The May 18 elections in Poland, Portugal, and Romania and their possible effects on Spain

Yesterday, May 18, there were important elections in three European Union countries: Poland, Portugal, and Romania.

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The results in these three countries show a political map that deviates from the one traditionally drawn by the Spanish media, which refers to centrist parties affiliated with the European People's Party (EPP) as "conservative," while the EPP has an alliance in Brussels with the Socialists and adopts ideological positions increasingly similar to those of the left.

However, this map also does not fit well with the globalism-antiglobalism framework proposed by some, at least in the case of Poland. This could be repeated in the Czech Republic in a few months, raising the question of whether this globalism-antiglobalism framework is as realistic as some claim. Let's look at the details.

Poland

The first round of presidential elections was held yesterday in the Republic of Poland. The main candidates were:

• Rafał Trzaskowski: Civic Coalition, supported by Civic Platform (PO), the EPP's Polish partners. Some media outlets are calling him a "liberal" candidate, but in reality Trzaskowski belongs to the center-left party, Tak! Dla Polski (T!DPL). A few weeks ago, he declared himself in favor of classifying abortion as a "right", just like the Socialists.
• Karol Nawrocki: independent, supported by Law and Justice (PiS), the Polish partners of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, Giorgia Meloni's group). Some media outlets portray him as "far-right," but he is actually a conservative candidate. PiS is a very hostile party toward Russia and has supported Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022.
• Sławomir Mentzen: He is the candidate of the Konfederacja, a coalition of very diverse parties ranging from different right-wing tendencies to the classic far right. Mentzen belongs to the New Hope party, which is part of this coalition and defends paleolibertarian theses. In 2019, he made a statement rejecting Jews, very much in line with some of the more extremist members of the Konfederacja. Some members of this coalition have also taken pro-Russian positions. In 2022, Mentzen criticized sanctions on Russian coal. Faced with the growing unpopularity of the already hated Russia among Poles, the Polish National Assembly has toned down its pro-Russian positions and turned them into anti-Ukrainian claims: Mentzen has directed several attacks against Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

According to polls, Trzaskowski (PO) won with 31.1%, followed by Nawrocki (PiS) with 29.1%. Both are expected to run in the second round. Some might see these elections as a failure of socialism in Poland, since the left-wing candidate with the most votes, Adrian Zandberg (Razem, far-left), would have obtained 5.2%. I'm sorry to have to water down these simplistic analyses, but the reality is that the Citizens' Coalition led by the PO includes leftist parties such as Zieloni (The Greens) and the Democratic Left Association (SLD), formed by, among others, the Polish Socialist Party.

Nawrocki has a good chance of winning in the second round, but that will depend on whether Konfederacja voters support the PiS candidate or let the PO candidate govern. It is worth remembering the European affiliation of the two main Konfederacja parties: New Hope (which is in the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group, led by Alternative for Germany) and National Movement (which is part of Patriots for Europe, PfE, promoted by Viktor Orbán, among others). This rivalry between the ECR and PfE could be repeated in October in the Czech Republic, where Prime Minister Petr Fiala's ODS party (ECR) is a rival to Andrej Babiš's ANO party (PfE).

Portugal

The Portuguese Republic held its parliamentary elections yesterday. The official results declare the Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition, formed by two partners of the European People's Party (EPP): the Social Democratic Party (PPD/PSD) and the Social Democratic Centre (CDS), both centrists. In the Azores Islands, the coalition also included the Popular Monarchist Party (PPM), a Christian Democrat party also affiliated with the EPP. The AD coalition won over 32% of the vote, winning with 89 seats.

Yesterday's results are a disaster for the Socialist Party (PS), the clear winner of the 2022 elections with 78 seats, but which yesterday was left with 58, its worst result since 1985.

The Portuguese Socialists' displeasure is even greater given that Chega, a national-conservative party and Portuguese partner of Patriots for Europe, is less than a point behind the PS. In fact, André Ventura's party actually led the Socialists for much of the vote. Chega drops from 50 seats to 58.

