Americans are mostly mystified by European Union politics, but then so are many Europeans. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of last week’s voting across 28 EU member states for the European Parliament.
“An earthquake” is how French Prime Minister Manuel Valls described the outcome. And no wonder: Both his Socialists and the main center-right coalition got walloped by the populist National Front, which took a quarter of the vote.
The other seismic shock came in Britain, where the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) led all parties with 27.5 percent of the vote. Prime Minister David Cameron, duly chastened, urged other European leaders to “heed the views expressed at the ballot box” and curtail the powers of the sprawling Brussels bureaucracy.
