Welcome to the next episode of the Feb stocks. This one is particularly special because we are recording that within just a couple of hours after the polling stations across 27 member states in Europe have closed and therefore we have with us an incredibly special guest, Matthias Ecke, outgoing and as we already know incoming member of the European Parliament from the S&D group coming from SPD in Germany and to make issues even more tricky the MEP representing
the Saxon region which had been particularly difficult in this campaign. I have to say a veteran of the movement if you allow me to use such a vocabulary having been part of users but also of the Bureau of the Young European Socialists and our expert when it comes to the regional cohesion and industrial policy in Europe. Matthias, thank you so much for making time just as said couple of hours after the elections. Welcome to the Feb stocks. Thank you for inviting me. I think
everybody across Europe would like to know what happened actually. You know this is the moment we are gearing up always in Brussels we say this is historical moment this will be the most important elections. What was special about the elections 2024? Did we have 27 elections? Did we have one election? How did it go from your perspective? Well I think that the European dimension of
this elections was not as big as in previous ones. I think that we rather had different national campaigns and especially the debate about the rise of the far right has a European dimension but it's always linked to national histories and national party political setups. So I think we had less of a European campaign than in the previous two elections I think and especially since it was not very close in the polls we had a difficult time to present our idea of a
socialist commission president on equal footing with the EPP's candidate. So I think that we had the best candidate but it's very unlikely that after this result and the composition of the council that we will have a socialist commission president so it was more exciting in the last European elections because it was closer in the run-up so I think this shaped a bit the European
dimension which was less pronounced than in the last elections I think. And coming out from the polling stations what do you think you know how would you summarize the result I mean there was a for a long time you've mentioned the surge of the radical right for a long time there was an expectation that they will do much better than what we see at this point. The EPP is coming out and on the election night saying we want this campaign so what is true how does actually
political map in Europe looks after the 9th of June. Well there was always talk about the shift to the right and the surge of the far right which made it also difficult to have a campaign about progressive issues to be honest and now what we see is a right-wing shift of the parliament which is maybe not as bad as expected but still quite bad I think it's more a shift to the center right with the EPP unexpectedly stable I would say even a bit increasing since we expected they also
would lose seats to the far right it seems they did not but the far right is strong in a lot of countries but it is internally divided and we will see to what extent they are able to form two or even one group in the European Parliament I don't think they will be able to form one group quite likely they will stay with two groups but since all the discourse was revolving around the surge of the far right it made it difficult to have a discussion about socioeconomic issues about
the future of defense and foreign policy about climate change and respect of policies in the end for the socialist group the outcome is well not well it's not a happy day for our political movement but it's not a defeat I think that we will we were more or less stable and we are the most important and the strongest force in the progressive camp by far and we will be a big player in the upcoming negotiations yes you've mentioned a couple of times by now that you
know this surge and the radical right rising was the main headline and that it was very hard to go ahead with the progressive topics but I imagine that in the past weeks you've must have completed like thousands and thousands of conversations so what were the issues that people were bringing when discussing with you as someone who on one side had to legitimize Europe and how it did in the turbulent times that led to the public crisis and on the other hand make a promise that it can
get better well a lot of people are concerned about the current global situation about security in a broader sense like the war the Russian war for aggression in the Ukraine and its consequences for the whole of Europe were one of the most dominant issues but also inflation and at general well I would say there's a bad mood and as I mentioned in the beginning since I have experienced our campaign in Germany which was dominated by national issues and the question of the
performance of the current government consisting of social democrat screens and liberals there was quite a strong push against the government from both the far right and the the EPP so that was a big issue performance of the government and then the on topics like migration inflation policies on climate protection and so on so there was a general setting that made it quite difficult to have a debate about the future of Europe but still of course all these issues that people care about
have a strong European dimension so we also tried to show that it is our goal to have a European solution for most of these problems that have transnational implications if you talk about migration of course you need to find common ground on legal migration labor migration but also on refugees and asylum seekers and we had the discussion about the common European asylum system what was quite astonishing for me is that people who hardly recognize what we actually did so
they talk about the problems but they do not actually talk about well this is what Europe did was sufficient or it was problematic or something they just see the problem and okay Europe does not do enough so this is this is quite difficult so I had hardly a very intense debate about specific policies of the European Parliament and the Council that we recently did only on very special subjects like in Germany the discussion about the combustion engine is very
