Two months to go-how we are faring in European election polls

With two months to go before election day, it can be said that the European election campaign in all nations of the EU is now almost in full swing, and there is a tense contest, apparently, between the two more prominent European President candidates, Jean-Claude Juncker (PM of Luxembourg for almost 19 years until recently) and Martin Schulz of the European Union's 'neoliberal triad' of the European People's Party, the Socialists and Democrats, and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (EPP, S&D, and ALDE).

Meanwhile, we Greens are faring well in some parts of Europe (e.g. Spain and Portugal) but elsewhere we find our voters often shifting to parties belonging to the European United Left group, as shown in France and Denmark at least. In Italy, the Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) group has wisely made an alliance with the Tsipras List aka The Other Europe in the hope of getting representation. We should nevertheless keep up the good work and help the Green vision spread across Europe, and even in a few nations where European Green Party members cannot get significant representation, helping the respective European United Left member will mean that there is counterplay to the neoliberal capitalist agenda that pervades the European Union. The picture is of course still being complicated by the rising support of non-inscrit (NI) parties, many of which lie on the far-right of the political spectrum; the rest are generally populist protest movements like the 5 Star Movement of Italy and ANO of the Czech Republic. Also, in light of the removal of the threshold in Germany for European Parliament elections earlier this month, national thresholds in other nations of the EU should also be lowered to that of the Netherlands (i.e. only enough votes for one full seat required).

Alan.

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