Keeping Europe safe from wars and poverty is the key thread of the narrative the EU socialists pitched for June’s European elections as they hammered out their strategy at a congress of the Party of the European Socialists in Rome last weekend.

With the war in Ukraine now in its third year, compounded by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the shift towards more security and defence investments in Europe allowed the socialist family to stress the importance of foreign and domestic security.

“We have to make sure that Europeans feel secure,” the elected lead candidate Nicolas Schmit told Euractiv in an exclusive interview, a message he repeated during the congress in Rome.

“When I say secure, I mean both external security – we are living in dangerous times – but also internal one, which also means economic and social security,” said Schmit, currently the EU commissioner for jobs and social rights.

Schmit adopted the narrative of socialist prime ministers who attended the congress, such as the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose speech focused heavily on Ukraine and defence.

“We are coming back to imperialism in Europe,” Scholz told the congress, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  “We agreed for many decades that changing borders by force should not be part of the reality of Europe anymore,” he said.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that the war had “fundamentally changed the reality in and for Europe. Once again, war is expected on our soil”. She stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening not only Ukraine but the whole international order.

Analogies with the centre-right

The socialists’ focus is strikingly similar to the one pitched by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the lead candidate of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), who zeroed in on Europe’s security after announcing her candidacy in February.

“Citizens want more defence in Europe. They want us to invest and remain transatlantic but to become more European. I also want to look at security in a wider sense: citizens want to be safe on our streets,” von der Leyen said.

“They want protection from poverty and illness, and they want to know who takes care of them when they are old,” she said, pointing out the need to fight corruption and defend the rule of law.

On the latter point, socialists again offered a similar rhetoric, stressing the need to protect fundamental EU values ahead of the European elections, where the far right is expected to make significant inroads.

What divide them

Although both political families remain vague on who they identify as ‘far right’, there are some differences in how they portrayed extremism in their latest speeches. 

Referring to the nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), who may be the fourth strongest group in the new European Parliament, von der Leyen said on 22 February that we “do not know who is forming the ECR after the elections, what groups will leave the ECR and, for example, join the EPP, which is also possible”.

Socialists, for their part, have been extremely vocal in stressing they would never govern with the far right as the centre-right has started doing in recent years.

“It is not acceptable to collaborate with the far right,” Schmit told the congress in Rome, criticising recent measures on civil rights adopted by the far-right Italian government of Giorgia Meloni.

“I condemn the Italian law which forbids the registration of children of same-sex couples. Children must never pay for political decisions,” Schmit said at the end of the congress.

In terms of EU policies, Schmit told Euractiv his party would seek to take over portfolios related to the social-economic and green transition, which are “deeply interlinked”.

The EPP, which is again expected to be the single biggest group in Parliament, will want to get the post of Commission president but also “key portfolios” such as the EU’s Green Deal, according to the EPP Secretary-General, Thanasis Bakolas, indicating tough talks on the distribution of portfolios after June.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

Read more with Euractiv