strong and so on and so on but this is all there was not one single very progressive topic that we discussed all the time which I think is a bit one of the problems one of the reasons why our campaign was not overly successful yeah I think you are hinting very much to this question you know the not enough of your compensation of the campaign not enough attention to the top candidates and very sort of national or even local issues now you know if we were in the UK
you probably would already have quoted some personal experiences so I can't resist the temptation to ask you about let's say one conversation that particularly stuck with you something that will make you sort of rethink something for the next Monday any particular sort of one even millisecond impression that you would like to share I think my personal experience in this campaign was probably very different from most of other people because
some of you may know that I was attacked by far-right activists in this campaign and so I yeah I had to leave the campaign trail for two weeks and had to recover and after that I was very much focused on the debate about well violence about the debate about the political climate that we are in about polarisation radicalisation and about the threats of the far right how much do they threaten our democracy how much do they threaten our security and this
was an ongoing debate and I think it also shaped it partly also shaped the German debate about this European elections which is on the one hand very important and very necessary and not only because I was involved personally but also because I consider it one of the most pressing questions on the other hand I also see the downsides that well when we talk about this abstract notion of the institutions are in danger our political our rights are in
danger democracy as such is threatened the far right is always very good at saying yet but but the bills went up but there are so many illegal migrants who committing crimes and so on like that we were talking in the clouds in the sky and they were talking about day-to-day issues and with hindsight I think that we might have focused too much about the threat of the far right to European democracy and to European integration for people to
grasp it I think if we warn against the threats of the far right and of radical forces that want to disintegrate Europe and want to turn people against each other we in the same time need to offer solutions for people's day-to-day problems so this is something that that my personal experience was that I talked a lot about these issues but it felt like we should have focused more on present butter subjects well thank you very much for sharing because
it can't be an easy subject and having gone through that it's I think we all across the political family and across Europe we have been very much shocked and while expressing solidarity also traumatized because it sort of hints you mentioned polarization but it hints together with everything else that took place in this campaign into aggression being a measure that is being taken that is being to some extent seeing horrid practices being
normalized I mean there were two prime ministers attacked in this campaign there were multiple attacks people statistics are showing that one third of the population of different countries have been exposed to if you want aggressive communication especially from right radicals or via the internet so what can be done I mean in that sense you know this feels very unsettling yeah it really is the question I think there are two dimensions one dimension
is that we need to clearly state who is the well who is the political force behind this brutalization of politics and it's the far right it's there it's part of their strategy to make politics more well savage yeah and to make the the rational discourse look like some feeble and weak intellectual enterprise of some strange academics so this is this is their strategy and they benefit from this brutalization of politics on the other hand
is also up to us us not as a social democratic family but as a wider range of democratic forces of the center that we do not overpolarize our internal debate and like take these measures this like savage style of politics as a tool to yeah to beat our democratic opponent yeah this is something that I also think we should take care of so if I if I have a different opinion than our Christian democrat in Germany then I should not use this kind of accusations
this kind of fake news this kind of very personal attacks that we know from the far right because it if we take this language if you take this if you take also these issues that they talk about and then we make them stronger and unfortunately I've seen especially with parts of the center right in in Germany that I know best but also from from other countries that they try to use some of these techniques to to attack us and this will hurt democracy so this is
one thing I've been talking about this a lot but coming back to my analysis of the the result I think that we did better in countries where we did not have this discourse on these abstract notions of democracy being under threat but where we could really use our social democratic key issues like labor housing the welfare state and and these kind of things I think when you these debates are kind of crowded out once you talk about the very essence
of democracy if you talk about violence it's always the top news yeah I can I can tell you it's always top news and but it's a bit depoliticizing because it's not talking about people's day to day problems so if you look at the results I think that we as social democrats only in a very few countries we ranked number one I think in Portugal and Sweden correct yes that's pretty much it yeah Romania and Romania so these three countries as far as I remember
Romania is of course the coalition so it's a little bit of a different yeah that's why I hesitated here yeah okay and and but they I think they have more members in this list so anyway but two or three countries have been number one and but we've been number two in a lot of a lot of countries so I think we were part of polarization with the far right or the center right quite successfully in a lot of big European countries in Spain
in France and also in Germany, of course, less successful, but we were always part of this polarization, which I think makes our group quite strong, not only in terms of seats, but also in terms of political, capital, political relevance.
So to sum it up, I did not have this one single eye-opening conversation, but I had this very intense debate about democracy under threat, with my personal story in this campaign, which really made me think whether we should have done it that way or whether we should have talked about other issues more.
