European Parliament Elections, G7 Leaders’ 50th Summit, Powerful Hurricane Season Looming, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, European Parliament elections begin across the continent, G7 leaders meet in Italy with a hefty agenda, and forecasts call for an especially active hurricane season in the Atlantic. It's June 6th, 2024 and time for The World Next Week.

I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's start in Europe where there's going to be quite a lot of things going on playing out over the next week or so. Today and through the weekend, close to 400 million Europeans are set to cast their ballots for 720 members of the European Parliament, the EU's legislative body. Since the last election, the EU has faced surging migration and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has helped far-right parties gain strongholds across EU member states. Polls are projecting a strong showing for far-right parties, and what would that mean for EU policy going forward?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, let's back up for a minute. So in case you're wondering if anyone outside of Brussels or Strasbourg, which are the two homes for the European Parliament, care about these elections, Moscow apparently does. Europeans are seeing a major push of Russian disinformation, claims that the French government is writing a tax to pay for Ukraine war. All sorts of claims about things, like this incredible story that's going through in Germany that a cyclist bled to death, a teenage cyclist bled to death because the German government supposedly turned off streetlights after it ran out of Russian gas. And now there are denial-of-service attacks going on today. So the Russians are paying attention to this.

Now, a few basic facts about the vote. This isn't a single national election, it's twenty-seven elections in twenty-seven member countries. Each state votes for its own representative, and the number of seats they have is just like the U.S. House, it's portioned by population. And the issues even vary state by state. Although there are common issues, they're much like what we care about here, economy, the price of gas, Ukraine, migration. But more than anything, everyone's saying that the vote is likely to be a referendum on current governments. And so, as you said, people are likely going to be voting many more than have in the past for rightist parties.

So what are the polls saying? The two main blocs of centrist parties have long run the show in the parliament, the EPP, which is the European People's Party. Which I love this, Politico Europe described as, "Sort of like the Republicans but anti-gun, pro-choice, and pro-NATO." So really not like the Republicans at all. And the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats or S&D, which are like the Democrats in the U.S., but more socialist. These two blocs are expected to continue to keep their hold on power and retain most of their seats. But the Greens and the Centrist Renew party are expected to lose a lot of seats and the two right-wing blocs, which are the Nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists, the ECR, which includes Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Poland's Law and Justice Party we've talked about, and the even harder-lined far-right Identity and Democracy, which includes Marine Le Pen's, National Rally and Geert Wilders' Dutch Party for Freedom, but recently tossed out Germany's AfD, are expected to make a very strong showing and together could end up with more seats than the reigning center-right European People's Party, which is the current European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's party.

So some polls chillingly have these radical right-wing parties on track to win the vote in as many as half a dozen states, including France and Belgium and of course Italy. So could they end up controlling the parliament? Our colleague Matthias Matthijs wrote on CFR.org this week that squabbling among the far-right parties as likely to be so intense that even if they did have the most number of seats, they're unlikely to control the parliament since there are so many issues that divide these right-wing groups, including Ukraine and European values. So they may come out ahead with most of the seats, they are unlikely to control the parliament and to control the votes.

As for why we should pay attention, it's interesting. I mean this is such a complicated structure. The EU commissioners, which is the executive branch of the EU, actually proposes laws. The parliament can't do it. Parliament still improves the budget and ultimately has to vote on these law. And if a growing number of European voters turn rightward, it could lead all the political leaders in the EU, in the individual governments and the EU commissioners and ultimately the parliament as well, to take a hard look at all these policies from climate change to migration and of course support for Ukraine, take a really hard look at all of those things and that's going to really matter, particularly if we take a rightward turn in the United States.

