The MEPs who actually matter

The MEPs who actually matter

This article is part of the Brussels Survival Guide.

There’s plenty to pay attention to in the new cohort entering the European Parliament — including, of course, the people. See below our guide on key figures across the policy palette.

Céline Imart

AGRICULTURAL DISRUPTOR

European People’s Party, France

A cereal farmer from Occitania in France, she is a trade unionist and Sciences Po Paris graduate. Imart, who will most likely join the agriculture committee (AGRI) in the European Parliament, participated in blocking the A68 highway during farmers’ protests in France earlier this year, according to local media, and has close links with French farming unions. She recently supported an alliance with the far-right National Rally in France as she stood by her conservative party’s leader Eric Ciotti — who consequently got ousted for it.

She believes the European Union’s plan to make agri-food more sustainable — the Farm to Fork strategy — is a “delusion” of French liberal lawmaker and former environment committee (ENVI) chair Pascal Canfin. Imart also told French media Libération that farmers are “exasperated by requirements” and angry at “the madness of degrowth.”

— Paula Andrés

Johan Van Overtveldt

BANKING INFLUENCER

European Conservatives and Reformists, Belgium

Strictly speaking, the European Central Bank enjoys treaty-bound independence from politics. But if there’s anyone with a decent shot at influencing the future course of Frankfurt’s policy, look no further than Van Overtveldt, a former Belgian finance minister and journalist whose withering critiques of the ECB’s foray into “green central banking” may soon have added weight due to the rise of his generally climate change-skeptic political grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists.

An outspoken and prolific member of the influential ECON Committee, Van Overtveldt has long complained about the ECB’s controversial green turn under Christine Lagarde. For all its independence, the institution is obliged to support EU economic policy, and it won’t be able to ignore any rightward shift away from net-zero targets led by politicians like Van Overveldt.

If he remains chair of the budget committee, the hawkish Van Overtveldt will also have a say in the enforcement of the EU’s fiscal rules — which carry considerable implications for monetary policy.

— Ben Munster

Andreas Schwab

COMPETITION POWERBROKER

European People’s Party, Germany

He’s a veteran of the European Parliament and an influential powerbroker on all things antitrust and tech. Schwab played a starring role in shaping the bloc’s flagship Digital Markets Act. Now governments in the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea are getting their own versions of the rule book to help tame Big Tech’s dominance. He’s also the rare member of European Parliament to make international headlines with his 2014 call for the European Commission to consider breaking up Google.

— Edith Hancock and Giovanna Faggionato

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann

HEAVY HITTER ON DEFENSE

Renew Europe, Germany

Among those entering the hemicycle for the first time, German liberal firebrand Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has some name recognition baked in.

That’s because the former chair of the Bundestag’s defense committee has been plastered across massive billboards around Germany and beyond in the run-up to the EU election since she was placed top of the list for the Renew faction.

Despite a less-than-stellar performance in the campaign, Strack-Zimmermann is still poised to be one of the big beasts entering this legislature — with some appropriate experience, given the war in Ukraine.

The native of Düsseldorf is big on defense, having pored over every detail of Germany’s military policy and procurement over the last few years. She also hasn’t been afraid to break ranks with the government (of which her Free Democratic Party is a part) over its failure to dispatch Taurus long-distance cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Expect Strack-Zimmermann to play a major part in the debate over whether to forge a full-fledged defense committee within Parliament this time around.

— Joshua Posaner

Pascal Canfin

GREEN STANCHION

Renew Europe, France

As chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee (ENVI) for the last five years, Canfin played a vital role erecting numerous pillars of the EU’s Green Deal. Canfin has told POLITICO he wants to remain in that role. But he’s facing stronger political headwinds this time around — the mood has soured both EU-wide and within France on green policies.

Canfin, a former Green lawmaker before joining French President Emmanuel Macron’s party in 2019, insists the EU election didn’t produce “a majority to dismantle the Green Deal.” Fair enough — but Europe’s right is certainly lining up at least a few green targets it wants to pick off. And don’t expect much new environmental legislation.

— Nicolas Camut, Cory Bennett

Stéphanie Yon-Courtin

FINANCIAL DEALMAKER

Renew Europe, France

Yon-Courtin made a name for herself as one of the economic and monetary affairs committee’s (ECON) most controversial MEPs last mandate for her unorthodox negotiating style and industry-friendly stance on EU retail investment rules.

Hailing from French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, which was wiped out by the far right during the election, she was reelected by a hair’s breadth, as 13th on the party’s list for 13 seats won.

Yon-Courtin, who also followed Big Tech files last time around and had a side job working for the French bank Crédit Agricole until her election in 2019, will likely retain leadership of the retail investment file, which is now heading for final negotiations with EU governments and the Commission.

She is also positioning herself to take part in the EU’s economic security push, praising new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and saying “pragmatic Europe at the heart of the territories is the commitment of my mandate!”

— Kathryn Carlson

Vytenis Andriukaitis

HEALTH ADVOCATE

Socialists and Democrats, Lithuania

Born in Siberia to parents living in exile, Vytenis Andriukaitis returned to Lithuania and became a trauma and heart surgeon. Despite his surgical duties, his career path led him to politics, where he adopted a leftist approach. He kept his health background alive, eventually becoming Lithuania’s health minister in 2012.

Two years later, Andriukaitis left national politics to join the Commission as commissioner for health and food safety, where he ushered through medical devices regulations, which have so far caused all manner of headache for industry and patients. Will he seek to fix it as an MEP?

Since 2020, he has been a special envoy of the World Health Organization for universal health coverage in the European region. He advocates for expanding the EU’s role in health and is a critic of the “weak” Lisbon Treaty when it comes to health policy.

— Giedre Peseckyte

Adina Vălean

TRANSPORT SPECIALIST

European People’s Party, Romania

Current Transport Commissioner Adina-Ioana Vălean is expected to leave her seat in the College to take up her MEP job — which won’t be new to her, as she has been sitting in the Parliament for more than 10 years (holding relevant posts such as vice president, and chair of the ENVI and ITRE committees).

While Romania could pick her again as a commissioner, the chances of a second mandate at the Berlaymont for Vălean seem slim. However, her experience in the transport sector is likely to play in her favor when political groups assign the top jobs and dossiers in the new legislature. And the TRAN Committee chair remains vacant after Karima Delli didn’t stand for reelection.

In the last five years, Vălean had to negotiate delicate dossiers concerning the road, rail, maritime and aviation sectors. She also had to deal with border closures within the single market due to Covid and the war in Ukraine, including the establishment of solidarity lanes with the country invaded by Russia. Why not put all this wealth of experience to the service of the Parliament?

— Tommaso Lecca

Peter Liese

SOLDIER OF INDUSTRY

European People’s Party, Germany

Several Green Deal policies have targets on their backs right now — and Liese is the EPP’s chief archer. Immediately after his group claimed victory in the European election, the high-ranking politician declared that a 2035 ban on the sale of combustion engine cars “needs to go,” arguing the election results vindicate his party’s push for a less restrictive Green Deal.

He has also led the charge against the new EU law to restore nature — successfully weakened in Parliament and squeaking by in the Council — as well as a long-awaited and now long-delayed revision of EU chemicals legislation.

A proposed phaseout of ubiquitous, toxic “forever chemicals” is also in his crosshairs: He’s been lobbying hard for assurances of industry carve-outs from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Brussels should “reduce all the legislation that stands in the way of the decarbonization,” he told POLITICO in an interview. Cue applause from business groups and moans from environmental nongovernmental organizations.