But yes, following up on what you've just said, because I think it's incredibly interesting how you show the dynamic which is somewhere in between polarization, a very clear sort of two polars of how the politics should look like, right? And on the other hand, the depolitization, right, which you've mentioned that it was very hard for social democrats to stand out from the mainstream politics. And now, since the election night, we have this sort of a message coming from especially the EPP.
Look, we want to have the pro-European mainstream staying together on the positions and possibly on the issues. But what about social democracy indeed? I mean, you come from, and I'm sorry if I'm going to put my finger into something that might be a wound, but you come from the region where social democracy did a very, very poor result. It influences the way we look at social democracy in Germany, but you've also already mentioned us being the best second choice in many different countries.
And in the Central and Eastern Europe, if you want, just across the border, and I know that the region is very close to your heart, you've been involved in many of the FEPPS activities in the Central and Eastern Europe. So if we look at Czech Republic and other countries, social democrats are very sort of low.
So what can be done? I mean, being the second choice is never nice, but being in a very peculiar position or even perillous position in some of the member states will certainly change the dynamic now also on the level of the European Council, won't it? Yes. Well, to be honest, I consider my region and most of the east of Germany consider us in terms of political culture and political history. We are part of Central and Eastern Europe.
Like our political culture is probably closer to the Czech Republic than to Bavaria. But this is probably a controversial idea, but you know, you could elaborate on that. You could make a highlight of this conversation, that's for sure, yes. Yeah, but yeah, we've seen this polarization of the far right and the center right in our region, but also we have a new national conservative left group that is probably an heir of the former state socialist party.
They have this very conservative worldview and in the same time left social policies. And this is something that is relatively new to our political system, but it's well known, I think, to other countries, political systems. And it is the war in Ukraine that is important to explain this reshuffling of the political landscape and the party political landscape. What can be done about that is not that easy, to be honest. It's not easy. I was also shocked by the results in Poland.
I was really shocked. I didn't expect them to be that difficult, but it seems that the platform of Abchanska is... Civic platform, yes. The only thing about the Bavarian Sky, yes. The Civic platform is kind of a catch-all thing for the entire party system that supports the current government against the peace system, to be honest. So we have this dynamics everywhere that you must be in the lead that you collect these votes also from other supporting partners. And I think it needs both.
It needs progressive policies for really to make societies more liberal, more livable, more sustainable, and to reduce tensions and violence within societies. Like in the Protestant being progressive, but at the same time being social, like being classical leftist, having a redistribution of income in favor of lower and middle incomes, supporting workers' rights, supporting the public ownership of infrastructure and democracy on the workplace and so on.
I think this is the very classical social democratic synthesis being socialist and being at the same time progressive in terms of policies. And I still think that's the best thing you can do, but it's not always received in the same way. So I see some of our member parties going in a more conservative direction, some going in a more like social liberal direction that they neglect, like redistributive part of it.
And I don't think it works in the, like on average, I think the classical program should be redistribution and liberalization of society. But it's 27 different societies. It's not always the one catch. It's not always a silver bullet. So let me sort of tease you out a little bit on this last sentence, of course, because you've already mentioned that, you know, you do expect that the right-wing and right-wing radicals will not be one uniform group.
We know that they also are facing a big issue when it comes to the coherence of voting and idea. They know that what they dislike, but there is not much of alternative that would unite them in the synthesis you've mentioned before. But the new European Parliament will be a very different place. I mean, the numbers are suggesting that, okay, social democrats sustained 135, but the parliament is 720.
And that means that probably the game in town, if you want, will be about the primacy of progressive politics and ownership of the different ideas. But we also have the record of voting where not always we are cohesive when it comes to trade, when it comes to migration and so on. So coming as an old member and a new member into the European Parliament, how do you expect this Monday to unfold?
What kind of strategy social democrats have in mind in order to sort of still deliver and leave up by the promises that they've made and have a say? Because, I mean, we continue saying we are the second family. It's not possible to get any groundbreaking deals without us. But that's sort of very minimum. Like how do we build on this minimum to go to maximum? In fact, is my question. Yeah. Well, first of all, we cannot let any constellation.
We cannot accept any constellation that makes us an exchangeable partner for the far right. So this is probably what the EPP strategically would prefer that they say, okay, we try to form random majorities, be it with the far right or be with the social democrats and liberals. So this is something that we cannot accept. It's only us or them. So for the for the five years, and I think this is a precondition for any deal that involves our votes for their proposal for a commission president.
