My guest is Simon Hicks.

Simon Hicks.

Simon Hicks is Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence.

Welcome to the podcast, Simon.

Hi, Paul.

Right. So, Simon, you've been tracking and predicting the outcome of European farmed elections for quite some time now.

Before we delve into some of the detail, could you give me some of the headline predictions you are currently making for the next European

Parliament elections, of course, taking place 6th and 9th of June this year? So the main thing we're

finding is significant increasing votes for MEPs and groups to the right of the European People's

Party. So around about a quarter of all seats in the European Parliament for the first time

will be to the right of the EPP in the two groups, ECR and ID. And ID could well emerge as the

third largest group in the Parliament. As a result of this,

the second big prediction is that the shift to the right will mean the average member of the

Parliament will no longer be in the Liberals. That person will be in the EPP. And this makes a

difference because that average member of the Parliament determines what sort of coalition

form in the Parliament.

And let's just remind our listeners what ID and ECR means, please.

Okay.

Okay, so ECR is the European Conservative Reformists group.

That's the group where the Polish Law and Justice Party sit,

and ID is the identity and democracy group,

so that's the group where Le Pen sits and other sort of more radical right parties sit in the right parliament.

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