— Leonie Cater

Aura Salla and Dóra Dávid

META MAGNETS

European People’s Party, Finland
European People’s Party, Hungary

Meta magnates

They are a package deal: Both are new to the European Parliament, and both have or had links to United States tech giant Meta.

Salla used to run around Brussels, presenting EU officials and lawmakers with Meta’s talking points, as the top lobbyist for Meta in town between 2020 and 2023. Last year, she moved on to become a lawmaker in Finland, her home country.

Dávid is the company’s product counsel but has now been elected in Hungary, for the party of Viktor Orbán rival Péter Magyar. Does this mean Meta has an easy way in? Not necessarily — but Salla has already said she wants to roll back “overregulation” in tech to help Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises.

— Pieter Haeck

Bernd Lange

TRADE DEAL MAVEN

Socialists and Democrats, Germany

Trade deal maven

A key figure for trade policy, returning EU lawmaker Bernd Lange has chaired the Parliament’s international trade committee (INTA) since 2014 — and it’s no secret he is eying yet another turn at the helm of the committee.

The veteran lawmaker and fan of collectible cars was reelected despite heavy losses suffered by his Social Democratic Party in Germany, as he ranked fourth on his party’s national list. A strong proponent of new trade deals with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries, Australia and Indonesia — as well as more sustainability provisions in trade deals — the MEP is a member of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with the ASEAN bloc of Asian nations and an expert on transatlantic relations.

— Antonia Zimmermann

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to clarify that Stéphanie Yon-Courtin stopped working for Crédit Agricole in 2019.

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How Britain voted: Charts and maps

Post By Politics British politics, Elections, Elections in Europe, Far right, keir starmer, Nigel Farage, rishi sunak, U.K. election 2024, United Kingdom

The U.K. Labour party is celebrating a landslide victory.

Keir Starmer’s party has 411 seats, excluding the speaker’s, and a large majority in the House of Commons. His tally includes a number of “red wall” constituencies the party lost to the Conservatives in the previous election in 2019, and seats the Scottish National Party had dominated for nearly a decade.

But a closer look at the numbers suggests Labour strategists should not rest on their laurels.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party won five seats, but placed second in more than 100 other constituencies. By vote share, it is now the U.K.’s third-largest party.

Those same vote shares paint a far weaker picture for Labour than its seat number would suggest. The party recorded a 200-seat jump — but its vote share advanced by only an inch.

UK legislative election results

2019
2024

The Conservatives lost 250 seats, as their vote share plummeted from more than 40 percent in 2019 to below 25 percent now.

But both Labour and the Liberal Democrats recorded major seat gains despite barely making any advance at all in their vote shares.

The U.K.’s first-past-the-post election system means Labour will occupy about 60 percent of the House of Commons, with less than 35 percent of the votes. That vote share is less than former leader Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2017, when he lost to Theresa May’s Conservatives.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won five seats — but collected more than 14 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party by vote share, ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

Labour’s anticipated win, while an extraordinary turnaround for a party that didn’t look electable just a few years ago, doesn’t appear to have enthused voters.

With turnout estimated at 60 percent, no election in the past 20 years drew fewer voters to the ballot box.

`Still, Labour made huge strides in the U.K.’s embattled swing seats.

Those constituencies were held by the Conservatives until 1997, before flipping to Labour and then back to the Tories from 2010.

Most of them have now swung behind Labour once more.

Labour’s loss in 2019 was punctuated by the crumbling of the “red wall,” as strongholds stretching from the Midlands to the north of England voted in a Conservative MP, many for the first time.

But that Tory control in these seats proved short-lived…

The Conservatives have had a terrible 2024 election, but so has the Scottish National Party.

The SNP has had a firm grip on power in Scotland since 2015, when it won nearly every Scottish seat — most of which had been occupied by Labour before.

But Thursday’s vote put an end to its winning streak. The party have lost around 80 percent of the seats total they held in 2019, with most going to Labour.

This election has radically changed the UK’s electoral map: a sea of red reminiscent of 1997 has the Conservative party reeling; a few dots of bright light blue and a significant vote share mark Reform UK’s entrance to mainstream UK politics, and the Lib Dems can enjoy a return from relative obscurity with more than 70 MPs, its highest number ever. Meanwhile, the shockingly poor performance of the SNP marks the end of an era north of the border.

*These figures have been updated following the last contituency’s declaration

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The dirty little secret no politician will admit: There is no way to ‘go for growth’

Post By Politics Aid and development, Austerity, Banking union, Banks, Bonds, Bruno Le Maire, Capital markets, Central banking, Central banks, Crisis, Debt, Elections, Emmanuel Macron, Eurozone, Far right, far-left, Finance and banking, Finland, France, Growth, Industry, Inflation, Interest Rates, Investment, Italy, Jordan Bardella, Markets, Monetary policy, opinion, Policy, Rights, Risk and compliance, Single Market, Spectrum, Stability, Tax, Transmission mechanism, United Kingdom

Investment professionals and politicians who spurned Liz Truss’s “go for growth” strategy for the British economy are slowly waking up to an uncomfortable truth.

The former U.K. Prime Minister’s plan, which relied on unfunded tax cuts that were perceived to be inflationary, may have been the only growth plan for Europe’s economies to escape over-indebtedness and low productivity without having to turn to austerity or greater state control of the economy. Not that any of them are prepared to admit it.

Britain’s Institute of Fiscal Studies on Monday described parties’ reluctance to admit as much on Monday as “a conspiracy of silence” arguing Labour’s pledge to rule out tax hikes was a “mistake.” “We wish Labour had not made those tax locks and it will be difficult [politically] to break,” IFS director Paul Johnson said about the party currently leading the polls.

But it’s not just British politicians who are refusing to face up to reality. In France, where an impending snap parliamentary election threatens to empower extremists on both sides of the political spectrum — to the cost of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party — there is a similar reluctance to admit there are only bad options on the table.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire highlighted last week, after French bonds began to wobble, that anything short of centrism risks placing France under the supervision of Brussels and the International Monetary Fund.

What he failed to point out is that even supposedly sensible centrists face having to do the unthinkable in the longer run.

“They have to go to financial repression because high growth as a strategy out of over-indebtedness is not going to be funded by the bond market,” Russell Napier, an influential investment advisor who authors the Solid Ground newsletter, told POLITICO. “I think it doesn’t matter who you vote for, you end up with roughly the same thing. So the market’s not maybe saying ‘we’re very sanguine about Labour [in the U.K.].’ They’re just saying: ‘It doesn’t really matter who you vote for. We are heading toward this route.’”

Incoming financial repression

That route, in Napier’s opinion, means it’s time for financial repression: putting a lid on the free movement of capital and having the government and other technocratic institutions increasingly determine which sectors benefit from public sector funding, and even more critically, from private sector funding too.

The pathway takes Europe much closer to the dirigiste policies that dominated the continent in the post-war period and away from the market-based liberalism that investors have become used to over the past four decades.

Truss’s risky tax cuts had hoped to avoid a push towards state-guided credit rationing by unleashing the power of the private sector and the financial industry to stimulate such a high rate of growth that the accompanying inflation just wouldn’t matter — especially if the Bank of England’s interest rate policy acted in support.

But the dilemma facing France, one of the EU’s largest economies, encapsulates three further political complexities: Paris does not control its own monetary policy, its public sector spending capacity is restricted by fiscal rules created in Brussels — which it is now officially in breach of — and any move to direct private sector financing domestically could clash with the bloc’s greater efforts to create a single capital markets and banking union.

