None of the above – what impact will the rise of anti-EU parties have on the next European Parliament?

Open Europe has today published a new briefing, projecting the make-up of the next European Parliament. We estimate that anti-EU or protest parties of various forms could win as much as 31% of the vote, up from 25% in 2009, and 218 out of 751 seats - a gain of 54 seats compared to the current parliament.

However, the main effect of this could, ironically, be to make the next European Parliament even more integrationist by crowding out the reformist middle. The result could also spell trouble for David Cameron's reform agenda, since the European Parliament will have an effective veto over some of the key items on his EU reform agenda. Critically, we project that the share of MEPs explicitly dedicated to free market policies could also fall - from 242 (31.6%) to 206 (27.4%).

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