MCMAHON:
Carla, thanks for spelling that all out because I do think it is a bewilderment to outside watchers, although they all understand it's an important democratic exercise. One of the deliverables or one of the important consequences also is I believe the naming of the European Commission president. So Ursula von der Leyen, as you mentioned, her party's involved. My understanding is she still is poised to be possibly renewed and has been running some campaigning on her own. That would be important, wouldn't it? Because of her pretty strong and outspoken support for the transatlantic alliance on the Ukraine front and so forth, yeah?

ROBBINS:
She's not on a ballot, okay?

MCMAHON:
Right.

ROBBINS:
Nobody votes for...The commission is the executive branch for the EU, and the way this works is that the heads of government in Europe, they choose, they nominate who's going to be the head of the commission and the parliament has to, a majority of the parliament has to sign off on it. The expectation is that they will follow who the big winners are and the European People's Party is still expected to come out ahead and she's their candidate. This is not a national vote here for who's going to be the president and it's not even a parliamentary vote. They could, the heads of government could choose somebody else. They did last time around. It wasn't who the parliament wanted. They chose somebody different and they ended up choosing von der Leyen.

There are several other candidates out there campaigning. She's not on a ballot anywhere, but she's campaigning like she is on a ballot. She's gone to eleven countries. There's been debates, there's been stump speeches. She is not as popular as she was last time around. There's been a variety of issues that have come up here. The betting is that she'll get the job anyway, and she's been a very good interlocutor for the transatlantic alliance and a huge supporter of Ukraine. So we'll see what happens here. And once again, a lot of this really matters, particularly if Trump wins the election here in the United States. Betting is it's going to be Ursula von der Leyen, but ultimately it's not the decision of the voters.

Now if she is nominated, the parliament has to approve it, a majority has to approve it, and if her EPP party does as expected, she's still going to have to have a coalition of seats in the parliament to give her that majority vote. And there is this whole question of who are they going to make a coalition with? And there's even a suggestion that Giorgia Meloni could be one of the kingmakers because her rightist group is going to get a lot of votes and that could cause a lot of problems. It could take quite a while for them to confirm von der Leyen or whoever is chosen.

MCMAHON:
You know, it makes me think, first of all, we should all be aware of sweeping conclusions after we see these votes come in because there are a lot, as you indicate, lots of interplay going on, even amid movements on the right or even the center-right or center-left. But it does strike me also as just a really important democratic exercise. Voters aren't going to have choices to go in different directions, whether they are feeling concerned about issues like migration issues or environmental issues or whatever, the choices will be there for them. It's just at the end of the day, there's going to have to be some horse trading to emerge with whether a repeat of the leadership that we've had or whether we're going to see a course change, which we've already seen on the national front as you mentioned.

Let's take a country like the Netherlands definitely gone to the right, although Geert Wilders, who you mentioned, has not been able to form a government, so there's had to be a bit of a horse trading there to come up with a consensus government that can actually rule the country. And they've already co-opted some of the more right-leaning policies, whether it's on immigration or elsewhere without going too far to the right in terms of being let's say blatantly anti-Muslim.

ROBBINS:
As important as this is, and for us it's really hard to understand this complexity. You've got a parliament, but they can't propose laws. You've got a commission president who's not chosen either in a parliamentary system or in a direct vote. This is a pretty complex thing. Europeans also find it overly complex to understand. And so while this is the second-largest vote in this year of elections after India's, I believe, you're going to have to see even how many people turn out to vote.

Europeans still see their own domestic elections as far more important, and five years ago, only slightly more than 50 percent of European voters showed up for this parliamentary election. Now there's an overlap in several states with their own domestic elections and that may drive up the numbers, but I think it's important. I think it's going to tell you something about the future of Europe and I think it may have an impact on policies that are very important for us in the transatlantic alliance for the future of Ukraine, but we'll see whether they even meet that 50 percent vote.

Bob, let's stay in the EU region and move down to Italy, a lovely place to go. And next Thursday, G7 leaders are going to meet in the seaside city of Apulia. Is that a city or a region?

MCMAHON:
It's a region. It's the region of Apulia.