That doesn’t leave much wiggle room for any incoming French government to experiment with a “dash for growth”, either of the free-market Truss variety, or — which is more relevant for France — the free-spending government interventionist one.

Politicization of the ECB

For Macron, the stakes are abundantly clear. In a speech to the Sorbonne University in April, he said: “We must be clear on the fact that our Europe, today, is mortal. It can die. It can die, and that depends entirely on our choices. But these choices must be made now.”

But in the same speech he, too, advocated a wholesale reordering of Europe’s economic framework largely because he — like the populists on either side of him — can’t afford everything he wants.

The current economic model, he said, is no longer sustainable “because we legitimately want to have everything, but it doesn’t hold together.”

Like all of the French presidents of the last 25 years, Macron has faced this constraint on domestic policymaking by trying to co-opt the one institution that has no formal constraints on creating money out of thin air — the European Central Bank. In his Sorbonne speech, he stressed that “you cannot have a monetary policy whose sole objective is to address inflation.”

The ECB’s mandate can only be updated by changing the whole EU treaty, something for which Europe’s leaders have no appetite. But even within its current legal straitjacket, the ECB has found plenty of ways to support national governments when it can, with a sequence of tools and programs that have allowed it to buy their bonds and keep their borrowing costs below where they would naturally have been.

It’s the newest of these tools that is likely to play a key role in the next few weeks. The ECB has stopped net purchases of bonds as part of its broader policy to bring inflation down, but it has one tool — so far untested — that it can use to alleviate any market stress after the elections: the so-called Transmission Protection Instrument.

The TPI allows the ECB to buy the bonds of individual governments whose borrowing costs it considers out of step with macroeconomic fundamentals. The idea is to ensure that its single monetary policy applies reasonably equally across the whole euro area. But it creates substantial scope for the ECB to exercise financial repression on behalf of those it considers aligned with its own mission.

It implies that the ECB knows better than markets what the value of a government promise to pay is. And in not setting any ex ante limits to the scale of its interventions, it has bestowed upon itself enormous power to take on the markets if it disagrees with them strongly enough.

It’s this power that Macron may want to harness if he is still able to present a budget he can call his own after July. But by the same token, he will want to ensure that the ECB denies that support to his opponents if they emerge victorious, just as it did to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Greece’s Alexis Tsipras a decade ago.

According to Napier, whether the ECB ultimately decides to use the TPI or not, the decision will have political implications, not least because it will change the parameters of what the central bank is really prepared to do save the euro, and on whose behalf.

“If you think Macron is an ally of the [European] project, then you don’t use it until after there’s some type of chaos,” Napier said.

Many things could still change between now and July 7. The far right National Rally’s Jordan Bardella, for example, has already walked back some of the party’s spendiest plans, aiming to reassure markets that conflict with the EU over its fiscal rules can be avoided.

But in an interview with the FT published on Thursday, Bardella upset the bond markets again by saying he’d campaign for a big rebate from the EU budget, only hours after his ally and mentor Marine Le Pen signaled that a National Rally government would try to wrest away Macron’s powers as commander-in-chief.

In other words, the threat of major market instability in July remains alive and well. And, as Napier put it: “If bond yields blow up in France they can blow up anywhere.”

(Additional reporting by Geoffrey Smith)

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Fear, a decisive force in these European elections

Post By Politics Aid and development, Bulgaria, Communications, Conflict, Cost Of Living, Crisis, democracy, Elections, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Growth, Health professionals/workforce, Hungary, Immigration, Inflation, Italy, Migration, Poland, Refugees, Regions/Cohesion, research, Romania, Russia, Security, Spain, Terrorism, Tony Blair, UK, Ukraine, War

As the European Parliament elections approach, a growing sense of fear stemming from multiple — yet mutually reinforcing — sources seems to be the decisive force shaping electoral behaviour. Citizens of the EU experience uncertainty in the face of broad economic and cultural changes occurring at an unprecedented pace, coupled by unforeseen crises, such as Covid and the climate crisis, and the re-emergence of war conflicts, on a continent accustomed to peace for over half a century.

The survey

Last month, more than 10,800 European voters took a stand on the pressing issues and running challenges of the EU, as part of a large-scale comparative survey conducted by Kapa Research across 10 member countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Spain) between May 4 and 24, 2024.

This survey goes beyond domestic dilemmas or voting intentions. Taking a closer look at emerging and established trends within European societies between 2019 and 2024, it examines what shapes the bloc’s social agenda today, citizen concerns about European and international issues, leadership expectations, and opinions about leading global figures. On question after question, responses reveal a strong undercurrent of fear impacting voting behaviour just days before June’s European elections, emanating from four critical realities.

Rising cost of living is the foremost concern for Europeans heading to the polls.

Fear cause No.1: Economic uncertainty

Rising cost of living is the foremost concern for Europeans heading to the polls. Inflation shocks that have stunned European economies during the post-pandemic period established a deep-rooted unease about people’s ability to make ends meet. Asked about issues that worry them most when thinking of today’s Europe, respondents, at an average of 47 percent , place “rising cost of living” as their top concern. The issue has become remarkably salient in countries like France (58 percent), Greece (55 percent), Romania (54 percent), Spain (49 percent), and Bulgaria (44 percent), yet, still, in the rest of the surveyed member countries the cost of living ends up among the top three causes of concern. This wide sense of economic uncertainty is further spurred by a lingering feeling of unfairness when it comes to the distribution of wealth: M ore than eight out of 10 (81 percent overall) sense that “in Europe, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer”.

via Kapa Research

Anxiety transforms into fear when one realizes that the main political conflict has little to do with competing economic solutions to high living costs. Instead, it is more of a clash between systemic forces and extremists, primarily centred on the field of immigration and the perceived threat to the European way of life.

Fear cause No.2: Immigration

On the cultural front, since 2015, immigration in Europe has been a complex and multifaceted issue, with humanitarian and political implications. In our survey, immigration appears to be the second most important citizen concern with 37 percent (on average), while, at the same time, on the question of which areas should Europe focus on the next five years, calls for “stricter immigration control” are prevalent, with 36 percent of respondents across all surveyed countries ranking it as a top priority. This is notably evident in Germany (56 percent), in spite of its reputation as a welcoming country early in the migration crisis, and in Italy (40 percent), a hub-country into Europe for migrants and refugees. More importantly, the perception of immigration as a “threat to public order” is widespread, with 68 percent of respondents holding this view, compared to only 23 percent who see it as an “opportunity for a new workforce”.

Fear cause No.3: War on our doorstep

The return of war to Europe has reignited fears about security; conflicts in Ukraine and, more recently, in Gaza come into play as new factors impacting this year’s EU elections. In this survey, “the Russia-Ukraine war” is the third most pressing concern for 35 percent of respondents, only two percentage points below “immigration ”. Here geographical proximity is crucial as the issue is especially prominent in Estonia (52 percent), Hungary (50 percent), Poland (50 percent), and Romania (43 percent), all neighbouring countries to either Russia or Ukraine. Additionally, demand for immediate ceasefire on both fronts is prevalent: 65 percent believe that hostilities in Gaza “must stop immediately ”, while the same view is supported by 60 percent for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

To this end, as the feeling of danger from wars and terrorism grows stronger, EU-UK relations become indirectly connected to the issue of security: 56% of respondents wish for a (re)alignment between Great Britain and the EU. At the same time, and compared to current leaders, former UK PM Tony Blair enjoys strong popularity ratings.

