European Elections Outcome and the Future of European Politics

How many people have turned out? What motivated their vote choices? Which parties can be considered winners and which ones are the losers of the elections? How do the results impact coalition building and legislative politics in the European Parliament? What are the implications for European policies, such as climate change and security? And, who will become the next Commission President? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during this evening with Marijn Kruk, Theresa Kuhn, Maurits Meijers and Nikoleta Yordanova.

About the speakers

Marijn Kruk is a writer and journalist originally from the Netherlands, based for 17 years in Paris and since 2022 in Amsterdam. He has been writing on a wide range of subjects, in recent years focusing on the rise of the radical right in Europe and especially Orbán’s Budapest as a centre for “an illiberal counterrevolution” that has been waging in the West for some time now. His upcoming book, Opstand, talks about this and is based on extensive reporting all over Europe. It was conceptualized during a residency at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS).

Theresa Kuhn is Professor of modern European history and politics at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on key challenges in European politics, such as euroscepticism, nationalism and increasing polarisation, particularly in light of recent crises such as the eurozone crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine. Currently, she leads a 5-year research project on European identity formation funded by the Dutch research Council. In 2020, she received the Young Scholar award for the most significant contribution to the interdisciplinary study of Europe for a scholar under the age of 40, awarded by the Council for European Studies.

Maurits Meijers is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. His research studies the challenges to political representation in both domestic and European politics. His research on political representation has been funded by a Veni grant of the Dutch Science Council (2019-2024) and he has received an Early Career Award in 2020 by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Nikoleta Yordanova is Associate Professor of European Politics at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science. From 2020 to 2024, she was the principal investigator of the EUINACTION project (co-funded by NWO and EU Horizon 2020 as part of the Norface Governance Network), studying politicisation and responsiveness in the EU. Previously, she has done extensive work on the European Parliament, including her book on the Legislative Organisation of the European Parliament. Her broader research on legislative politics, delegation and compliance in the EU as well as coalition politics has appeared in leading international peer-reviewed journals.

Matthijs Lok (moderator) is a Senior Lecturer in modern European History at the Department of European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. His specialisation is the political, cultural and intellectual history of modern Europe in a global context since the eighteenth century, in particular topics on the intersection of history, politics, philosophy and memory. His main interest concerns the role of ideas in political change and ‘counter-narratives’ of political modernity and globlisation. In 2023 his latest book, Europe Against Revolution, came out with Oxford University Press.