These elections leave a complicated political landscape in Portugal. AD will have to consider who it allies with to govern: the PS or Chega. The possibility of AD's leader, current Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, allying with Ventura's party is highly unlikely. In April 2023, Montenegro expressed his total rejection of governing with the "far right", in a veiled reference to Chega, whom he described as "racist" and "xenophobic." In fact, these elections were called after a vote of no confidence by Chega against Montenegro.

Romania

The second round of the Romanian presidential elections was held yesterday. According to the official results, Nicușor Dan, an independent candidate, won with 53.6%, while George Simion of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) obtained 46.4%. Dan was the founder of the Union Save Romania (USR) party, affiliated with the Renew Europe group of center-left parties. AUR is the Romanian partner of the ECR.

As happened in France with Marine Le Pen, Simion's victory in the first round mobilized the other parties to support Dan. This was helped by the identification of Simion as a "pro-Russian" candidate by many media outlets. In reality, Simion has maintained hostile positions towards Russia for years. In 2020, he said that "Putin is a criminal, a dictator" and that "Russia is a threat to Romania", in line with the positions that the ECR has been maintaining on the matter. However, his alignment with Trump has recently led him to soften that clear anti-Russian stance: "Russia does not have the potential to pose a significant threat to the world's largest military alliance," Simion said a few weeks ago. However, Simion is clearly in favor of Romania remaining in the European Union and NATO, so many of the adjectives that have been thrown at him in recent days in many media outlets are blatantly false.

In these elections, Simion has received the support of PfE, which does not have any Romanian party associated with its group. However, Viktor Orbán has not wanted to show his support, beyond a veiled reference on May 9 in which the Hungarian prime minister did not even expressly mention Simion, who has sought the support of the significant Hungarian minority in Romania, which represents 6% of the population. Orbán's silence is no coincidence. Romanian nationalism and Hungarian nationalism are historical enemies, and this has been confirmed once again in these elections. In the two Romanian districts where the Hungarian ethnic group is the majority, Harghita (84.6% Hungarian) and Covasna (73.79% Hungarian), Nicușor Dan has won by a landslide (90.78% and 84.42%, respectively).

In the end, as Orbán has also demonstrated in the case of Ukraine, the globalism-antiglobalism scheme collapses as soon as the national interests of one sovereigntist party conflict with the national interests of another. Indeed, on which of these two poles do some place the Polish and Czech rivals of the ECR and PfE?

The effects for Spain

Could what happened yesterday in Poland, Portugal, and Romania have any impact on Spain? The answer is yes. The political map drawn in these three European countries shows a growing collision between the conservative and patriotic right (ECR and PfE) and the centrists of the EPP, to such an extent that in Poland, Portugal, and Romania, an understanding between centrism and the left now prevails over the need to remove the socialists from power, whose ideological theses, I repeat, have already been largely adopted by the EPP.

Does this mean we're facing a clash between "globalists" and "anti-globalists"? No. What this map reveals is not that centrist parties put supposed globalism before national interests, but that centrism has shifted so far to the left that it is now merging with it. We are not necessarily witnessing the disappearance of the classic division between right and left, but rather confirmation that the EPP has ceased to be a conservative or right-wing party and has become something very different and increasingly distant from the values ​​of many of its voters.

I've been warning about this in Spain for years, as the Spanish People's Party (PP) has been exhibiting the same progressive drift as some of its European partners. There are still exceptions, such as Italy and the Czech Republic, where the EPP partners govern in coalition with the ECR partners (Meloni and Fiala), but we'll see for how long.

For Spain, this ideological shift by the PP could end up making it difficult to oust Sánchez from power, should an agreement between the PP and Vox prove impossible, which seems increasingly difficult for both parties. Let us remember that less than two years ago, the president of the PP offered Sánchez a pact for the party with the most votes to govern, an offer that sought to make Vox's support for the PP dispensable and repeat in Spain the coalition between the EPP and the Socialists in Brussels. Will we end up seeing something like this? Time will tell.