Fear cause No.4: The unknown reality of AI

Over time, technological advancement has been widely welcomed as a positive development for humanity, as a means of improving living conditions, and as a growth accelerator. The rapid rise of a rtificial i ntelligence in citizens’ day-to-day lives seems to be disrupting this tradition. Among the member countries surveyed, an average majority of 51 percent considers AI more as a “threat to humanity” rather than as an “opportunity” (31 percent ). Along the same vein, scepticism is reflected in the reluctance to embrace AI as a strategic goal for the EU in the next five years, with 54 percent opposing such a move.

Mixing all four of the above ingredients produces an explosive cocktail of fear within European societies.

Key takeaway

Mixing all four of the above ingredients produces an explosive cocktail of fear within European societies. While combined with the prevalent EU technocracy and the weak institutions-to-citizens communication, it is reasonable to expect mounted distrust and electoral consequences. Voters will use their ballot to send painful messages. However, our survey shows that the great majority still favo r strengthening the European acquis — security, freedom, democracy, growth, and social cohesion — and seek a competent leadership that can defend it.

See full survey report by Kapa Research here.

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Von der Leyen faces Socialist revolt over her far-right flirtation with Meloni

Post By Politics Aid and development, Elections, Elections in Europe, Emmanuel Macron, EU election, EU staff, European Parliament election 2024, Far right, France, German politics, Germany, Giorgia-Meloni, Iratxe García Pérez, Italy, Katarina Barley, Manfred Weber, Mario Draghi, Markus Töns, MEPs, Nicolas Schmit, olaf, Olaf Scholz, Pascal Canfin, Playbook, Rights, Ursula von der Leyen

Europe’s Socialists have warned Ursula von der Leyen they won’t back her for a second term as European Commission president if she continues to suggest she could work with hard-right MEPs aligned with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Perhaps most crucially — just as French President Emmanuel Macron visits Germany to try to forge Franco-German consensus on Europe’s political landscape after the June 6 to 9 election — even Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democratic Party are signaling that they are willing to torpedo a second term for von der Leyen.

Some even have a replacement in mind: former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. And that’s a choice that will go down well in Paris.

In multiple comments over recent days, high-ranking Socialists including Scholz and the SPD lead candidate for next month’s EU election Katarina Barley threatened to scuttle von der Leyen’s candidacy if she accepts the backing of the hard right to secure a majority in the European Parliament.

“We will not work with the far right,” Barley said on the Berlin Playbook podcast, reiterating the pledge made by the Socialists and Democrats, Renew Europe, the Greens and the Left to “never cooperate nor form a coalition with the far right and radical parties at any level.”

The comment was the latest sign of the left-leaning parties’ alarm at von der Leyen’s stance on Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which belongs to the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament.

Von der Leyen, who hails from the center-right European People’s Party, has indicated that if she fails to secure a majority with the backing of center-left and liberal lawmakers after the EU election, she could work with the ECR.

On Friday, Scholz warned von der Leyen against such a move, saying: “When the next Commission is formed, it must not be based on a majority that also needs the support of the far right.” He added that “the only way to establish a Commission presidency will be to base it on the traditional parties.”

Putting the boot in further, Nicolas Schmit, the Socialists’ lead candidate for the EU election, said in an interview published Sunday: “Von der Leyen wants us to believe that there are good right-wing extremists and bad ones.”

Meloni is “politically extremely right wing” and her vision is “certainly not a strong, integrated Europe,” Schmit said. “For Ms. von der Leyen, however, she is probably a conservative.”

The questions now are whether Scholz and his German Socialists would actually kibosh a second term for fellow German von der Leyen — and who they might have in mind to replace her.

One potential challenger to the incumbent is Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS

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For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.

Just last week, Draghi received the backing of one of Emmanuel Macron’s closest allies, Pascal Canfin, an MEP from the French president’s liberal Renaissance party who is known to have a direct line to the Élysée.

Asked by POLITICO whether France supports von der Leyen’s reelection bid, Canfin said: “France and everyone in the presidential ecosystem would like Draghi to play a role.”

Macron has long been rumored to be maneuvering to put Draghi at the head of the EU executive — and now he appears to have allies in Berlin.

Markus Töns, a German MP from the Social Democrats, told POLITICO’s Brussels Decoded: “Draghi has experience at the European level and knows the current challenges. I would have no problem seeing him in this position — he might even be better than Ursula von der Leyen.”

Ralf Stegner, an influential SPD member of the Bundestag, on Friday said: “If Emmanuel Macron is critical of another term for Ursula von der Leyen, who lacks sufficient clarity regarding alliances with the right-wing bloc, I have every sympathy for him.”

With both Paris and Berlin expressing dissatisfaction with her stance on working with the ECR, von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as Commission chief faces a serious challenge.

While von der Leyen is the EPP’s lead candidate going into the EU election, in theory making her a shoo-in for the post, she will require support from European leaders like Scholz, Macron and Meloni to secure it.

The electoral arithmetic is difficult as she will need 361 votes in an approval vote in the European Parliament, and the EPP is on course only for some 176 seats. The Socialists and Democrats are expected to win 144 and von der Leyen’s prospects will be in severe trouble if the center-left MEPs do not support her.

If they do decide to forgo EPP lead candidate von der Leyen in favor of a curveball, it wouldn’t be the first time: That was precisely the way von der Leyen herself got the job after the 2019 EU election, installed after leaders shunned the EPP’s Manfred Weber.

Macron is currently in Germany for the first state visit with full ceremonial honors by a French president in 24 years. Macron will meet Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday.

It’s hard to believe there won’t be any mention of the electoral mathematics — and of Meloni and Draghi.

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#Von #der #Leyen #faces #Socialist #revolt #farright #flirtation #Meloni

Trump VP prospect Doug Burgum and GOP oil baron Harold Hamm are allies in business and politics

Post By Oil and Gas Breaking News: Politics, business news, donald trump, Elections, Energy, Oil and Gas, politics

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump shakes hands with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Vivek Ramaswamy, left, watches at a campaign rally at The Margate Resort in Laconia, New Hampshire, Jan. 22, 2024.

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

If former President Donald Trump taps North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be his running mate, the biggest beneficiary of the partnership could be someone else entirely: Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of shale oil drilling giant Continental Resources, who could end up with two powerful allies in a Trump White House.

Burgum’s ties to Hamm and the shale oil drilling giant he founded are complex. Continental is the largest oil and gas leaseholder in North Dakota, where oil and gas is the biggest industry by revenue.

The two men also have a friendship outside of business: Burgum recently contributed a rave review blurb to Hamm’s new memoir. And during his 2023 state of the state address, Burgum compared Hamm favorably to President Theodore Roosevelt, describing Hamm as a person “whose grit, resilience, hard work and determination has changed North Dakota and our nation.”

But Burgum has an even more personal link to Continental: Burgum’s family leases 200 acres of farmland in Williams County to the energy giant for the company to pump oil and gas, according to previously unreported business records and a federal financial disclosure report.

Burgum has made up to $50,000 in royalties since late 2022, while he’s been governor, from the deal with Continental Resources, according to his financial disclosure, details of which have not been reported.

Experts told CNBC that Burgum and his family business likely made thousands more from the agreement with Continental Resources since signing a contract with the company in 2009.

This link between Burgum and Continental highlights one of the potential risks for Trump of selecting a running mate who has lived most of his adult life in private.

