Holiday Weekend Schedule: News Items will be off the grid on Sunday and Monday. Matt Murray’s Week in Review will be distributed tomorrow. There will be posts from Political News Items over the weekend, including a new edition of “Polls in One Place.”
1. This year could mark a turning point in EU history, with the population of 448 million beginning a decline that is expected to persist, marking an unprecedented shrinkage in peacetime, according to UN projections. The EU population rose in the year to January 2023, helped by an influx of displaced persons from Ukraine, after a temporary two-year dip that reflected the impact of the pandemic. Last year, Eurostat forecast that the population would peak at 453 million in 2026. But the 2023 numbers came in below expectations as EU births fell to levels Eurostat had not forecast for another two decades, suggesting the peak may come before 2026. (Source: ft.com)
2. Eurointelligence:
The most important political trend in Europe so far this year is not the shift in the vote towards the far-right, but their internal realignment. Yesterday, the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament kicked out the German AfD after its lead candidate tried to exonerate the SS in an interview. Marine Le Pen had been planning for some time to separate from the AfD, but this stupid interview triggered it prematurely.
The big trend we are seeing is a broader realignment of the far-right. Giorgia Meloni's success has inspired other leaders of the right, and especially Marine Le Pen. They realised that they need to engage constructively within the EU to get anywhere. Meloni is not destroying the EU from within, as she once claimed she would. She may at some point succeed to repatriate a policy area or two. But she discovered that she has a lot more to gain if she acts at the European level. As Le Pen is adopting more moderate positions herself, we could see much closer co-operation between the two groups of the right - ID and the European Conservatives and Reformists, the group headed by Meloni. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
3. Before India’s marathon election kicked off in April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was promising to come back to power with an even bigger majority than he won five years ago. With less than two weeks to go before election results are announced, the picture is looking less certain for the popular leader. Party insiders, opposition members and analysts who have traveled across the country to speak to voters say there’s little evidence of a “Modi wave” that allowed his Bharatiya Janata Party to sweep the polls in 2019. (Source: bloomberg.com)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to News Items to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.