But and at the same time, we need to work on these issues that they will not, they have not answered to in recent in the last five years. And they do not even intend to answer now that that redistributive questions question of people participating in a changing economy that gives a lot of opportunities, but they need to be distributed evenly. So we talk about a new greener, more digital economy. We will talk about we still have a very intensive global division of labor.
Of course, we have some debates about like reassuring and about protectionism and but we will continue to live in a globalized world. And I think we are the only political group that has an answer on how to make this new economic model an inclusive one. And this is what we should elaborate on that this means employment policies, climate and protection policies, cohesion. It means democracy at the workplace and it means fiscal policies.
This is something that I see the far, the far right has no solutions anyway. But the center right is very weak about and this is what really concerns people and it's about housing. It's about health care. It's about the state today problems and Europe can provide a framework where these things can be solved in a good way on a national or like a regional municipal level.
So we cannot like run the bus system in a Portuguese village from Brussels, but we can provide the means and the respective legal framework that it can be done successfully. So this is one thing. And the other thing is that we need to strengthen our European institutions. We need to strengthen the EU to face the common challenges from within and from outside. Yeah, we have a social market economy. We have a liberal democracy. We have a society based on individual fundamental rights.
And this very idea of society is under attack from within and from outside. And I think it is a social democrat. It is our job to defend this way of life. And this means more than to build walls and to strengthen our military capacity, which might be necessary, but which is not sufficient. Like at least the first military capacity might be necessary. But it's not sufficient. And this is where the mindset of the conservator stops.
And I think that we have a more holistic idea on how to make people's lives in Europe better. Not just pretend them from harm and not making things worse, but we really want to make their livelihood better. And I think that's the only political family that really aims at doing this. It's almost the grand finale that I would expect, but I still have two small questions.
The first one, do you think that in this constellation taking into account everything we've discussed about the polarization, the politicization, the issue of the aggression being part of the contemporary politics, do you expect a lot of disruption inside of the European parliamentary debate? More than we know so far, I think. I think it will be tougher. But we already do have these people in the parliament. There will be more of them.
And maybe they reconsider their strategy, because in the moment they just really don't, like the ID group, they don't really participate in the work, in the legislative work. They just, you know, doing their speeches and the plenary and doing their TikTok videos. We will see whether they really try to influence lawmaking. I don't think they will.
So I think that they will intensify these kind of political games, point of order, like their speeches about national issues, about any single case that wasn't a national tabloid, that it's a question of discussion in the European parliament and so on. I think this kind of style we will see.
And we will see a constant strategy of the centre-right to collaborate with them on a day-to-day basis, on a single issue basis, in order to not have them demonized, because they are more useful for the EPP if they are not demonized. Yes, and the absolute last question. You are a returning member of the European Parliament.
You were one of the front-benches in the previous one dealing with social cohesion with the industrial policy, two bad bonds of what we would like to see the European integration move forward on. Imagine that we move the clock and it's 2029 and I'm having with you this sort of wrap-up demanded conversation also on FEPSTOCK, hopefully. And I'm asking the question, what do you think most proud about as an achievement of this mandate? What would that be?
Well, I hope that we still look very good and young by then. All right, then. Apart from that, yeah, I think that by 2029 I would have a flourishing, well-running economy in Europe, more investment, more new economic opportunities, more jobs, more well-paid jobs, and a cohesion policy that contributes a new cohesion policy that we have finished in 2028, that will contribute to an equal distribution of the opportunities this new growth model provides.
So I'm very keen on working on this new cohesion policy because I know that there are some political forces in Brussels and the parliament, especially in the council, that want to get rid of this very idea of cohesion. But I think that we as socialists have to fight for it because it's the essence of European integration is that we are together, we help each other and we move closer to each other. Like an ever closer union also has a socioeconomic dimension.
And this is something when I look back on this mandate, I hope that I can say, "Okay, I did contribute to the renewal of this idea of cohesion." Fantastic. We wish you all the best of luck with that particular mission, which I think might be what might change the odds for social democracy next time around as well.
Thank you so much. Matthias Ecke, a member of the European Parliament, as a returning member of the Socialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, the former users member and young European socialists was your guest at FEPSTOCK, the first round-breaking episode after the European elections. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. Thank you, Anja. [Music] (upbeat music)