Burgum has never been subjected to the kind of scrutiny that someone like Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has undergone and from which Rubio has emerged politically intact.

Burgum endorsed Trump in January, a month after he dropped out of the Republican primary for president. Since then, he has become an advisor to Trump on energy policy and joined a shortlist of contenders to be the former president’s running mate.

Hamm, meanwhile, is one of Trump’s biggest supporters in the industry. Burgum, Hamm and other industry advocates were reportedly at a meeting at Trump’s private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, where the former president called on oil and gas executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in exchange for his plan to roll back environmental regulations.

Hamm is co-hosting an event for Trump that’s sponsored by the former president’s political action committee, Make America Great Again Inc., on May 22, according to an invitation.

Continental Resources donated $1 million to the super PAC in April, according to Federal Election Commission records. Hamm gave $614,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in March.

Burgum’s oil deal with Continental

The original agreement between the Burgum Farm Partnership and Continental Resources was signed by Bradley Burgum, the governor’s late brother, according to a land lease reviewed by CNBC.

Burgum spokesman Mike Nowatzki told CNBC the contract was drawn up years before the governor was sworn into office in 2017.

“North Dakota is a leading energy producer, including the No. 3 oil producing state. Tens of thousands of families and mineral owners have similar arrangements,” Nowatzki said. “As the publicly available disclosures show: The cited agreement began many years before he became governor.”

Nowatzki did not answer specific questions about the deal, Burgum’s role with the family business or his relationship with Hamm.

A spokeswoman for both Continental Resources and Hamm did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

CNBC obtained Burgum’s personal financial disclosure by a request to the Federal Election Commission. His business records were acquired through the North Dakota secretary of state’s office.

Data from North Dakota’s Minerals Department shows that the locations of the oil and gas wells matches the coordinates of Burgum’s family farm on his business records. The state’s data does not identify Burgum’s address, but the area where the farm and seven of Continental Resources wells are located is within a small township named Brooklyn.

All seven wells have been active since 2011, just two years after Burgum’s family signed an agreement with Continental Resources. The wells produced over 5,000 barrels of oil and thousands of cubic feet in natural gas in March alone, according to the latest data from Drilling Edge. It’s unclear how many of the seven wells are located directly on the Burgum property.

Burgum was elected governor in 2016 and reelected to a second term in 2020. He’s not running for reelection in 2024.

The Burgum Farm Partnership LLP, which oversees the family farm land in Williams County and Cass County, is worth between $500,001 and $1 million, according to the financial disclosure.

Doug Burgum is a managing partner of the Burgum Farm Partnership, and he signed the businesses’ latest annual report in March. Burgum’s financial disclosure says the governor is a non-managing member and the company is a “family investment” limited liability partnership.

The company’s annual report that was filed to the secretary of state’s office in April lists Burgum, his late brother’s two children, his sister, Barbara, and his own three adult children as managing partners of the family business.

The oil and gas land deal says Continental Resources provides the Burgum Farm Partnership 19% of the proceeds from the sales of oil and gas Continental sold after it is pumped from the Burgum property, according to the contract and experts who reviewed the records.

“The greater benefit is that the Burgum Farm Partnership does not have to invest any money to drill the wells, collect the hydrocarbons (no pipes, no tanks, no roads),” Edward Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said in an email after reviewing the contract.

The royalty payments arrive in monthly and quarterly installments, according to the agreement.

The sun sets behind a pumpjack during a gusty night in Fort Stockton, Texas, March 24, 2024.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

Experts note that landholders leasing their property to oil and gas companies can make thousands of dollars more beyond the royalties in bonuses and other payments.

“The company will usually pay the land owner a ‘bonus’ for signing the lease (usually hundreds or thousands of dollars per acre, depending on how hot the market might be),” said Jack Balagia, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and former general counsel for Exxon Mobil.

Ryan Kellogg, a professor at the University of Chicago who reviewed the contract, said the document does not disclose details of a bonus to the Burgum farm company, except to give a low range of how much was paid.

“The up-front bonus payment is not disclosed,” Kellogg said. “It’s just listed as ‘$10 and more’ where the ‘more’ is potentially significant. Bonuses are almost never disclosed in leases.”

The Burgum contract also says that the family business made money from Continental Resources through one initial down payment called “paid-up” on the lease, with no details provided on how much Burgum and his family saw from that part of the agreement.

“By paid-up, [we mean] a lease where all cash for the term of the lease is paid upfront, and by a rental form, we mean one with a down payment and rental payments once a year after that,” said Ted Borrego, an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Burgum drilling contract raises questions

Government ethics experts say the new details on Burgum’s Continental lease deal underscore the fact that if Burgum were to help implement energy policy in a Trump White House — either as his vice president or in a Cabinet position — his work could personally benefit the North Dakota governor and his family.

“There are potentially significant conflict of interest concerns with respect to Mr. Burgum’s oil and gas leases if Trump were to be reelected and Burgum selected to play an administration role” in implementing Trump’s energy policies, said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Trump has promised that one of his first acts in office, if he is elected, will be to implement a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy and end delays in federal drilling permits and leases for American oil and natural gas production.

“A significant conflict of interest concern would arise, for example, if implementation of these policies would affect the value of Burgum’s leased property interests, his oil and gas leases or the royalties he receives from Continental Resources,” said Canter.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum encourages voters to support Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in the basement ballroom of The Margate Resort in Laconia, New Hampshire, Jan. 22, 2024.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Neither of Burgum’s two financial disclosures from his successful runs for governor reveal a land deal with Continental Resources. North Dakota requires candidates for state office to disclose only the names of businesses that do not act as their principal source of income. No other details are required to be disclosed.

Since Burgum first ran for governor in 2016, he’s disclosed to the North Dakota secretary of state’s office that he and his wife, Kathryn, have a financial interest in more than a dozen companies, including Burgum Farm Partnership.

But those three-page state records do not specify how much of a financial interest they have in these companies nor any money they make from those businesses.

A candidate for president or Congress is required to disclose many more details, including a range of income from each of their assets during the previous 12 months.

Burgum’s federal disclosure report spans 26 pages and reveals scores of closely held LLCs, partnerships and assets. With Burgum’s net worth easily in the hundreds of millions, the Continental lease forms only a small part of his income streams.

Burgum and Trump aligned on energy

Ultimately, it may not matter to Trump whether Burgum has been fully vetted if the governor is the person he wants on his ticket.

For Trump, Burgum represents a key ally in the oil and gas business, as the former president looks to raise money from the industry’s executives.

Dan Eberhart, who runs oil and gas drilling company Canary, said a Trump/Burgum ticket could help to accomplish this.

“Choosing Burgum would bring more industry donors to Trump’s orbit,” Eberhart said in a recent interview.

“Nominating Burgum as VP would send a strong signal to the industry that we would have an important voice in a potential Trump administration,” he added.

President Donald Trump greets Harold Hamm after he was introduced by Hamm at the Shale Insight 2019 Conference in Pittsburgh, Oct. 23, 2019.

Leah Millis | Reuters

Government ethics watchdogs have also started to take notice of the relationship between Trump, Hamm, Burgum and others linked to the oil and gas industry.

“The fact that Mr. Burgum has an income producing, oil and gas lease arrangement with Continental Resources itself raises its own concerns, since Continental Resources’ executive chairman, Harold Hamm, recently participated with other oil and gas executives and Mr. Burgum in the Mar-a-Lago meeting Mr. Trump held last month seeking $1 billion in fundraising from those in attendance,” said Canter.

