Dear readers,

Welcome to EU Elections Decoded, your essential guide for staying up to date and receiving exclusive insights about the upcoming EU elections. This is Max Griera, writing from Brussels. Subscribe here.

In today’s edition

• How serious can Europe’s joke parties get before EU elections? Quite, it seems.
• Bits of the week: ID’s short-lived Bulgarian far-right romance; European Greens slash relations with Hungarian party for cosying up with Orbán; tracking EU parties’ Spitzenkandidaten, Volt’s lead candidates. 
• In case you missed it: EU’s hard right rolls out election campaign and a bid to charm EPP; EU Commission issues guidelines for addressing digital risks to elections; Salvini and Le Pen against von der Leyen, corner Meloni.
• EXTRA: Check out Euractiv’s brand new EU election projections page, with nitty-gritty data on each country.

People disenchanted with the traditional political system are increasingly attracted to joke parties’ use of satire as a tool for critique, with Hungary’s ‘Two-tailed Dog’ party and Germany’s ‘Die PARTEI’ likely to enter the European Parliament with one or two seats each.

Despite having very little influence in the large EU Parliament, one should not underestimate how far satirical parties can go as they gain local power on anti-establishment programmes.

In Ukraine, once-comedian and current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now widely regarded as the embodiment of democratic values, came to power with his Servant of the People party, born from a comedy TV show.

“People look at satirical parties as a venture where they can vent their frustration with the political system,” Endré Borbath, protest politics researcher at Berlin Social Science Centre, told Euractiv.

In Hungary, Fidesz’s controversial governing and the lack of viable alternatives have fuelled the growth of the ‘Two-tailed-dog’ party (MKKP), which could become a kingmaker in the upcoming Budapest elections and is polling at 8% nationally.

One of their stellar moves: to send a man dressed as a chicken “doing chicken noises” to national TV the day before the 2022 parliamentary election, MKKP EU election lead candidate, Marieta Le, told Euractiv. 

Meanwhile, the Austrian Beer Party, one of its key proposals being to build public Beer fountains in Vienna, holds local council seats and will run for the national parliamentary elections in autumn, but they have decided not to participate in the EU election. In 2022, its leader came third in the presidential elections with 8% votes.

Fun ways, real agenda

As joke parties grow in popularity, they are increasingly under pressure from media and other parties to position themselves on key issues, Borbath said.

“The party also has serious initiatives,” MKKP’s lead candidate Marietta Le told me, arguing it runs donation campaigns for homelessness and refugees and is committed to fighting corruption.

If she enters the European Parliament, she wants to “close down inefficient and useless committees, so I will join the petitions committee, close it down, and start something that actually works,” she said, asserting that her party wants to boost citizen participation and bring the EU closer to Hungarians. 

Despite having initially decided to stay as non-inscrits within the EU assembly, the party is considering joining a group, possibly the Greens, to be more involved in the policymaking process.

On the other hand, Die PARTEI has used Strasbourg’s assembly for the past ten years to criticise high-ranking politicians as a platform to show gains back home.

While so far the party has not engaged in constructive policymaking, their new lead candidate, Sybille Berg, seeks to work on privacy and fighting surveillance, Die PARTEI leader and MEP Martin Sonneborn told me.

“We are ready to become a European movement,” added Sonneborn, who affirmed Die PARTEI is working on ‘Satirical International’, a project aiming at unifying satirical “powers”.

To turn this ambition into reality, intense campaigning awaits the party, where Sonneborn lamented, “It will be difficult to have a better joke than Ursula von der Leyen becoming Commission President again.”

New seat projection: battle for bronze medal continues. Europe Elects’ late-March projection for Euractiv certifies a tight battle between the liberal Renew Europe group, nationalist-conservative ECR, and far-right ID for the third place. Read the newest late-March projections here. 

European Greens slash relations with Hungarian party for cosying up with Orbán. The European Green Party announced on Monday (27 March) excluding their Hungarian member LMP from its EU elections campaign plan for supporting Dávid Vitézy, former state secretary of state for transport under controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for the Budapest June elections. 

… In practice, LMP will not be invited to electoral events or receive campaign material from the umbrella party. The European Greens “will continue to monitor further developments,” a statement reads, leaving the door open for further measures. 

ID’s short-lived Bulgarian far-right romance. Far-right pro-Russian party Vazrazhdane, projected to score three seats, announced they would join ID in late February, after which they were included in the party’s website as a member. One month later, Vazrazhdane has completely disappeared from the website. “The ID proposed a suspension but they preferred to leave on their own,” an ID official told Euractiv. The decision could have followed a rally in Moscow with Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, attended by Vazrazhdane members. 

Pan-European party Volt’s lead candidate race. Volt will elect its two lead candidates during the 6-7 April campaign launch event in Brussels. The frontrunners are current German MEP Damian Boeselager and Dutch MEP Sophie in’t Veld, followed by four other contenders from Spain, Slovakia, Portugal, and Belgium.

Spitzen-tracker: what are the EU elections lead candidates up to? Socialist Nicolas Schmit went to Nancy on Wednesday alongside French socialist leader Raphaël Glucksman, where he met with unions, industry and youth; EPP’s Ursula von der Leyen keeps silent on her campaign plans, as her new X account continues mute and her campaign team remains unknown; liberal Valérie Hayer visited Kyiv; European Left’s Walter Baier spotted on Monday in a Brussels event with the young farmers to present his vision for agriculture; Greens’ Terry Rentke tries to sway agri-votes too with a farm visit in Germany.