What are the European elections about in countries that aren’t obsessed by Brexit?

Politics Explained: While we focus on Britain’s exit from the EU, concerns are different for the bloc’s other nations

In the UK, the European Parliament elections have, unsurprisingly, taken on a distinctly Brexit flavour. Brexit policy questions are dominating the news, and the party that looks likely to win is called the Brexit Party.

This may seem strange, given the elections will have no direct effect on the Brexit process, but it’s the way it is.

However, it is not so everywhere. You might wonder what the elections are about across the rest of the continent, which is understandably less bothered by Brexit.

Frankly, there is not just one answer. While there are some shared issues across the continent, each European parliament national election is effectively its own mini-contest. People vote for the parties they know: the votes are sometimes used to give governments bloody noses, or to express support for others domestically.

In Germany, for instance, the parties would like to focus on who has the best ideas for the future of the EU. In France, it has devolved into a two-horse race between Macron’s pro-EU list, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

That there is no single European polity, but in fact a collection of 28 different ones, has been an emerging criticism of the way the EU is set up. If people are focused on their national political systems, the increasingly important one in Brussels feels ever more remote.

There have been some moves to make the system more European-wide. The spitzencandidat system debuted at the last elections in 2014 is supposed to link the results of the elections to who the next European Commission president is. But given how separate the elections in different countries are, it hasn’t necessarily worked as some might hope.

There are proposals for future reforms, such as trans-national lists where people in different countries can vote for candidates standing across the EU. Those are yet to be agreed, though there is support for the principle in Brussels. But for now, the answer to the question of what the EU elections are about on the continent is… it depends.