“Under these circumstances, Mr. Burgum seems to be uniquely positioned to benefit himself both financially and politically depending on what he is able to bring to the table that would serve the respective interests of Trump and Hamm,” she said.

Hamm’s company has had extensive business in North Dakota for over a decade, and the state is ranked in the top three states to produce oil.

In 2022, Hamm announced Continental Resources was investing $250 million into a pipeline that spanned 2,000 miles to capture carbon dioxide and pump it underground for storage in North Dakota. Last year, Hamm donated $50 million to a planned library in North Dakota honoring Roosevelt.

Hamm’s alliance with Burgum preceded a donation Continental Resources made to a PAC that backed the North Dakota governor when he ran for president. The company gave $250,000 to the pro-Burgum Best of America PAC in July, according to FEC filings.

Burgum’s gubernatorial campaign has regularly been backed by other executives in the oil and gas industry, according to data from the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.

Burgum’s successful campaign for governor in 2020 received more than $35,000 from those in the oil and gas industry. That amount is second only to the more than $1 million Burgum put into his campaign.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Make America Great Again Inc. and the correct spelling of Ryan Kellogg’s name.

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Opinion: Opinion | Lok Sabha Polls Phase 2: Can NDA Maintain Its 2019 Lead? What Numbers Say

Post By Stock bjp, Congress, date, Elections, india, Lok Sabha, Opposition, phase, polling, polls, result, vote, voting

As many as 87 seats are set to go to polls on April 26 in the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections. These seats are spread across 13 states: five each in Assam and Bihar, three each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, one each in Jammu & Kashmir and Tripura, 14 in Karnataka, 20 in Kerala, six in Madhya Pradesh, eight in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and 13 in Rajasthan. Apart from these, one constituency in Manipur that voted in the previous phase will witness polling this time too in the remaining booths. Meanwhile, elections in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul have been pushed to Phase 3 after the death of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate.

In effect – three states, Rajasthan, Kerala and Karnataka – account for over half of the seats going to the polls on April 26. While the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) hopes to maintain – if not improve – its tally, the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc will need to make a dent in the NDA’s numbers to really gain some edge.

Turnout In 2019

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are contesting 70 seats each, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) is in the fray in 16 in Kerala. The BSP has put up candidates in 74 constituencies, higher than even the BJP and the Congress.

In terms of turnout, in 2014, these 87 seats recorded 67.3% polling, and in 2019, the voting percentage rose to 70.1%. The decline in turnout in Phase 1 of the elections has been a subject of intense debate, and hence, how much voting the upcoming phase will see will be monitored closely by all.

The polling numbers will also have to be tracked not only in total but also seat-wise. Seventy-one of these 87 seats saw higher voting percentages in 2019, and of them, the incumbent party lost in 24. On the other hand, the turnout saw a decline in 17 seats, and the winning party from 2014 lost in six constituencies.

Winning Margins Bigger For BJP

In the previous elections, the BJP won 52 seats, the Congress 18, while other parties and candidates won 17. Adjusting for allies, the NDA secured victory in 61 constituencies, the INDIA bloc in 23, while non-aligned parties got three seats. For the NDA, the winning margins were around 20% in those 61 seats, meaning that the areas are the alliance’s strongholds and a large number of swing votes will be required to sway the results any other way.

Meanwhile, the Congress’s winning margins in 18 seats in the last election were much smaller – around 10%. This means that a swing of just 5% votes in these regions can put the grand old party on the back foot. Non-aligned parties won with an even thinner margin of 5%, and these seats may see cut-throat contests this time.

Assam And Bihar Contests

Of the five seats going to polls in Assam, the BJP won four last time, and the Congress just one. The latter hopes to gain a few this year on the back of the discontent and the consequent polarisation due to the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

In Bihar’s five seats that will witness polling tomorrow, the Janata Dal (United) (JD-U) won four and the Congress merely one in the 2019 contest. The Mahagathbandhan formation is hoping to bank on the mistrust and anger that Nitish Kumar’s constant flip-flops may have caused amongst certain sections.

Can Karnataka Spring A Surprise?

Fourteen seats are going to the polls in Karnataka tomorrow. Of them, the BJP won 11 in 2019, while the remaining three were netted by the Congress, the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) and an independent. Given the implementation of the ‘guarantees’ by the Siddaramaiah government since it came to power in the state last year, the Congress hopes to make significant gains this time.

The BJP, meanwhile, hopes to neutralise losses due to anti-incumbency by aligning with H.D. Deve Gowda’s JD(S), which has decent clout in Southern Karnataka.

The Kerala Battlefront

Kerala is going to be an interesting battle. Of the 20 seats going to polls here, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) had won 19 seats in the previous Lok Sabha election, while the CPI(M) led Left Democratic Front (LDF) could bag only a single constituency. The BJP hopes to make the contest triangular this time in around five seats where it bagged a 20-30% vote share, and finally open its account in the state. High-profile candidates like Anil Antony, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Suresh Gopi and V. Muraleedharan may help it in that endeavour, but the battle remains tough.

However, the main contest is between the UDF and the LDF. The two Communist parties and the Congress, which are friends in Delhi but foes in Kerala, have been attacking each other aggressively. While the LDF has attacked the Congress over Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Wayanad and not Uttar Pradesh, the latter has questioned why Chief Minister Pinayari Vijayan is not behind bars. The Left has also been raising the CAA issue and the Manipur conflict to woo minorities and win a few seats.

Hat-Trick Bid In Rajasthan, Local Currents In Maharashtra

In Rajasthan, the BJP in 2019 had won all the 13 seats that are going to the polls on April 26. The party hopes to score a hat-trick in the state and win all its 25 Lok Sabha seats again. However, a resurgent Congress and the recent Jat/Rajput ire could put a spanner in the works.

Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, of the eight seats that are poll-bound, the BJP had won three in 2019, the Shiv Sena four, and an independent candidate one. But since then, three erstwhile Sena MPs have joined the Eknath Shinde faction in recent months. The battle in Maharashtra has heated up, with the crucial question for the state and its voters being who the real Sena and the real Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are. After the splits in both parties, while the symbols are with the Shinde and Ajit Pawar factions, the family legacy rests with Uddhav and Sharad Pawar. The contest has turned somewhat local, which is not good for any incumbent; a Presidential-style battle is usually beneficial.

In 2019, the BJP won all the eight seats going to the polls in Uttar Pradesh, except one – Amroha – which was bagged by the BSP. This time, with Mayawati’s party not being a constituent of the INDIA bloc, the BJP hopes to win all of these eight seats. That could be possible but not easy, given that the party’s winning margins in two seats last time, Meerut and Baghpat, were just 4,700 and 23,500 votes, respectively.

To achieve ‘Mission 370’, the BJP will need a strike rate of 83%. It could touch only 72% in the previous Lok Sabha elections. Can it raise its tally this time?

(Amitabh Tiwari is a political strategist and commentator. In his earlier avatar, he was a corporate and investment banker)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.

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#Opinion #Opinion #Lok #Sabha #Polls #Phase #NDA #Maintain #Lead #Numbers

Pioneering policy leadership in a transformative era

Post By Politics Aid and development, Bridges, Buildings, career, Certification and standards, Communications, democracy, Demographics, education, Elections, Energy, Environment, finance, Finance and banking, Governance, Greece, Growth, Harbors, media, Middle East, Negotiations, Policy, Remedies and commitments, research, Security, Skills, Society and culture, state of the union, U.S. elections, Ukraine

With the European Parliament and U.S. elections looming, Europe is facing policy uncertainties on both sides of the Atlantic. Persistent geopolitical turmoil in Ukraine and the Middle East, and threats to democracy — coupled with concerns over slow economic recovery, demographic shifts, climate hazards and the rapid evolution of powerful AI — all add to the complex global political and economic landscape. Europe’s present and future demands leaders who are capable of effectively navigating multifaceted challenges.

