The Netherlands will be the first country in Europe to elect its new MEPs, when the polls open on 6 June 2024. The vote takes place across all 27 member states between Thursday and Sunday, June 9, with the first official projections not published until 11pm on Sunday night.

The Dutch will elect 31 out of 720 members of parliament, two more than in the current parliament, which has 705 seats. But, with an expected surge in populist and far right support, what is at stake?

Louise van Schaik, head of EU and global affairs at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, told Dutch News that the key themes for voters in the Netherlands will be migration, the green transition and the cost of living.

“There are concerns migration has not been handled well and the debate is about refugees, migrants from other EU countries, people from Ukraine and international students,” she said.

On the shift to greener energy, there are questions about whether the EU pushed it “too hard too rapidly”, especially for farmers and households.

According to a Euronews-Ipsos poll, however, more than half of European voters continue to see climate change as a priority. The state of the climate was also a top priority among Dutch voters in the latest Eurobarometer survey.

Van Schaik says in the Netherlands the vote will be especially influenced by the ability of political parties to form a new government and deliver on voters’ expectations, after the Eurosceptic PVV won almost 25% of the vote in the November election.

“The Dutch electorate is volatile at the moment. The European elections turnout is not high and in the Netherlands this is likely to favour the left,” she added.

In 2019, less than 42% of eligible voters went to the polls, a turnout higher than in the past European elections but well below the 77% in November’s general election.

Five years ago, the PvdA (Labour party) gained the largest number of seats (6), followed by the VVD and the CDA, at four each and Groenlinks and FvD (Forum voor Democratie) on three each. The PVV did not win any seat then, but could get 9 this year, according to polls. The party has also ditched its traditional Nexit stance.

This year, too, the PvdA and GroenLinks are fighting the election as a single party and polls suggest they will be firmly in second place.

Shift to the right

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank headquartered in Berlin, anticipates “a massive surge in support for the far right, powered by European public dissatisfaction with the latest wave of illegal immigration”.

This will be the first European parliament election without Britain, and support for leaving the bloc has faded in other countries since Brexit. But the ECFR predicts that anti-European populist parties will get the largest number of votes in nine EU countries – the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia – and come second or third in other nine.

Whether a shift to the right will create major changes in the parliament political balance, however, “remains to be seen,” Louise van Schaik added.

“Populists and right-wing parties tend to fight each other, so we will have to see if they will align and group together. We will also have to see what role the [European People’s Party] EPP will play. Whether they will move to the right or incorporate right-wing parties that will take more a moderate approach, such as Giorgia Meloni’s party in Italy,” she said.

“If the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the liberals of Renew, maintain the majority, the situation will not change dramatically,” she said.

Next European Commission

The result of the elections will also be used by the European Council (EU governments) to nominate the new commission president, who will have to pass a parliament confidence vote.

Over the years the parliament has pushed for the Spitzenkandidat process (‘lead candidate’ in German), in which European political parties announce before the elections their Commission candidate to give a say to voters.

The process, however, is not part of  EU treaties and after the 2019 elections, governments decided to ignore it and appoint Ursula von der Leyen, who got the parliament’s support by a slim majority of 383 votes to 327.

This year Von der Leyen is the lead candidate for the EPP and, according to Brussels insiders, she has high chances to be reconfirmed in the role. Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout, together with Germany’s Terry Reintke, is the lead candidates for the European Greens.

66 days until the first day of the EU Parliament election.

Lead candidates: recognized europarties

Centre-right EPP: Ursula von der Leyen 🇩🇪
Centre-left S&D: Nicolas Schmit 🇱🇺
Liberal ALDE: Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann 🇩🇪
Centrist EDP: Sandro Gozi 🇮🇹
Greens: Bas Eickhout 🇳🇱…

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) April 1, 2024

Priorities

Van Schaik says the new European Commission will continue focusing on some of its current priorities, such as demography and migration, and “strategic autonomy”, to avoid dependence on other countries on issues like energy and essential raw materials.

More partnerships to control migration with non-EU countries are likely to be negotiated in the coming years, while measures to attract foreign talent will be debated to overcome labour shortages and an ageing society.

New priorities will be the EU enlargement to the Western Balkans and Ukraine, the institutional reforms these will require, and the ‘war economy,’ Van Schaik added. “If Trump is elected US president in November, we will have to scale up the European defense and borrow for that,” she said.

As for the green deal, championed until last year by then commissioner Frans Timmermans, Van Schaik predicts that efforts to green the energy sector will continue, while contested proposals about nature and biodiversity may “resurface” in the European agenda under the health chapter.

Borrowing

An emerging theme is also a new economic plan founded on a reform of the single market and joint borrowing.

The Netherlands was initially against the idea of joint debt to support the recovery from the pandemic and is likely to resist further actions in this area.

The plan is currently being prepared for the commission by former European central bank president and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi and is due to be published after the elections.

In a letter reported last week by the Financial Times, NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt and the party’s European campaign chief Dirk Gotink, called on the commission to publish the report before the vote. “We must give people a greater say in the political direction of the EU,” they wrote.

EU nationals who live in the Netherlands also have until April 22 to register if they plan to vote here using a special form. In 2019, only 12% of EU nationals registered to vote in the Netherlands.