ROBBINS:
Okay. Apulia, for their fiftieth summit. The agenda, as it always is for the G7, is extensive. The question of continued support for Ukraine, positions on the Israel-Palestine relationship, de-risking from China, improving ties with Africa, safeguarding artificial intelligence. And in a bid to make the G7 more inclusive, Italian Prime minister Giorgia Meloni, potential kingmaker on the EU Commission president, has invited a host of additional leaders with many from the Global South. What can we expect from this summit?

MCMAHON:
Well, we would be remiss in not mentioning that Zelenskyy, who we love to mention in showing up at these events, is going to be there as well. That would be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And we should also mention Pope Francis, who I believe will be the first pope ever to attend one of these meetings, obviously not having to travel too far, and is particularly interested in AI issues. So that is going to be intriguing.

But let's go back to Meloni because she has been taking this very seriously in terms of scoping out an agenda and she has been sort of an intriguing person in her own right in terms of when she came to office, there were all sorts of concerns about a rightward lurch in Italy, but she took a number of interesting steps including really full-throated support for Ukraine, taking Italy out of the Belt and Road Initiative that China has been trying to extend well into Europe, and making statements like this one, which she says the G7 has a quote, "Increasingly important role in the defense of democratic values, the protection of the rules-based international system, and the ability to meet the challenges of our time." That seems like a pretty consensus sort of view for a G7 host to be having.

And she's...on top of it. She's going to be taking on an issue, I think, in much more of a robust way than we've seen the G7 before, which is migration. Italy is a frontline country, obviously. It's island of Lampedusa is inundated really with migrants who are fleeing really horrible situations in Middle East and Africa in particular, and she's trying to take a multi-track approach. The way she's framing it is a two-part effort she would like the G7 to coalesce around, which is going after the traffickers who are definitely taking advantage of these desperation of the migrants and clamping down and providing a concerted effort against those, and then trying to find a way to deal with the problem at its source, which is helping source countries to further strengthen themselves, strengthen their own systems of governance and wellbeing so that migrants are not forced to flee in the first place. That is the work of ages, frankly, given the scale of problems. But it is a start.

She has an initiative underway with Albania, an agreement, a five-year agreement in which Albania is going to host thousands of asylum seekers. She just made a visit this week with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to sign the deal, and there's going to be other G7 countries keenly interested in this issue. Obviously the UK, Rishi Sunak, who's facing his own election next month, has tried to put forward a deal with Rwanda where it would host asylum seekers and I believe other migrants as well. That deal is, seems to be stalled at the moment, but it is an issue front and center because the numbers of migrants are growing. And this is, we should say irregular migrants on top of the legal migration, which is at a very high level as well, in part because of people leaving Ukraine and being allowed to resettle legally around Europe.

So it's a big issue. We're going to look to the G7 for framing this and for giving us a sense of where it can go. It's important to note looking at past G7 meetings maybe to see how they might come down on issues. Last year's summit, for example, the G7 ministers committed to a joint agreement on climate protection and energy security, and the country's had agreed to offshore wind and solar capacity increases by 2030. However, they could not agree on phasing out coal or restricting investments in natural gas. And climate efforts have basically been shunted aside as countries deal front and center with energy prices surging. So it's a way of pointing out that the G7 will give you a sense of these still very strong and leading democratic economies on the issues of the day, but their ability to sustain or take concerted action is sometimes limited.

ROBBINS:
So Meloni hasn't been anyone near as scary as many people feared, but migration obviously is just a favorite scary issue for the right-wing parties. And let's face it, she comes from a very right-wing party. You described her policies that she's promoting in a rather anodyne way, Bob.

MCMAHON:
I beg your pardon?

ROBBINS:
Are you taking this, do you really believe that she really is concerned about traffickers and all that? Or is this just a cover for denying people who want asylum the possibility of asylum under international law and EU law inside of Italy? She's broken with many people in her own party on questions like Ukraine. Is she coming up with some sane ideas on migration or is this all a cover?

MCMAHON:
I think as it relates to traffickers, I mean those who follow this issue closely will definitely acknowledge this is an issue. There are networks and gangs in Italy; Meloni knows criminal gangs in the mafia in particular are seizing the opportunities here. It seems to be a real thing in terms of the operational or the people capitalizing on the ongoing surge in migration and desperation of migrants. So as far as that goes, I don't necessarily doubt that. However, it's the issue of working with the partnerships with countries, not necessarily Albania, but countries on the front lines. Tunisia, a country that's lurching in an extremely authoritarian direction. Egypt has an authoritarian government and the partnerships with those countries, there have been attempts to extend further into Africa. And other countries, by the way, in Europe, have tried to do the same thing.

I think on the one hand it does make sense, and the U.S. has tried this in Central America too, that you try to shore up the weak states or the frontline states in ways that allow them to deal with the problem rather than you having to deal with the problem. Does it mean that they should be doing more to actually process properly and abide by their international law commitments? Yes. At the same time, as you say, it's a hot, hot political issue, especially in a number of European countries where you have the demographics for the population increasing are particularly bad, and having your traditionally Italian or German or other populations supplanted by Middle Eastern populations, for example, does not sit well with many in the population, which again is feeding the populism of right-wing parties in particular. Which is all to say that, these countries are trying to stanch the flow of migrants.

I mean, recall what happened after the 2015 surge, which was higher than we've currently seen, and you had a number of remarkable things. You had both Angela Merkel opening up Germany in an extraordinary way that created though a backlash that fed the founding or the growing of the AfD, the Alternative für Deutschland party, which is a extremely far-right party. And you also had the EU countries making a deal with Turkey to be the country of, the staging country, the country of permanent kind of purgatory status for millions of people who would otherwise be fleeing across Mediterranean waters and other seas to get to Europe. They had to make a deal there that was not necessarily a great thing, but it was a way of keeping the flows down. They are back and they're coming from North Africa now, not from Turkey and the feeder issues, war, failed states, climate, all of these issues are not going to be settled overnight.

Something we've talked about repeatedly in the podcasts, for example, the war in Sudan, it's horrible. There is now signs of famine setting in there. That's not going to be settled anytime soon. And you can point to hotspots throughout certainly Africa and the Middle East to show the growing areas of where migrants are forced to make these moves. So it's a long way of saying, Carla, there is some legitimacy in her approach, but there's also a sense of making a strong power move from a wealthier country towards a less wealthy country to try to offshore the problem a bit. And we've seen this happen again and again.

ROBBINS:
And then of course they're going to, I think, be wrestling with this question about what to do with frozen Russian funds.

MCMAHON:
Yes, that's another one worth watching, which is how much consensus is there for there for the interest that's accruing on frozen Russian funds, which is in the many, many tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, taking that and using it for reconstruction in Ukraine. There seems to be growing support for that, although there are also G7 countries that are wary of that. Russia has been warning against that and trying to demonstrate how it could stage its own reprisals by seizing assets that are still in Russia itself from Western countries. So it's not clear whether that's going to emerge as a full-fledged thing or not.

Certainly, again, I mentioned Zelenskyy. There'll be talk about unifying behind him. These meetings will be coming off of the big events that are playing out as we were taping this podcast in Normandy, president Biden gave a big D-Day speech today. He's going to give another one at Pointe du Hoc, this incredible cliff that was scaled by Army rangers on D-Day, and then he's going to have a state visit in France and there's going to be ongoing discussions and reaffirmations of support for Ukraine. So I think you'll see something from the G7 that at least rhetorically will be a statement of support in terms of concrete steps like the seizure of assets, Russian assets, or further sanctions. Not sure yet how those are going to take shape. We should also mention China continues to be on the mind of these countries as well, and there'll be some talk about possible sanctions on China related to dumping of renewable energy equipment and so forth.