At the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, we are committed to developing a groundbreaking executive program that prepares professionals for multilevel policymaking of the 21st century. Our new EUI Global Executive Master (GEM) aims to transform policy professionals into agents of change and enhance their skills as effective managers and leaders who inspire and drive sustainable change.

Listening and responding to the needs of policy professionals is at the core of our new program.

New leaders wanted

George Papaconstantinou is dean of executive education of the European University Institute, and a former Minister of Finance and Minister of Environment and Energy of Greece. | via European University Institute

Just as public policy has changed in the past 20 years, so has executive education for public policy professionals. Listening and responding to the needs of policy professionals is at the core of our new program. The new GEM takes our commitment to training professionals to respond to today’s cross-border issues to the next level; it stands out from other executive master programs through its dedication to providing a personalized career development journey.

Launching in September 2024, the GEM has a two-year, part-time format, with three week-long study periods in Florence, and two additional visits to global policy hubs. This format, combined with online modules, allows policy professionals to integrate full-time work commitments with professional growth and peer exchange, building their knowledge, skills, and networks in a structured way.

This allows policy professionals to integrate full-time work commitments with professional growth and peer exchange.

During the first year, EUI GEM participants take four core modules that will set the basis for a comprehensive understanding of the complex task of policymaking, and its interaction with government, the economy and global trends. In the second year, they have the possibility to select courses in one or more of four specializations: energy and climate; economy and finance; tech and governance; and geopolitics and security.

These core and elective courses are complemented by intensive professional development modules and workshops aimed at enhancing skills in the critical areas of change management, project management, strategic foresight, leadership, negotiations, policy communications, and media relations.

Through the final capstone project, EUI GEM participants will address real policy challenges faced by organizations, including their own, proposing solutions based on original research under the guidance of both the organizations concerned and EUI faculty.

In addition, the program includes thematic executive study visits for in-depth insights and first-hand practical experience.

In addition, the program includes thematic executive study visits for in-depth insights and first-hand practical experience. Participants attend the EUI State of the Union Conference in Florence, a flagship event that brings together global leaders to reflect on the most pressing issues of the European agenda. They explore the role of strategic foresight in EU institutions’ policy planning through an executive study visit to Brussels, complemented by dedicated training sessions and networking opportunities. A final Global Challenge study visit aims to encourage participants to engage with local policy stakeholders.

Bridging academia and practice

Since its inaugural executive training course in 2004, the EUI has successfully trained over 23,000 professionals of approximately 160 nationalities, in almost 600 courses. The EUI GEM leverages this expertise by merging the academic and practical policy expertise from our Florence School of Transnational Governance and the Robert Schuman Centre, as well as the academic excellence in the EUI departments.

The EUI GEM’s aspiration to bridge the gap between academia and practice is also reflected in the faculty line-up, featuring leading academics, private-sector experts, and policymakers who bring invaluable expertise into a peer-learning environment that fosters both learning and exchange with policy professionals.

Effective, agile and inclusive governance involves interaction and mutual learning between the public sector, the private sector and civil society actors, all acting as change agents. That is why our program is designed to bring innovative perspectives on public policy from all three: the public and the private sector, as well as civil society, and we welcome applications from all three sectors.

An inspiring environment

EUI GEM participants spend 25 days in residence at the magnificent Palazzo Buontalenti, headquarters of our Florence School of Transnational Governance. The former Medici palace harbors art-historical treasures in the heart of Florence. In September 2024, a dedicated executive education center will be inaugurated at Palazzo Buontalenti, coinciding with the arrival of the participants of the first GEM cohort.

The GEM is poised to redefine the standards for executive education and empower a new generation of policy practitioners. We are ambitious and bold, and trust that our first cohort will be, too. After all, they are the first to embark on this adventure of a new program. We can’t wait to welcome them here in Florence, where the journey to shape the future begins. Will you join us?

Learn more about the EUI Global Executive Master.

The EUI Global Executive Master | via European University Institute

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#Pioneering #policy #leadership #transformative #era

Senegal’s presidential election: A look at the four main candidates

Post By World Africa, African politics, democracy, Elections, Features, Macky Sall, opposition party, Ousmane Sonko, presidential elections, Senegal

After a political crisis with many twists and turns, Senegalese voters go to the polls on Sunday to choose their new president. Seventeen contenders are hoping to succeed President Macky Sall. FRANCE 24 examines the political backgrounds and main proposals of four candidates: Amadou Ba, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Idrissa Seck and Khalifa Sall.

Issued on: 22/03/2024 – 17:06

5 min

A fast-paced electoral campaign is coming to an end for 17 Senegalese presidential candidates. Over just two weeks, they have been striving to convince voters to support them at the polls on Sunday.

This extraordinary campaign was cut short by the political crisis that began on February 3, when Sall cancelled the election that had been scheduled for February 25. Senegalese lawmakers voted to postpone the vote to December 15, but the Constitutional Council voided the cancellation and the postponement and forced Sall to set a new date.

Sall is nearing the end of two terms (2012-2024) at the head of one of West Africa’s most stable countries. The constitution doesn’t allow him to run for a third mandate.

On March 9, two days after the council confirmed the March 24 vote, Senegal’s presidential candidates launched their campaigns. The 17 hopefuls have increased their trips and public meetings over the last few days to boost visibility and present their ideas on issues including sovereignty, civil liberties, emigration, schools, unemployment and a fishing industry crisis.

Here’s a look at the four main candidates’ key proposals:

Amadou Ba, the continuity candidate

Prime Minister Amadou Ba, 62, is a ruling party candidate and Sall’s preferred successor. The former minister of economy and finance and then foreign affairs, Ba presents himself as a candidate for stability and the continuity of the incumbent’s economic record, while also promising a return to calm after months of political crisis.

Ba focused his campaign programme on youth employment in a country where three-quarters of the population is under 35. His key promise: to create 1 million jobs by 2028 through public/private partnerships and investment in agriculture, industry, infrastructure and renewable energies.

He also calls for updating “conventions and contracts signed by the state of Senegal in the field of natural resources”, providing a minimum financial allowance to the elderly and accelerating the construction of a national school of cultural arts and crafts.

Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the anti-system candidate

Senegalese presidential candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye gestures during a press conference in Dakar on March 15, 2024. © John Wessels, AFP

Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, a replacement for opposition leader Ousmane Sonko who was excluded from the presidential race in January, has had even less time than other candidates to campaign in person. The cofounder of the opposition Pastef party, who was released from prison along with Sonko on March 14, is campaigning against the country’s political class and promises to reclaim Senegal’s “sovereignty”, a term used 18 times in his electoral platform.

To this end, Faye proposes getting rid of the CFA franc inherited from the colonial era to introduce a new currency, and to make the teaching of English widespread in a country where the official language is French. He also says he wants to renegotiate mining and hydrocarbon contracts as well as defence agreements.

The Pastef platform also aims for institutional reform with the creation of the role of vice president and safeguards to check the power of the president, including potential removal from office.

