Although he can't answer the question posed in the title, Dolack provides a good summing up of the significance of the recent elections to the European Parliament. Given that people under capitalist rule have few choices to select from and that capitalist governments have little real independent power, he writes:
Europe is not ready to revolt. Or, possibly more accurately, given the 43 percent participation rate, Europeans simply see the European Parliament as irrelevant. Given the little power it has, and the anti-democratic structure of European Union institutions, many saw the election as simply as an opportunity to cast a protest vote.He concludes the article with this insight:
An intensified race to the bottom is all that is on offer by the governments and institutions of the world’s mature capitalist countries. There is no tweak of policy, nor exchange of one corporate party for another corporate party, that can solve the structural crisis of the global economic system.You might also want to take a look at Wayne Madsen's take on the election entitled "European Parliament’s New 'Neo-Nazi / Far Right' – Not so 'Nazi' and not so 'Far Right'" as a measure of political change among Europeans who voted. He essentially argues that many of these "far right" parties have been de-contaminated of much of their traditional far-right views and have been co-opted into supporting most pro-Empire policies.
