 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The results of the European Parliamentary Elections are out. And while the traditional power blocks, both the centre-left and the centre-right, have suffered damages, the prospect many people were fearing, the dominance of the far-right, has been averted for now. To talk more about this, we have with us D. Raghunandan, political analyst. Thank you for joining us. So, could you first give an outline of the results and what you think are the key trends that we have seen in this election? Well, as you said, I think the key trends are that the centre, both the centre-right and the centre-left, have lost ground. And it was feared, some may have expected, that the far-right and the nationalist parties would have gained at a European level, which hasn't happened. But I think the more interesting trend is that the biggest gainers have been the Greens, who have gained virtually across Western and Northern Europe, and they have recorded significant gains. And the other big gainers have been the Liberals, which is significant because it marks a major turn in European parliamentary politics. For the first time, the centre parties of the left and the right, between them, don't have a majority of seats. So, when it comes to important legislative decisions, when it comes to choosing the main office-bearer posts in Europe, that's the European Commission President, the European Council President, and importantly, the Governor of the European Central Bank, which has to be decided and ratified by the parliament, this is not going to happen just by a coalition of the centre-right and the centre-left. And in order to form a winning coalition, which would vote on European lines, there would have to be a coalition between the centre-right and centre-left, and either the Greens or the Liberal Democrats or both. And I think the significance of this lies in the fact that these four, the centre parties, the Liberals and the Greens, are all the pro-European parties, whereas the nationalist parties, the far-right parties, etc., are the Eurosceptics who are likely to pull in different directions. So, one of the key narratives ahead of this election was the possible rise of the far-rights, like you talked about, in Germany, in the UK, Italy, France. And in many of these countries, we did see them actually dominating. For instance, in France and Italy, they were the leaders and in the UK too. So, what sort of implication do you think this rise has on the domestic politics of these countries and in Europe as a whole? Well, till now, the dominance of the far-right has been restricted mostly to the new entrants into the European Union, whereas the EU-15, the original members, were not so affected by this problem, except for France, with the strong showing of the National Rally, which is now called the National Rally. But now you've got the Brexit Party and you've got strong showing from Italy, of course. So, these three parties in Western Europe have pushed up the numbers of the far-right. The only thing is that so far, given the fact that the key driving forces behind these far-right movements tend to be nationally restricted, and they share perhaps only one common thread, which is a Euroscepticism. But Nigel Farage's party is the only party that actually wants to leave the EU. No other far-right party has indicated a desire to quit, but they want a greater assertion of national sovereignty compared to a centralization of a European identity. But I think all the far-right parties would find it very difficult to work together as a bloc because I think they don't share as much ideologically as it may appear from the outside. Le Pen's party, the Front National in France, has been consistently reluctant to join any other far-right grouping because it thinks it has a unique role in a place to play, which is central to French society rather than having a common European thread or a pan-European thread. So I think that while in the national context there is a considerable amount to be worried about the far-right, at a European level, in legislative terms, they may not be that much to be concerned about because I think the concerns of each of the individual parties, ranging from populism to a far-right conservative agenda to extreme nationalism, I think vary so much that they would find it difficult to work together as a bloc. But one of the issues many of these parties seem to have a common understanding on is the issue of migration. So would you see the movements against migrants and the xenophobia actually increasing in the aftermath of these results in success for them? See, the sentiments about immigration have actually been rising in Europe for some time even among the centrist parties and it's not a concern confined to the far-right. The far-right have made it a central point of their agenda and also made it a xenophobic issue whereas the concerns about immigration have even been central to many of the centrist parties, the Conservative Party in the UK for example, the CSU in Germany have been concerned. But now the concerns about immigration including the populist parties and the far-right parties and so on have certainly come to occupy a more central place in the European discourse than before and I think that the centrist parties are finding it increasingly difficult to sound pro-immigration. The stance that Germany's Angela Merkel took when migration from North Africa and the Middle East was at its peak as pro-immigration, as you know, took quite a beating in Germany as well as elsewhere in Europe as a result of which Angela Merkel herself has had to retreat from that position and I think there are few parties in Europe today which can take a very openly pro-immigration stance. And one of the other key issues in this election was of course around centred on climate and one of the major victors in this election like you pointed out has been the green parties across the continent. So how do you see the rise of these parties and what are the advantages and limitations there? Well firstly the greens have registered a very dramatic rise although in percentage terms the rise of the greens is matched by the lies of the liberals in this election but the greens have shown across the board not just in terms of representation in the European Parliament but in terms of the votes pulled a significant rise. For example in Dublin city it was a green party candidate who had the highest percentage of votes around 26 or 27 percent. I think environmental concerns particularly on climate have become even more central in Europe today than they were earlier and in particular the concern is that whereas earlier many parties of the center left even of the center right in Germany for example have shown pro-environmental concerns about climate change these have been frankly more rhetorical than actually in action and what the greens have said now is that they are now keen to ensure that legislatively and through executive action these are translated into positive laws and actions to ensure that the laws are actually followed. So I think one can see in the months and years to come a more concerted European stance in favor of positive action on climate change and on sustainability issues within Europe but the greens also have not just environmental issues but social justice issues as a central platform and have made what they call social Europe a central slogan for them which along with human rights makes a triumvirate of issues which the greens look forward to. If you ask me today in Europe a young person who likes to think of himself or herself as radical would vote green and that's what these show. However it should be noted that the success of the greens is largely restricted to western and northern Europe. They have very little presence in Spain marginal presence in Portugal and virtually no existence at all in eastern Europe or southern Europe. So they have very little in Italy very little in Hungary, Poland etc. So this is also to be taken into account that this is centered around the better off part of Europe in central and northern Europe as a phenomenon. So one will have to really wait for this to spread to other parts of the EU 27. And finally to look at the other section we not talk much about that's a left. They actually suffered a bit in terms of their overall number of seats and voting percentage. And this has also happened when for instance there have been popular mobilizations across the continent the Yellow West being the most primary example. So what could be the reasons for this and what would be the challenges for the left? See to my mind in the popular imagination in Europe nationally there are very few countries where the left has a significant electoral presence. However and this is the phenomenon which I think we are familiar with in this country as well as in other countries the left has a greater role in the popular imagination than it does in representative politics and electoral politics. And I think that is the role in Europe also when there are anti-capitalist movements in Europe when there are environmentalist movements in Europe and many movements where these two coalesce together the left imagination or left ideas plays a very strong role. In fact I think viewers also need to know that apart from the greens there is a coalition of parties in the European parliament which call themselves left green. The Nordic greens. Exactly. And they have a fairly significant presence in the European parliament which reflects a lot of the left imagination in western and northern Europe which is also a combination of left and environmental imagination. However the younger population, younger and radical populations of Europe seem to identify themselves certainly in electoral politics. I think one will have to wait for quite some time more before the strong conceptual and ideological presence of the left in popular consciousness recovers the kind of electoral representation the left used to have a few decades ago. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching News Collector.