Idrissa Seck, the veteran candidate

Idrissa Seck, founder of the Rewmi party, is seen during an opposition press conference in Dakar on January 15, 2019. Seck was also a candidate in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election. © Seyllou, AFP

Former prime minister Idrissa Seck, who served under ex-president Abdoulaye Wade between 2002 and 2004, is running in a fourth consecutive presidential race. The 64-year-old former Sall opponent, who long maintained the suspense surrounding his eventual candidacy, has put his political experience and knowledge of the inner workings of government to use in his bid to win over voters.

Among his signature proposals are compulsory military service, the creation of a common currency for West African countries and a fund financed by oil and gas companies to compensate for damage to the fishing industry.

The founder of Senegal’s Rewmi party also proposes to devote 60 percent of public investment to areas outside the Dakar region.

Khalifa Sall, the comeback candidate

Presidential candidate Khalifa Sall greets supporters during a tour of several areas in Senegal’s capital Dakar on March 9, 2024. © Seyllou, AFP

Khalifa Sall (no relation to the outgoing president) is another Senegalese political heavyweight trying his luck in the race. Sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 5 million CFA francs for fraud and embezzlement of public funds in 2018, the leader of the Taxawu Senegal coalition was barred from entering the 2019 presidential contest. Macky Sall’s rival has since returned to politics thanks to a presidential pardon and a law authorising the restoration of civil rights for convicted people who were amnestied following a national dialogue initiated by the government in May 2023.

In this election, the 68-year-old Sall is presenting himself as the candidate to heal a “damaged” country. The man who sees himself as the heir to Senegal’s socialist party promises to institute a citizen-initiated referendum. He also pledges to devote at least 1,000 billion CFA francs (1.5 billion euros) of the annual national budget to agriculture.

Sall’s foreign policy programme aims to “diversify and rebalance” diplomatic and economic partnerships by “strengthening (global) south-south cooperation and cooperation with emerging countries”.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

The 17 candidates in Senegal’s presidential election

Anta Babacar Ngom

Amadou Ba

Boubacar Camara

Déthié Fall

Daouda Ndiaye

Khalifa Sall

Idrissa Seck

Mame Boye Diao

Mouhamed Boun Abdallah Dionne

Aliou Mamadou Dia

Malick Gackou

Aly Ngouille Ndiaye

Mamadou Lamine Diallo

Serigne Mboup

Pape Djibril Fall

Bassirou Diomaye Faye

Thierno Allassane Sall

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‘Shpilkin method’: Statistical tool gauges voter fraud in Putin landslide

Post By World Elections, Europe, Features, Fraud, presidential elections, Russia, Russian politics, Vladimir Putin

As many as half of all the votes reported for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election last week were fraudulent, according to Russian independent media reports using a statistical method devised by analyst Sergey Shpilkin to estimate the extent of voter manipulation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed a landslide victory on Sunday that will keep him in power until at least 2030, following a three-day presidential election that Western critics dismissed as neither free nor fair.

The criticism is shared by Russia’s remaining independent media outlets, which have published their estimates of the extent of voter manipulation during the March 15-17 election that saw Putin clinch a fifth term in office with a record 87% of ballots cast.

Massive fraud

“Around 22 million ballots officially in favour of Vladimir Putin were falsified,” said the Russian investigative journalism website Meduza, which interviewed Russian electoral analyst Ivan Shukshin.

Important Stories, another investigative news website, gave a similar number, estimating that 21.9 million false votes were cast for the incumbent president.

The opposition media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe came up with an even bigger number, claiming that 31.6 million ballots were falsified in Putin’s favour.

That figure “corresponds to almost 50 percent of all the votes cast in the president’s favour, according to the Central Election Commission [Putin received 64.7 million votes]”, said Jeff Hawn, a Russia expert at the London School of Economics.

All three estimates suggest that “fraud on a scale unprecedented in Russian electoral history” was committed, added Matthew Wyman, a specialist in Russian politics at Keele University in the UK.

The three news outlets all used the same algorithmic method to estimate the extent of voter fraud. It is named after Russian statistician Sergey Shpilkin, who developed it a decade ago.

Shpilkin’s work analysing Russian elections has won him several prestigious independent awards in Russia, including the PolitProsvet prize for electoral research awarded in 2012 by the Liberal Mission Foundation.

However, he has also made some powerful enemies by denouncing electoral fraud. In February 2023, Shpilkin was added to Russia’s list of “foreign agents”.

Shady turnout figures

The Shpilkin method “offers a simple way of quantitatively assessing electoral fraud in Russia, whereas most other approaches focus on detecting whether or not fraud has been committed”, said Dmitry Kogan, an Estonia-based statistician who has worked with Shpilkin and others to develop tools for analysing election results.

This approach – used by Meduza, Important Stories and Novaya Gazeta – is based “on the turnout at each polling station”, said Kogan.

The aim is to identify polling stations where turnout does not appear to be abnormally high, and then use them as benchmarks to get an idea of the actual vote distribution between the various candidates.

In theory, the share of votes in favour of each candidate does not change – or does so only marginally –according to turnout rate.

In other words, the Shpilkin method has been able to determine that in Russia, candidate A always has an average X percent of the vote and candidate B around Y percent, whether there are 100, 200 or more voters in an “honest” polling station.

In polling stations with high voter turnout, “we realised that this proportional change in vote distribution completely disappears, and that Vladimir Putin is the main beneficiary of the additional votes cast”, said Alexander Shen, a mathematician and statistician at the French National Centre for Scientific Research’s Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics in Montpellier. .

To quantify the fraud, Putin’s score is compared with what the result would have been if the distribution of votes had been the same as at an “honest” polling station. The resulting discrepancy with his official score gives an idea of the extent to which the results were manipulated in his favour.

The Shpilkin method makes it possible to put a figure on the “ballot box stuffing and accounting tricks to add votes for Vladimir Putin”, said Shen.

Limitations of the Shpilkin method

However, “this procedure would be useless if the authorities used more subtle methods to rig the results”, Kogan cautioned.

For instance, if the “fraudsters” took votes away from one of the candidates and attributed them to Putin, the Shpilkin method would no longer work, he explained.

“The fact that the authorities seem to be continuously using the most basic methods shows that it doesn’t bother them that people are aware of the manipulation,” Kogan added.

Another problem with the Shpilkin method is that it requires “at least a few polling stations where you can be reasonably sure that no fraud has occurred”, said Kogan, for whom that condition was not easy to be sure about in last week’s presidential election.

“I’m not sure we can really reconstruct a realistic distribution of votes between the candidates, because I don’t know if there is enough usable data,” added Shen.

Does this negate the validity of the estimates put forward by independent Russian media?

Kogan said he stopped trying to quantify electoral fraud in Russia in 2021. He explained: “At the time, I estimated that nearly 20 million votes in the Duma [lower house] election had been falsified. Then I said to myself, ‘what’s the point in going to all this trouble if the ballots were completely rigged?’”

Nevertheless, he said it is important to have estimates based on the Shpilkin method because even if it is difficult to get a precise idea, “the order of magnitude is probably right”.

These rough estimates are also “an important political weapon”, said Wyman, stressing the need to “undermine the narrative of the Russian authorities, who claim that the high turnout and the vote in favour of Putin demonstrate that the country is united”.

It is also an important message to the international community, added Hawn.

“The stereotype is that Russians naturally vote for authoritarian figures,” he said. “By showing how inflated the figures are, this is a way of proving that the reality is far more nuanced.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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#Shpilkin #method #Statistical #tool #gauges #voter #fraud #Putin #landslide

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