ROBBINS:
Bob, as a former Miamian, here's another story I'm very concerned about. June 1st marked the start of the Atlantic Basin's hurricane season and scientists are predicting a total of 204 storms this year, more than double the average and possibly somewhere between eight and thirteen hurricanes. And in response to these ever-increasing destruction costs, insurers are leaving the most affected states in droves. Is this, first of all, all climate change and are we getting any better at preparing for and surviving these storms?

MCMAHON:
It is in great part climate change because as we got the news about the hurricane season forecasts, following up that we have also seen further reporting about the sustained period of record setting temperatures now, twelve months straight beyond the 1.5º Celsius that countries in the Paris accords had targeted as the level that they don't want to exceed or they were going to be facing major consequences. The consequences are here. Climate change, among other things, warms the oceans. The oceans tend to be the area that captures most of the excess heat. And when the oceans get warmer, there is a dynamic that occurs that basically contributes to more and more powerful storms. The hurricane season is a sign of that. I should also mention the tornado season is going to pick up, and we just had nearby here in the mid-Atlantic, some tornadoes touched down in Maryland in ways that we have not seen before.

But the hurricane season is going to be one to watch. These storms are incredibly powerful. They're adding to the names, they're creating extra categories for how to name these storms, extra categories for how to rate these storms. And there's categories three, four, and five. You hear five is winds of 111 miles per hour or excess. We are seeing the forecast or average indicate something like twenty-three named storms, eleven hurricanes, and five major hurricanes. And if they hit places like your beloved Florida or the Gulf Coast or they come up farther into the sort of mid-Atlantic area, or they swirl around and maybe hit another part of the Gulf into Texas, they have incredible wind power and wind damage. They have incredible amounts of rainfall that can come down and the signs are there already.

Back to your question on the resiliency, yeah, some towns are getting more focused, even places in which there are elected officeholders who are not so seized of climate change concerns and do not see the need to try to ramp up renewables and phase out fossil fuels, they are still acknowledging the need to create plans and safeguards for these coastal communities that will not exist if this keeps on happening.

And I'm talking about Florida, I'm talking about Texas and the Gulf coast as well. They need to get better at it though. And part of getting better at it, though, acknowledges what climate change is. For me, it almost conjures up some of the vaccine denial response that you have. Like here you have a method for dealing with diseases that is ironclad proven to be effective even with the reports of people who have problems with vaccines and so forth, on balance, it is incredibly effective way of fighting diseases. Climate is far more complicated, obviously, but a starting point is to phase out the fossil fuel dependence and then deal with the changes that are here to stay. And so that is building up infrastructure, it's continuing to pour resources into forecasting.

And you see actually a great deal of trust in the National Weather Service. I saw a media survey that says National, or the Weather Channel, I should say, is considered the most trusted media in the country in the U.S. at this point. So you have that, but you do have these weather services that are extremely diligent about trying to predict, and then they do a kind of post-mortem about what they got right and what they got wrong. I think we're going to need more of that all along the line to understand what's happening here, to understand what an El Niño and a La Niña is. We're apparently cycling out of El Niño and turning into La Nina, which is supposed to bring a cooling phase to oceans and temperatures. But that change in temperature also leads to all sorts of tough weather and sometimes really fierce weather responses including a severe hurricane season.

So hold on for the next six months, Carla, sorry to say. And it's just a question of where these storms are going to go and how these communities are going to be able to build up their barricades, but also pick up the pieces afterwards because unfortunately we're going to be looking at that.

ROBBINS:
This of course reminds me of one of my truly favorite lines from one of the Men in Black movies in which the Tommy Lee Jones character, of course, had his brain scrambled so he doesn't remember he is a Men in Black and he talks about how his life has become normal and he describes his life as what he does, "I sleep late on the weekends and I watch the Weather Channel." So, it sounds a little bit like a life I aspire to.

