhat bleak.

Take three cross-cutting levels of analysis: the philosophical outlooks of new MEPs, the institutional interests of the European Commission and its ‘eurocrats’, and the development of EU law as introduced via the EP.

Family values remain marginal

Although they come in diverse shapes and sizes, some of the ascendant Eurosceptics have cut their teeth in their national same-sex marriage debates. Britain’s Ukip initially took a lot of supporters from Conservatives upset by Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement in October 2011 that same-sex marriages would be created by the Coalition Government. Nigel Farage, Ukip’s leader, was happy to oppose the plans while his party was gaining numbers. But now the issue is settled (the first British same-sex marriages took place in March), Farage has confirmed that the legislation would not be repealed if Ukip won the General Election in 2015 -- although that’s not to stop his fellow MEPs opposing it from the sidelines, of course.

It seems that once the same-sex marriage battle has been “lost”, the expediency of opposing the measure dissipates and politics moves on. Unfortunately, this is likely to be the outlook for most of the new Eurosceptic MEPs. Watch out if a suitable case comes up before the European courts over the lifetime of this Parliament.

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