Europeans gear up to vote, with one eye on Trump return

BRUSSELS — Three months from now, 370 million Europeans will be called to elect a new EU parliament under the shadow of a contest playing out across the Atlantic, as Donald Trump, the former US president, fights to reclaim the White House.

How exactly the prospect of a Trump 2.0 presidency, growing more tangible by the day, could nudge voters across the 27-nation European Union one way or another, is an unknown.

But one thing is certain: it would have a major impact on the bloc, at a crossroads when it comes to fighting climate change, shoring up Ukraine and ensuring its own security.

“For Europe, Trump 2 is both a huge exclamation mark and a huge question mark,” said Sebastien Maillard, associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House in London.

Trump’s disruptive first term, with his “America first” credo dismissing multilateralism in general, and the EU in particular, is still fresh in European minds.

The twice-impeached former president has caused consternation in Europe with his threats to walk away from US NATO commitments, fueling a push by Brussels toward greater security independence.

“The Trump scenario is very, very consequential for what the European project is going to be able to do over the next period,” said Susi Dennison, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, or ECFR. Any number of the bloc’s strategic priorities become “much, much harder to achieve” if he returns to power, she said.

On the most critical of these, the conflict on the EU’s eastern rim, US Republicans are, at Trump’s behest, blocking aid to Ukraine.

While the EU seeks to spearhead the global fight against climate change, Trump’s second-term plans tack radically the other way, vowing to tear up a massive clean energy bill.

Both European priorities, preserving Western unity on Ukraine and transitioning to carbon neutrality by 2050, could already be complicated by the June 6-9 European Parliament vote.

The balance of power in the 720seat legislature determines how the EU’s top jobs, heading the commission, the parliament and the European Council, and leading foreign policy, are shared.

Indicators suggest a surge by farright parties, fueled by anti-establishment currents coursing across the bloc. The center-right European People’s Party is set to remain the biggest force, followed by the Socialists, but the centrist Renew Europe could lose third place to the far-right Identity and Democracy group.

The ECFR says “anti-European populists” are likely to come out on top in nine member states including France, Hungary and Italy.