MCMAHON:
The Weather Channel is becoming a reality TV show, a gripping reality TV show that is unfortunately getting more and more dramatic.
Well, Carla, I'd love to talk more about the disintegration of our weather system, but let's go to the audience figure of the week. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. And this week our audience seemed to be channeling this fossil fuel issue. They selected, "OPEC+ Cuts 5.8 million Barrels a Day of Oil Production." Do these cuts mean that we should worry about summer gas prices, Carla?

ROBBINS:
Directly related to the previous conversation of course. And yes, the Saudis and Russians are certainly hoping that we should be worrying about rising summer gas prices. Interestingly, U.S. average national gas prices right now are $3.56 a gallon, and that's actually a penny less than they were a year ago. And that's even with all that is happening in the Middle East. The war in Gaza, attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Houthis, the global benchmark price of Brent Crude is in the $81 to $83 per barrel range for the last month or so after surging far above a $100 a barrel in the months after Russia invaded Ukraine. So OPEC+, which is OPEC+ Russia and several others have been trying for more than a year to push the prices back up to that a hundred dollars range. And this week's statement extends a series of collective cuts that began more than a year ago, and it extended another group of voluntary cuts as well by eight of the largest producers, but with a phase out calendar. And it seems that instead of focusing on the cuts, traders seem to be more focused on that phase out, at least for now.

So as of 8 AM today, Thursday, New York time, the price of Brent Crude was... I sound like I'm on a different channel. Price of Brent Crude was $77.48, so far below that hundred, far below even the $80 to $83 that it has been. So economists have a variety of explanations for why these cuts over the last year have yet to work. Slower economic growth in China may have reduced oil demand; non-OPEC supplies, good part U.S. shale producers; and there's been a growing global investment, the good news, in clean energy. We'll see whether these new cuts eventually get priced in. Who knows?

As for the $100 a barrel goal, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS really wants that money. He wants increased oil profits to fund what he calls his Vision 2030 to ultimately diversify Saudi Arabia's economy. And that's especially true after he's failed to drum up as much foreign direct investment as he'd been looking for for that project. And we all know why Russia wants more money. They want higher oil prices to sustain its war economy, which is really a good reason to not be driving your cars.

So on Thursday, interestingly, with the market not doing what they wanted, OPEC+ ministers were meeting in St. Petersburg and they said they could revisit the agreement, including the promised phase out. So we'll see.

MCMAHON:
And Russia, of course, has been having to offer their sales at a discount just to keep some of the buyers interested in their sanctioned energy supplies. But any sort of increase somehow will trickle to them in a positive way. So yeah, that is one of the many stakes here with this decision. And OPEC+, while maybe less of a dominant feature in the global markets previously, is still really important to watch, and we're going to see what the summer holds for U.S. autos, and we should also mention the EV industry, the electric vehicle industry, is in a bit of a flux right now too. They're trying to slash prices, but they still are far above other price costs and the whole infrastructure for charging and so forth seems a bit lagging as well. More to come, I'm sure, Carla.

ROBBINS:
And is MBS coming to the G7 meeting, Bob?

MCMAHON:
Carla, as far as we know, he has not accepted yet, so we're not sure if he's going to show up at G7.

ROBBINS:
And I am not sure he was invited there for his Global South credential so much as those oil prices.

MCMAHON:
We should mention that he and many other Global South countries are represented in the G20, which has stolen some of the G7s thunder in recent years.

ROBBINS:
Referring to the Saudis as the Global South is an interesting concept.

MCMAHON:
Well, that's our look at the world next week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visits China, and the eighty-fourth Peabody Awards, spotlight television, podcast, radio, and online media in the United States.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it, we appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode as well as the transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please know that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those in the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. And special thanks to Kennedy Mangus for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria, and this is Carla Robbins saying so long and take public transportation.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.