The European Union and its shift to the right

Indeed, today's dizzying technologies, as well as fast disruptions in politics, economy and cultures have transformed the world into a global village. The emerging events and trends in Europe, in the Americas and in Africa, and all over the world are necessarily impinging on us in Asia. We, Filipinos, should be aware of all the developments in today's geopolitics on the other sides of the globe, which necessarily impact on the socio-economic and political trends in Asia and specifically in the Philippines.

We cannot remain impervious nor indifferent to the shifting of trends today. One significant contemporary event is the distinct swerve to the ideological right in the European Union. The EU is a political and economic alliance of 27-member states, which is considered as supranational in the sense that it transcends political and geographic boundaries. The EU's distinct importance lies in the fact that the 27 countries it encompasses contain more than 455 million people, or 6 percent of the world's total population and its combined nominal GDP is estimated to be not less than $18 trillion. The EU is a major political and economic alliance that controls the wealth of Europe, except the UK, which made a historic Brexit on June 23, 2016.

Before the EU came into being, whenever I travelled to Europe, I used to change my dollars into different currencies everytime I crossed the borders of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Austria. Today, one euro can be used in all 27 member states, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands. Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. It is imperative that we Asians, and more specifically, we Filipinos, should be constantly aware of the EU developments because we have diplomatic and trade relations with all of them and there are thousands of OFWs working in the EU nations.

The June 2024 EU Parliament elections resulted in a very sharp swerving of ideology from the left and from the center towards the right. Last June 9's parliamentary elections resulted in a major victory of the rightist EPP or the European Peoples' Party, led by Ursula von der Leyen, which captured most of the contested seats. The elections saw the tremendous debacles of the liberal and environmentalist parties, as well as the pro-EU centrist alliances. The rightist European Conservatives and Reformists aggrupation trounced their liberal opponents and several new right-leaning parties won a significant number of seats. This trend is significant and will have an impact on economic and trade policies that shall affect us, Filipinos, especially on immigration and migrant labor.

The EU elections from June 6 to 9 was the tenth in its history and a total of 720 members of the EU Parliament were elected. The allocations of Parliamentary seats, based on the size of population and economy, are 96 for Germany, 81 for France, 76 for Italy, and 61 for Spain followed by Poland, 53, Romania, 33 and Netherlands 31. Smaller members Belgium has 22, then 21 each for Sweden, Portugal and Czech Republic and 20 for Austria. The smallest members with only 6 seats are Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta while Estonia has 7. Hence, the nations that really run the EU are the triumvirate of Germany, France and Italy in alliance with Spain, Poland and Romania. After Brexit, the UK's 27 seats were distributed to the rest of the members.

The emergence of the EU as a leading force in the global economy has pushed the BRICS composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to strengthen itself by recruiting new members in order to give the EU a run for its money. These are developments that Filipinos should watch closely and be conscious of so that we shall not be left behind in the global struggle for global competitiveness and survival.

In today's world, the law of the jungle dominates again: the survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit.